YouSaid · the spoken record

Avi Patel

lines on the record: 97
first: 2026-05-20
most recent: 2026-05-20
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Throwing equities, it's the only way to, you know, if no matter what happens to our country, if you look at Google, you look at Amazon, you look at Apple, you look at Uber, you look at Airbnb, you look at Coinbase, these are international companies that transcend any region or any dollar. They're truly international diverse companies. Sure, they might lose a little bit in a seismic, you know, seizing of markets that could occur or devaluing, but Amazon people are not going to stop ordering from Amazon or using Amazon Web Services. They're not going to stop using their iPhones. They may buy one every three years instead of every two, one every four years instead of every three. The cycle could slow down, but these companies remain money printing machines, just own equities is the advice that we give to my brothers.”
2026-05-20 · This Week in Startups · Avi Patel on the startup that copied Kled and why he called out General Catalyst by name | E2291 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For everyone Neither party is going to stop the crazy spending. That's what I've come to. They were going to do Doge. They were going to get rid of fraud. They were going to cut spending. And they just moved the spending around instead of having the spending on social programs. They're just adding a trillion dollars to the military when we were supposed to cut the military. We're just going to increase it by a trillion and a half. Trump is adding more to the national debt than any president. Ever has Biden added more than any president had. Trump won edited more than any president had. In other words, every president added eight or nine trillion dollars to the debt. There has to be some consensus here to stop it or else the country is going to go out of business.”
2026-05-20 · This Week in Startups · Avi Patel on the startup that copied Kled and why he called out General Catalyst by name | E2291 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“French fries go from four dollars to five dollars or four to four fifty but you create more consumers who then buy more hamburgers and fries.”
2026-05-20 · This Week in Startups · Avi Patel on the startup that copied Kled and why he called out General Catalyst by name | E2291 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It makes no difference to the federal government. 50% of the taxes are paid by the 1%, 80% are paid by the top 10%. We might as well just wipe out taxes under 75K a year. Makes sense to me. We might as well increase the number of people in the middle class by just slowly, I'm not saying dramatically. I'm not like saying go to $25 an hour or $50 an hour like these lunatics in California. That would be a shock to the system. That would cause people to leave. You don't want to do shocking things just slowly. 50 cents a year for 10 years is $5 more, 75 cents a year for five years, whatever it is. Come up with something de minimis, not shocking to the system. And what you'll see is your cup of coffee goes from 450 to 5. Hamburger goes from eight to nine”
2026-05-20 · This Week in Startups · Avi Patel on the startup that copied Kled and why he called out General Catalyst by name | E2291 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I mean, you bring that up. This would be an easy concession to make. And what they found in those other areas. So I had a preconceived notion about minimum wage, which was. Let the free market decide because you're going to eliminate jobs the second you increase minimum wage. I saw this in my portfolio. All the companies doing automation, the second you raised the minimum wage in these major cities, San Francisco, New York, and Seattle were the ones with the most aggressive programs, you saw automation take off in those areas. So I was like, a quick way to retire jobs. What actually happened was, yes, those jobs got retired, but there still wasn't enough people to work in these jobs. You still had low labor participation because the rates were so low. And what happened was in New Zealand, Australia, and these other places, you created more consumers. It turns out people making under $100,000 a year do not save money. They spend it. And Bezos was on CNBC just saying, why are we charging a nurse in Queens any taxes? If they're making $75K a year, they're paying $12,000 to the federal government.”
2026-05-20 · This Week in Startups · Avi Patel on the startup that copied Kled and why he called out General Catalyst by name | E2291 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It would look good for our society to say, yeah, seven's unliv Just add a dollar a year for five years and see what happens. We can always reverse it.”
2026-05-20 · This Week in Startups · Avi Patel on the startup that copied Kled and why he called out General Catalyst by name | E2291 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just fine for Australia, just fine for Finland and these other places. And if you look at Seattle, San Francisco, New York, you did see fast food workers, jobs get automated, they're getting automated anyway. It just pulls the timeline by 12 months. I think we should really just add a dollar to the federal minimum wage for 10 years, just one dollar go from $7 an hour to $17 or from $7 to $13, whatever. Let's make it a dollar for five years and see what happens. Like, would it kill anybody to pay seven or twelve? No. It's going to be no difference.”
2026-05-20 · This Week in Startups · Avi Patel on the startup that copied Kled and why he called out General Catalyst by name | E2291 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Where they did this in other developed countries, including English-speaking ones, that very much model the United States. It worked out okay. The only place that was problematic was underage workers, underage jobs went away because 16, 17, 18-year-olds are not worth $20 an hour. They're worth less than the minimum wage. So you just need to have like a for 16 to 19 year olds or something, a different wage maybe, or 16 to 18-year-olds. It's worked out just fine for New Zealand”
2026-05-20 · This Week in Startups · Avi Patel on the startup that copied Kled and why he called out General Catalyst by name | E2291 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The wealth tax, the seizure tax, and Rokan had dropped out, I think, because it's kind of hard to defend. Anyway, Bradley Tusk came on and we were kind of aligned in it, but we were just talking a bit about solutions to wealth disparity, which has got a lot of hand wringing going on here in the United States. The upper middle class has massively increased. People in poverty has decreased in the United States, but it's really a tale of equity owners versus non-equity owners. What's happening is, I think, we should really look, and I'm going to get called the Libtard and a socialist for just even bringing this up. I do think we need to look at the minimum wage as a backstop. If we are going to be not letting people into the country, it's just naturally going to go up anyway. And if you study when they...”
2026-05-20 · This Week in Startups · Avi Patel on the startup that copied Kled and why he called out General Catalyst by name | E2291 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, no, it is definitely the future of our society that if we're not going to allow immigration, get ready for 30, 40, $50 an hour to be the bogey for this type of work, whether it's a valet, a barista, a housekeeper, these seemingly entry-level jobs. If we don't have immigration, be prepared to experience what New Zealand, Australia, the Nordic countries have all experienced in this regard, which is a minimum wage, that's around 20 bucks, $25 in those other countries is the max it's ever reached. It's kind of 15 to 20. And I have to say, and I was just on the ProfG podcast with Ed Elson, I just, they invited me. ProfG didn't show up, but Ed Elson did. And we were supposed to have a debate. Me and Rokana over.”
2026-05-20 · This Week in Startups · Avi Patel on the startup that copied Kled and why he called out General Catalyst by name | E2291 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And capsule hotels in Japan and in other, this Japanese company, you can look it up. It just opened their first Hawaii capsule hotel. And so these capsule hotels are really interesting. You can get a room for, you know, somewhere in the $50 to $100 range when you're stacked in a capsule. Then they have ones where the capsules are next to each other. So it's like a bed with a side table and a door that closes and you use a common bathroom, kind of like a hotel. And so I guess this is the one. Yeah, this is it. And really what has to happen for these things to change is competition. But New York is, you know, turning into a non-competitive regulatory capture market. And I just thought it was super notable.”
2026-05-20 · This Week in Startups · Avi Patel on the startup that copied Kled and why he called out General Catalyst by name | E2291 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And there's an upper limit, so they're not allowed to because of union regulations. You're not allowed to hit two in an hour. You're not allowed to certainly to hit three. And you probably don't want a hotel room being cleaned in 15 minutes. You probably want a thorough job for cleanliness and hygiene. And you're charging a high price. So, you know, it's not like you can have people come to a room and there's dust bunnies or like, you know, dirt or garbage in the room like you might see in some lower end hotels. This is just an extraordinary look at a regulatory capture market and the pricing of it. Blocking Airbnb combined with the demand combined with the regulatory capture, the taxes. It is just extraordinary what's happened in New York City in this regard. They really need to figure out how to get Airbnb working in that city and how to create more units. They do have done some experiments with Mike.”
2026-05-20 · This Week in Startups · Avi Patel on the startup that copied Kled and why he called out General Catalyst by name | E2291 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So this is regulatory capture at its highest level. The hotels have basically banned Airbnb as a competitor. The unions know that. There's not a lot of supply. So therefore, if there's not a lot of supply and there's a ton of demand, prices go up, and then everybody benefits from it. And then I looked at what is the number of rooms cleaned by a housekeeper per hour. Turns out it's like 1.4.”
2026-05-20 · This Week in Startups · Avi Patel on the startup that copied Kled and why he called out General Catalyst by name | E2291 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, so this is triple. And then other cities, which would be very comparable to New York, they make like 50 or maybe 60. So this to me was like, whoa, we have been talking about wages and this fear of like not keeping up. This is incredibly notable. A housekeeper at a hotel in the New York City area gets paid $100. Thousand dollars a year. And I was wondering how is this possible And I did just a wee bit of research, and obviously a very powerful union. New York City has banned Airbnb. So there's no competition in New York City without competition. They are kind of getting the highest rates of any city. So going to New York City, I don't know if you've ever had to go and stay in a hotel, but it's extraordinarily expensive.”
2026-05-20 · This Week in Startups · Avi Patel on the startup that copied Kled and why he called out General Catalyst by name | E2291 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This to me was just incredibly notable about how much a housekeeper in New York City gets paid versus other cities. Other cities are paying $30,000. I think the average housekeeper gets paid $30,000 a year, $35,000. $39.”
2026-05-20 · This Week in Startups · Avi Patel on the startup that copied Kled and why he called out General Catalyst by name | E2291 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Here we are. So just be thoughtful if you're a founder. And this is why I think open source and maybe using Anthropic XAI or other Gemini, there might be other places that maybe have less of a reputational issue and might be more in the acquisition camp. than open AI. If a deal seems too good to be true, it might be.”
2026-05-20 · This Week in Startups · Avi Patel on the startup that copied Kled and why he called out General Catalyst by name | E2291 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, listen, Sam is cutthroat. Have we learned anything from the trial last week Mira leaving, her impression of him, everybody leaving, the nonprofit board blowing up? This isn't like, I'm not making this up. There's questions about his ethics or morality, his approach to business, his cutthroat nature. I mean, phrase it any way you want. The New Yorker article is certainly a little bit sensational, but people lined up to quote, to share their experiences. They came to me and were asking me to be part of the article. I was like, you know, I like Sam interpersonally. I think he's incredibly smart. I don't like what he did to Elon. I thought he stabbed him in the back. I think it was incredibly immoral, unethical what he did to him. Okay. You know, people do moral, they do unethical things all the time.”
2026-05-20 · This Week in Startups · Avi Patel on the startup that copied Kled and why he called out General Catalyst by name | E2291 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Unethical way? No, they can just watch usage go up. They need to understand the usage. So when they see these 20 YC startups now had their usage go 20x, right? These are the 20xers. They can just say, look at their website. Go hire their people, go compete with them, and then boom, all of a sudden you now have educated Sam Altman and the Open AI team on what's working. That's why they're doing this. This is an information play. This is not out of the goodness of their heart. This is for them to, they don't need the return on the 2%. This is for them to get data, to steal ideas from early stage short-ups. That's what it is. Now, I'm using the term steal ideas, but it's for market intelligence is the way you could say it in the most Generous way possible. The most charitable interpretation of this is it's market intelligence.”
2026-05-20 · This Week in Startups · Avi Patel on the startup that copied Kled and why he called out General Catalyst by name | E2291 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Development group looks at your usage, they study your usage, they see which one of those companies is growing best. Remember he was the CEO of YC for a while, so he knows the value. And then he will just go to each of these companies. Let's say 10 of them are breaking out. And he'll say, hey, I want to buy the company. He knows. So now OpenAI can buy those companies, put them in there. Or if they don't take his offer to buy them because he now owns 2% of the company already, he has some amount of information rights by having that. He's got some connection to the companies. That's what makes this offer brilliant and dangerous. And then he can just say to his team, hey, look, this person went from whatever 2 million in tokens to 20 million in tokens, we need to study that company. Now, does that mean they're going to study them in a”
2026-05-20 · This Week in Startups · Avi Patel on the startup that copied Kled and why he called out General Catalyst by name | E2291 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“End with what level of morality or ethics. People would say Apple is the most conservative in this regard. If you look at when they add something to iMessage, they typically have let other people wring as much value out of that and then they finally add to the Apple Watch the ability to get a sleep score. But for like years, Apple Health is like, here are five different sleep apps, here are five different meditation apps, whatever. And then eventually they calm.com is like a meditation app, but they put a breathing exercise into the Apple Watch. Okay, great. So they tend to want to have a robust ecosystem and then do this. I don't believe Sam Waltman is not going to just use this to study and to get a leg up and to buy them, which is his want and right. He can do that to collect information about these startups. Now they know that you're part of this. So they take those 200 companies. The business.”
2026-05-20 · This Week in Startups · Avi Patel on the startup that copied Kled and why he called out General Catalyst by name | E2291 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Most important thing to realize about any of these platforms coming in, because Facebook did the same thing, and you can look that up, and I made a video like attention to Facebook founders. I forgot what the offer was. If it was like platform credits or whatever. But I just did a thing, hey, Facebook. Hey, YC founders. And it went viral many times over. And I said, listen, you're letting the fox into the hen house. Facebook is going to study whatever you're building and just incorporate it into the native platform. You can't trust Zuckerberg. I turned out to be exactly right. I don't want to be right in these things, but as somebody who has experience, I can tell you what the platforms all do. The platform study the app layer. They pick the best things, and then they make them defaults. So Windows, Android, iOS, Facebook, they all do it. Apple. And the question is, at what velocity?”
2026-05-20 · This Week in Startups · Avi Patel on the startup that copied Kled and why he called out General Catalyst by name | E2291 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, you look better. Yeah, you and I should just judge these things. We'll adjudicate these. We are the law. Bring us your startup cases and we will pass judgment. You know, like, why combinator is just always going to have this issue where if you route for hackers, sometimes hackers take it too far. If you say, tell me a time you broke the rules to win, which is essentially what they're saying. That's what hacking means. Tell me the time you broke the rules in order to win. And then you invest in people based on that. Don't be surprised. If people break the rules in order to win. And then some of it might be uncomfortable.”
2026-05-20 · This Week in Startups · Avi Patel on the startup that copied Kled and why he called out General Catalyst by name | E2291 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You just can't replicate. That passion and the drive and the resiliency to not give up. I guarantee you, these companies that are stealing websites and just copying them pixel by pixel, not putting their own spin on it, they don't have the enthusiasm that will carry them through the downtimes. They'll just quit. So you just have to understand that and keep going.”
2026-05-20 · This Week in Startups · Avi Patel on the startup that copied Kled and why he called out General Catalyst by name | E2291 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Pursue it with the level of discipline that Jordan or Kobe or LeBron do and they just don't succeed. Then you see people with less gifts like Jalen Brunson on the New York Knicks who's smaller than most point guards who are slower than most point guards. But he figured out how to be the best point guard in the league and one of the top five players in the league somehow.”
2026-05-20 · This Week in Startups · Avi Patel on the startup that copied Kled and why he called out General Catalyst by name | E2291 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“People can't do in all of this is people cannot people Can't not do anything. If there is a new market, you have to go after it. That's part of it. But what people can't copy is your resilience, your self-reliance, your enthusiasm, and you not quitting. The people I find who do derivative startups for the money, they wake up on the day it's hardest or the day it's second hardest. And they're like, you know what? This is hard. I'm playing for the bronze. I quit. That's what happens. You see it in professional sports sometimes. Somebody is like super highly intelligent. They've got this incredible physique. They've got all these physical gifts. But they don't.”
2026-05-20 · This Week in Startups · Avi Patel on the startup that copied Kled and why he called out General Catalyst by name | E2291 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Which is, and that's not moral, that's not unethical or immoral if you Saw Uber or Airbnb being successful, you said, hey, that's an incredible category. We need to go for the silver and bronze in that category. Let's be a fast follower. Let's build something that's on the margins better. Let's take the margin out. Let's change the business model. Great. Go for it. Generally, that's not how to win. You want to go with the leader, but Facebook was a fast follower of MySpace and Friends. And they wound up being a colossal win. People would say Uber was a fast follower of SciCar, even though it was just like the timing was there. But they did follow Lyft into ride sharing, right? Uber was Lincoln cars. They saw Ridehair was coming and they were like, well, that's illegal. We're not doing that. And then Lyft was like, yeah, we are reinterpreting the laws and they had no choice but to include that in their product line.”
2026-05-20 · This Week in Startups · Avi Patel on the startup that copied Kled and why he called out General Catalyst by name | E2291 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, 115 just raise 15 million, 20 million, start building up your chip stack so that you can go more aggressive and most of all win. Just win. Winning is the greatest. Winning is the greatest revenge. Living well is the greatest revenge. I had some people I was partners with previously on conferences and whatnot. They turned out to be of not the moral character allegedly whatever that I wanted to be involved with in the breakup. I lost millions of dollars in value in a conference. And then I went on to just absolutely flourish with the launch brand. So without mentioning anybody's names and all this theoretical stuff, like sometimes just getting out of something toxic and moving on from it opens up so many other doors. I can tell you just from my personal experience, it's just much better.”
2026-05-20 · This Week in Startups · Avi Patel on the startup that copied Kled and why he called out General Catalyst by name | E2291 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Have a good one. Yeah, you got to just put it into your work now. That's like what founders need to do is just stay focused on the work. These things can make a founder a bit crazy. And if you get in these kind of situations, what you have to do is channel that energy into the product, into growth, into hiring, into raising money. The only thing I disagree with him, he's like, oh, I shouldn't raise money, whatever. Immediately open a note and get those.”
2026-05-20 · This Week in Startups · Avi Patel on the startup that copied Kled and why he called out General Catalyst by name | E2291 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Came out in support of Delve, and then they withdrew their support, and I think they just erased the note and let them keep the money. I think they just gave their shares back. I don't even know if they got their 125K back. There it is, folks”
2026-05-20 · This Week in Startups · Avi Patel on the startup that copied Kled and why he called out General Catalyst by name | E2291 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They're a great firm, great team over there. I think I'll give them a little grace here that, you know, they're in an impossible situation right here. Their choice now is to throw this person under the bus, to, you know, take their money back. Who knows? Maybe they're talking to that company and saying, hey, we want our money back. And we want to, you know, and they're just in the process of settling that. They might be. You never know. Just like Y Combinator initially came out in support of that company. Was it Delve? I just want to make sure I'm talking about”
2026-05-20 · This Week in Startups · Avi Patel on the startup that copied Kled and why he called out General Catalyst by name | E2291 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Here's what I'll say. I didn't adjudicate so that judge dread JCal. Just, you know, JCal has spoken here. I will say I'll give my I will adjudicate the issue for G7. GC probably made a speed error here. They didn't, they knew the category was emerging. They wanted to place a bet. There's 20 different companies going after it. They picked one and they may have just made a mistake in vetting that company. Maybe they didn't vet them well enough. And maybe the company, if that company, let's say was not ethical or moral, as you've pointed out. And if that's all true, well, maybe they didn't present themselves ethically or morally to GC. And GC got taken for a ride here. GC's in their grill right now saying, why did you do something stupid like this? Why did you kick the hornet's nest here and do unethical things if these unethical things are all true? And it wasn't just random.”
2026-05-20 · This Week in Startups · Avi Patel on the startup that copied Kled and why he called out General Catalyst by name | E2291 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Remember, I told you the founders who win are a bit punk rock. They're, you know, a bit effervescent. Like you obviously are signaling that, like you're not going to. You're going to go down swinging. Period, full stop. If they're going to try to stop you, if they're going to try to steal from you, you're going to go down swinging. You're not going to be a prisoner. You're not going to be somebody else's. I will say, GC is a great firm This is a great honorable author. So it's profound”
2026-05-20 · This Week in Startups · Avi Patel on the startup that copied Kled and why he called out General Catalyst by name | E2291 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Calling them out, keeping it unemotional, not being drama, just saying, here are the facts. And now I need to get back to work. Now I know your company. I saw your follower count went up. I noticed a lot of VCs started following you. I'm assuming some people are interested in like, hey, you're the high performer and you're alleging this other one is the copycat. They've raised more money than you. You seem to be the real deal. You're alleging they're not. Maybe people want to put a little more money into your coffers. Maybe people want to be on your team. And now your profile goes up and you get more attention. So I think you did the right thing.”
2026-05-20 · This Week in Startups · Avi Patel on the startup that copied Kled and why he called out General Catalyst by name | E2291 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Don't feel great to me, and I think you need to look at this startup and maybe just check the reality. So you did what you had to do. You had to defend yourself in the face of somebody effing with you if this is all true. The same thing with Vanta and the company that was doing the AI, allegedly doing the AI slop, Sock 2 things, right? Like what is Vanta or their contemporaries supposed to do? They have to call the company out because they're poisoning the well. You're in a category. This company, if what you say is true, they're poisoning the well of the same customer base. And now what you've done.”
2026-05-20 · This Week in Startups · Avi Patel on the startup that copied Kled and why he called out General Catalyst by name | E2291 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you go to the yard and somebody or you get in your meal and they take your cake, you got to take the tray, you got to smack them across the nose and break their nose. And then if you get your ass cake and they jump, you're fine. But at least you stood your ground. You had no choice but to stand your ground on this. So I think it's great that you said, hey, listen, here's the evidence. Here are the facts. Judge for yourself. And you called. Venture capital firm out, and you said, Hey, listen, you guys invested him, that's your right. If you prefer them over us, that's fine.”
2026-05-20 · This Week in Startups · Avi Patel on the startup that copied Kled and why he called out General Catalyst by name | E2291 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we've adjudicated YC. They could do a little better on the margins, but the strategy is the strategy. Then we've adjudicated this specific company. Now, Avi, I'm going to pass judgment on you. You have come here to this week in startups, the official place where these judgments are given. And I think you did. You handled this exactly right. Tell you why you know you don't have the resources, time, or want to waste time on a lawsuit. So then what are your other options? You can in prison let somebody F with you. You can let them, you know, take your cake from your tray or spit in your food. You've seen all these. And if that kind of stuff happens, then you become a prison B word. You become a prison. Now everybody's going to F with you.”
2026-05-20 · This Week in Startups · Avi Patel on the startup that copied Kled and why he called out General Catalyst by name | E2291 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm like, great. Now I understand this really well. We train our startups. Don't ever mix your pipeline, your trials with customers. If they're on a trial, say trial. If it's a paid trial, say pay trial. If it's on a pay trial, say unpaid. If they're a customer and they're paying, say they're paying. But don't exaggerate. We had startups doing crazy things like taking four years of a contract value and then saying that was the revenue there in this month. Crazy stuff, right? So let's put that”
2026-05-20 · This Week in Startups · Avi Patel on the startup that copied Kled and why he called out General Catalyst by name | E2291 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Look for GC. The company looks really stupid. And now the eye of Saurong, the magnifying glasses on your startup and every single behavior you do. And what I found of the first 400 companies I invested in, we had three that were doing things that were in that area of unethical, immoral, maybe illegal securities fraud, pricing of options, making claims when you're raising money that were bending the truth. Man, we had to cut loose from these because when I went to my council, I said, hey, this company said people worked for them who didn't work for them. They said, okay, were they raising money at the time? I said, yeah, it's in their deck. They said, okay, that's securities fraud. I said, what? They said, yeah, that's the definition of security. You're making a claim while raising a security, while selling a security to investors. That's not true. Securities...”
2026-05-20 · This Week in Startups · Avi Patel on the startup that copied Kled and why he called out General Catalyst by name | E2291 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“$10 million on a lawsuit over a website. It's just not possible. So when somebody does that kind of behavior, if you're an investor, if you're Y combinator, if you're GC, whoever's investing, that is a blaring, blaring alarm signal. If somebody is willing to do something that's unethical, immoral, then that means you need to investigate if they are doing other things that are immoral, unethical, or illegal. So as a founder, you should never do anything with the appearance of impropriety because it's a blaring alarm signal to double click on everything else you're doing, your equity, your pay, your contracts, who your customers are, your metrics, and sure enough, Avi alleges a bunch of other things about the startup that don't look good. I'm not taking any of those and giving a verdict on them, but now GC is being pulled into this.”
2026-05-20 · This Week in Startups · Avi Patel on the startup that copied Kled and why he called out General Catalyst by name | E2291 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Can you trademark design and stuff like that? Yes, on the margins, but you can't really can't stop his business and spend.”
2026-05-20 · This Week in Startups · Avi Patel on the startup that copied Kled and why he called out General Catalyst by name | E2291 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So now I'll move on to, so they should just be a little clear that that's lame, don't do it. I'm pretty clear with that. If somebody comes and applies and why combinator or any accelerator can't say we're going to just bet on one person in a vertical, there's all the companies pivot, like literally the majority of the companies pivot from their original idea within the first two or three ideas when you're at the accelerator stage. So people pivot into each other. That's all good. But they should just say on a moral ethical basis, ripping off and stealing and photocopying is just lame and unethical, please don't do it. And that's what I say. Like, it looks lame. Okay, now I will move on. This company This company looks lame, unethical, and immoral based on stealing the website pixel by pixel. That illegal? No.”
2026-05-20 · This Week in Startups · Avi Patel on the startup that copied Kled and why he called out General Catalyst by name | E2291 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Know selling your shares back, breaking up, and cleaning up the relationship is also the right thing to do. So I understand why's position. YC should be a little bit more clear on the margins about this specific type of behavior, which is blatant ripoffs. They've now become known for being the blatant ripoff shop because when you have 200 companies that have 500K each, they don't get product market fit. I know these founders, I know what they go through. They go through massive panic of, oh my God, I'm going to fail. And you get the shame of failing. So with your last, let's say you did your first idea and you spent 300 of the 500K, you got 200k left, you throw a Hell Mary, you stand up a website really quick. You copy somebody else's idea. You try to raise money. Sometimes it works out.”
2026-05-20 · This Week in Startups · Avi Patel on the startup that copied Kled and why he called out General Catalyst by name | E2291 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So the default stance is always to support your founders. That's what they should do. That's what I do. And then if they did truly do something wrong”
2026-05-20 · This Week in Startups · Avi Patel on the startup that copied Kled and why he called out General Catalyst by name | E2291 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Over people who are not rule breakers. Now, people who are somewhere in the middle, they'll bend rules. They tend to do really well if they're competent. But there is a special place in the world for people who are willing to bend and break rules. And the problem with that is once you establish that culture of rule bending, breaking, reinterpretation, say Airbnb, reinterpreting how things work. Obviously Uber, I was famously an investor in like they reinterpreted some laws, ride-sharing laws, renting your couch laws. Hey, we're not a hotel. We're just renting a room. Okay, distinction without a difference, you know, I'll leave it up to you. But the problem with this is you have to explain to those rulebreakers when you invite the rule breakers in, some of them will do criminal things. Some of them will do things that are morally, you know.”
2026-05-20 · This Week in Startups · Avi Patel on the startup that copied Kled and why he called out General Catalyst by name | E2291 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I'm prepared to give my judgment as the judge and Jeremy and chairman of the interwebs and startups as the official judge, jury, judge dred of these kind of issues I will give my ruling. First, I'll give my ruling on Y Combinator. Y Combinator encourages this hacking behavior because they know if you were to make a four quadrant chart, people who break the rules and who are competent, people who don't break the rules and who are competent, people who are incompetent break the rules don't break the rules. If you were to make those four boxes, rule breakers, rebels, who are competent or incompetent tend to win”
2026-05-20 · This Week in Startups · Avi Patel on the startup that copied Kled and why he called out General Catalyst by name | E2291 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And just so people know, Dal was the Vanta competitor. That was doing allegedly AI slop sock to compliance, destroying their customers allegedly reputation. So you had a, and this is, I guess, where Ethics and morality matter. Did they come to YC with that idea? Or did they come to YC with a different idea and pivot? Do you know?”
2026-05-20 · This Week in Startups · Avi Patel on the startup that copied Kled and why he called out General Catalyst by name | E2291 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So they copied the exact, like they photocopied your website to a level that was absurd. I think that's kind of established. How does something like that occur? Did they address that allegation? They have not addressed any.”
2026-05-20 · This Week in Startups · Avi Patel on the startup that copied Kled and why he called out General Catalyst by name | E2291 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Level of stealing, you're a legend, and that just with the eye test. I don't know if these have changed since have they changed their website since you.”
2026-05-20 · This Week in Startups · Avi Patel on the startup that copied Kled and why he called out General Catalyst by name | E2291 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And just to pause for a second, If we look at these side by side, which Alex is doing a good job of here, font, color, And then section by section a complete ripoff.”
2026-05-20 · This Week in Startups · Avi Patel on the startup that copied Kled and why he called out General Catalyst by name | E2291 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Else who has it, and then be inspired by Their recipes, and then maybe open a similar restaurant. A time you most successfully hacked some system to your advantage. So you are alleging here, Avi, that they hacked the system to their advantage. Explain what you woke up and saw and then how you reacted to it and why.”
2026-05-20 · This Week in Startups · Avi Patel on the startup that copied Kled and why he called out General Catalyst by name | E2291 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source