Tech investor Paul Graham, co-founder of startup founder Y Combinator (García Martínez sold his Y Combinator-backed company AdGrok to Twitter), defended the ousted product engineer, who worked previously as a product manager at Facebook, among other companies. "Antonio García Martínez is actually a good guy," tweeted Graham. "He might write the occasional shocking thing for effect, but he'd never, for example, organize a petition to deprive someone of their livelihood." In a heated Reddit AMA chat four years ago, after being asked, "Why are you such a colossal dic****?", García Martínez described himself thus: "Outsiders who know nothing about Silicon Valley think I'm terrible. Insiders who know the game well think I'm actually honest, self-deprecating, and funny, and actually tame by Valley standards."