Good that it got taken down. I'm not surprised it was made. The sleaze kinda attracts sleaze. It really feels like this headline is, "Startup known for parading young attractive women takes down website that drew too much attention to the fact it was parading young attractive women."
It'll be interesting to see how things go for this company. I feel like there will be some interesting books written about it a decade from now.
The guy who created it (Sebastian Mandal) has already taken down his site, his linkedin, and protected his Twitter/X. Guess he's getting slammed for his gross choice here.
I was really hoping for a fun story about someone using a corgi to disrupt a social media campaign though.
> Sebastian Mandal, a San Francisco-based startup startup founder who describes himself on LinkedIn as a college dropout and a professional Minecraft player.
I see a Sequoia Capital funding round in his future.
That's honestly just an expression of how the "base level" of corporate ethics and morality has sunk so low that it is fully believable that such a site could have been spun up by an employee of Corgi, so many of us are conditioned to take the worst possible interpretation of any such headline. I did the same, actually, until I clicked through and skimmed it.
However, the headline itself does not say anything like that. It simply says they "killed" the website. Which they did, via legal threat. I think the specific wording they used was more engagement bait than anything, and honestly a quite mild version of it compared to many. Might even have been completely unintentional.
i think (especially on HN) "X kills Y" usually means X owned/controlled Y and are ending support or whatever. e.g. "Google kills Glass" (for more, see killedbygoogle.com) or "Microsoft kills Skype" (for more, see killedbymicrosoft.info)
The whole startup ecosystem encourages go all in, crash and burn, go big or go home style actions from all actors involved.
It is fascinating to watch, now that I have a closer view of the table. You're encouraged to take pot shots at each other, get attention at all cost and win big.
it is so easy to lose all humanity in the doubling down on each other and thinking it is all one big frat party. all of us should be guilty to be part of the perversion, but since everybody is involved none of us are.
> For its three days of existence, CorgiGirls.com displayed photos of Corgi’s female employees in side-by-side comparisons, letting visitors vote on who they thought was more attractive. The website now shows a domain name error.
> The website appears to have been set up by Sebastian Mandal, a San Francisco-based startup startup founder who describes himself on LinkedIn as a college dropout and a professional Minecraft player. On Monday evening, Mandal said in a now-deleted tweet that he had purchased the CorgiGirls.com domain, asking his 279 followers, “what should i do with it? have an idea, but it may not be politically correct.”
> He then tagged Mark Zuckerberg to ask for his input, presumably as a nod to Facemash, a similar “hot-or-not”-style website that the Meta chief built in 2003 during his sophomore year at Harvard.
Oh this guy again. This guy is a total douche. Not related, he previously tweeting being "inspired by" Martin Shkreli and writing letters to him in prison.
Good that it got taken down. I'm not surprised it was made. The sleaze kinda attracts sleaze. It really feels like this headline is, "Startup known for parading young attractive women takes down website that drew too much attention to the fact it was parading young attractive women."
It'll be interesting to see how things go for this company. I feel like there will be some interesting books written about it a decade from now.
This is the YC startup that allegedly stole a bunch of code from Papermark:
https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/26/corgi-the-buzzy-y-combinat...
> how much does it matter if the source isn’t identical?
Ask a free climber why a 7-11 D carabiner isn’t just as good as a pro one.
"You don't need either to tie on a chalk bag."
You can't steal code.
The guy who created it (Sebastian Mandal) has already taken down his site, his linkedin, and protected his Twitter/X. Guess he's getting slammed for his gross choice here.
I was really hoping for a fun story about someone using a corgi to disrupt a social media campaign though.
Let’s be the change we want to see. Maybe we can secure seed round funding for a corgi, a web server, and a precariously situated extension cord.
> Sebastian Mandal, a San Francisco-based startup startup founder who describes himself on LinkedIn as a college dropout and a professional Minecraft player.
I see a Sequoia Capital funding round in his future.
A startup so nice, they said it twice!
This title really implies Corgi (or someone associated with the company) made the site. It was a shitty third-party with no association who did it.
If we replace "short-lived" with "third-party", it would clear up the confusion without adding any more characters.
That's honestly just an expression of how the "base level" of corporate ethics and morality has sunk so low that it is fully believable that such a site could have been spun up by an employee of Corgi, so many of us are conditioned to take the worst possible interpretation of any such headline. I did the same, actually, until I clicked through and skimmed it.
However, the headline itself does not say anything like that. It simply says they "killed" the website. Which they did, via legal threat. I think the specific wording they used was more engagement bait than anything, and honestly a quite mild version of it compared to many. Might even have been completely unintentional.
i think (especially on HN) "X kills Y" usually means X owned/controlled Y and are ending support or whatever. e.g. "Google kills Glass" (for more, see killedbygoogle.com) or "Microsoft kills Skype" (for more, see killedbymicrosoft.info)
The whole startup ecosystem encourages go all in, crash and burn, go big or go home style actions from all actors involved.
It is fascinating to watch, now that I have a closer view of the table. You're encouraged to take pot shots at each other, get attention at all cost and win big.
it is so easy to lose all humanity in the doubling down on each other and thinking it is all one big frat party. all of us should be guilty to be part of the perversion, but since everybody is involved none of us are.
If corgi distances the company from this, is it a net positive from a PR perspective? I’d never heard of or thought a second about Corgi until now.
> For its three days of existence, CorgiGirls.com displayed photos of Corgi’s female employees in side-by-side comparisons, letting visitors vote on who they thought was more attractive. The website now shows a domain name error.
> The website appears to have been set up by Sebastian Mandal, a San Francisco-based startup startup founder who describes himself on LinkedIn as a college dropout and a professional Minecraft player. On Monday evening, Mandal said in a now-deleted tweet that he had purchased the CorgiGirls.com domain, asking his 279 followers, “what should i do with it? have an idea, but it may not be politically correct.”
> He then tagged Mark Zuckerberg to ask for his input, presumably as a nod to Facemash, a similar “hot-or-not”-style website that the Meta chief built in 2003 during his sophomore year at Harvard.
"Takes down" would be better than "kills". Kills sort of may imply they created it in the first place.
I agree with the latter but I don't think "take down" is any better.
Oh this guy again. This guy is a total douche. Not related, he previously tweeting being "inspired by" Martin Shkreli and writing letters to him in prison.
Something, something the company you keep.
I hate this “do anything for clout” culture.