Y Combinator‑backed AI startup is under fire after its founder offered instant interviews to partygoers who got company tattoos, then apologized

A startup founder said he offered instant interviews to anyone who got company tattoos at a recent event—and several people apparently took him up on it.

Jordan Zietz, the CEO and cofounder of Y Combinator-backed startup LemonLime, said in a now-deleted LinkedIn post that seven people took him up on his offer and got tattoos from an artist the company brought along to a recent YC Startup School after party.

In the deleted post, Zietz said the five-month old AI automation company hosted the event “to meet exceptional people, and find out which of them are just as crazy as we are.” Later in the post, he added that people looking to apply to the company “might want to take notes.”

Still, after he raved about the event online, Zietz was immediately attacked by people who said he had gone too far, as well as others who wondered whether the difficult job market really merited going to such extremes to merely get an interview.

“Imagine getting branded with the LemonLime logo for a job interview, then getting rejected,” wrote one user on X. 

“The job market cannot be this cooked that kids have to get permanent tattoos to get interviews,”