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Equally as trashy and sick as Bumfights, the sort of thing that might happen in the early scenes of a documentary exposing the rise and fall of another fraudulent startup. I'm sure he'll be in the 30 under 30 soon.
Isn't startup culture a bit like bumfights?

Rich people using their financial prowess to subjugate others who are in a much weaker position in order to let them engage in unhinged behavior for their amusement and benefit.

All in favor of skipping the "rise" for this one
> We are bold, we take risks, and we do things that haven’t been done before.

This is a very annoying line. Risk for the sake of risk is self-destructive. The risk-reward profile is what matters, and people respect risk taking with large upside.

Having your company’s logo tattooed on a bunch of random people is zero or negative upside.

Tattooing company logos has already been done https://www.huffpost.com/entry/billy-gibby-aka-hostgator_n_2...

So really, they are just boring and derivative. Probably an analog to be drawn here for modern SV.

There seems to be a line of thinking that past unicorn startups had bad risk-reward profiles, and therefore a good founder should be taking lots of bad risks. If they take good risks, they will never succeed and become a unicorn. Very "tres commas".

So, demonstrating there's no risk too outlandish for you becomes a form of social signaling to investors.

It's the kind of action founders imagine who would be willing to give optional tattoos to any of their their proud employees after all their unusually generous equity packages have skyrocketed, matured, and been cashed in.

But they know they don't have what it takes for that.

This whole affair has the dirty shadow of a society like the one depicted in Jennifer Government.

    "We need to find smart people who will work 100 hours a week like Musk"
    "How do we do that?"
    "Let's ask them to tattoo our logo before we'll consider interviewing them"
    "brilliant. That shows the kind of commitment we need"
    "The press will be fantastic as well"
    "lets do it"
Is it modern slavery already or more nuances required?
In Stargate SG-1, the Jaffa slaves had their forehead tattooed by pouring liquid metal. We're getting there.
Not quite weimar conditions yet
Maybe "indirect" modern slavery? First we teach a man how to cult, then we show him how to enslave himself?
As a person covered in tattoos, my greatest fear here would be if the company rebranded.
Even worse is when the branding (sic) remains, but the image changes.

I'm wonder if there are lefty geek Tesla lovers that branded themselves and then regretting the image shift.

Certainly I've seen plenty of tattoos that have become sadly dated (by me).

You are then dangerously obsolete. New branding means old flesh thrown to bio-degradable trash can and new flesh for the nexgen corpo needles.
I've seen this all over the news. It served its purpose.
What purpose is that? Are you claiming they aren't looking to hire people, and just want their company name out there for other purposes? Or that having this story somehow helps their actual hiring goals (e.g. by dissuading people who think that this is awful from applying, or that it will actually make people want to apply)?

I can think of several purposes someone might claim that this has. All of them seem pretty dubious to me though, so if you think it's obvious, I would be interested in hearing what you think it is.

The fantasy series, Farseer trilogy, and beyond (great read) has "Map-Faces". People subjugated to slavery, wearing their current owner's crest on their cheeks so everyone immediately knows who they belong to. Of course, when traded/sold to another, means yet another "map".

Seems like the valley is getting there and dropping all pretense pretty rapidly.

Ew. At what point do we just decide that this whole community has eaten itself? Remember when a "YC founder" was a diligent nerd just trying to make something people want and get to ramen-profitable before the runway from their tiny seed check ran out?

Now being a founder is such a valuable status that it's attracting people who thinking that ghoulish worshipful body art (on the bodies of people afflicted with the same status envy, it needs to be pointed out) is a great idea.

Do the nerds even have a home anymore?

Was that image of the plucky hacker shooting their shot actually something based in reality or something cooked up to get people interested in founding a company? Look at the inaugural YC class. Do those people today resemble what you're describing? It is important to have critical literacy about things like this. Describing a narrative that isn't consistent with reality in order to convince people to do something is not unique to Silicon Valley. I'm not encouraging wholesale cynicism but just a healthy level of skepticism.
Don’t judge a whole community by one freak.
Come and gone. Gatekeeping has some merits
I could imagine how a potential interviewee might say something like “I’d tattoo myself with your logo for a chance at a job” and a CEO might respond “Hell, yeah! That’s the kind of energy I’m looking for.”

What I can’t understand is how in a whole executive team, no one thought bringing a tattoo artist to tattoo potential interviewees with was a stupid idea. This wasn’t an accident, or surprise, like a tattoo artist just happened to be there and things got wild. They specifically brought a tattoo artist to do this. What the fuck.

> I could imagine how a potential interviewee might say something like “I’d tattoo myself with your logo for a chance at a job” and a CEO might respond “Hell, yeah! That’s the kind of energy I’m looking for.”

If I were that CEO I'd avoid that person because of their very poor judgement, lack of boundaries, and questionable self respect.

That you think it's even on the edge of normal describes the current balance of power in the tech job market in a nutshell, though.

They didn't think it was a bad idea because they don't have a sense of right and wrong. If something is potentially profitable and technically legal they will do it. This is what YC screens for.
Group think. Monkey see, monkey do. It's actually remarkably difficult to be the only one to dissent unless you grew up in a culture where dissent is encouraged.

The people who work at a company all were filtered from the hiring process of the founder. If his filter included sycophants and suck-ups, he filtered out any dissent or critical thinking that could challenge his decisions. It's easy to get an exec team who doesn't diverge from decisions of the guy at the top, but obviously that much homogeneity / thought alignment comes with a cost.

Anyway, I'm glad this was publicized. Some rumored or one bad GlassDoor review can be easily overlooked; this will be a stain on the CEO's reputation for a while.

You seem to think people in tech/leadership are actually smart. Your mistake
Lizard people.
Feels like SF Standard gonna get a copyright strike from The Onion for this headline.
His apology seemed AI generated as well
From a job listing I saw here on the front page today. Instantly repulsive:

> About the role

> "Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in event of success"

> You gotta be in founder mode.

> Next.js web / React Native app. / Supabase, firebase, and Prisma. / Nest.js for WhatsApp / Open AI and Anthropic APIs for agents / Solidity and web3.js for Smart contracts. / A lot of Typescript.

It is a reference, but seemingly also sincere, at least to a non-trivial extent.

Edit: I do not mean this to imply the same company as in the OP

They're trying to make software development sound like polar exploration or something?
cringed ngl.

how about build for the customer / end user?

it’s not that big of a deal.

What company?
They shoot horses, don't they?

Rollerball.

Tattoo yourself if you want to be interviewed.

That is a pack of cynicism
I think YC has an image problem. With its companies, and here, too.
Another story I'd probably see on the Silicon Valley TV show, not real life.
"LemonLime bills itself as a no-code AI startup, not to be confused with the hundreds of startups building something similar."

Ouch

Meanwhile, there will be a line of VCs out the door rushing to give this kid a few million dollars. Because of this.
Not going to click on any of the articles to avoid driving traffic to this…conflagration of poor judgment colliding head on with amorality…but there’s a part of me that wonders if the tattoos were all done with the same needle. Bear with me here. This is not a case study in good judgment. Extending the logic is purely academic.
No, bad logic.

This was a local professional tattoo artist from San Francisco doing a pop up shop at their company party, not some prisoner with a sewing needle. Professional Tattoo artists know how to minimize risks. They aren't taking pointers about how to do their job from some stablecoin microfinance startup tween.