Regular HN users have flagged the comments, since obviously they're against the convention here. I've emailed the founders to ask them to call off their friends/teammates/etc.
People who don't know HN's rules often try to "help" in this way. I try to tell everyone that it doesn't help, it hurts! but it's hard to get the word out.
(Edit: forgot to mention that the comments disappeared because HN users flagged them enough to make them [dead]. You can see [dead] comments if you want to, by turning on 'showdead' in your profile. That's also in the FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)
It's against the rules and if you scroll down https://news.ycombinator.com/yli.html you'll notice it's in bold text—for a reason! Unfortunately it's hard to get the message across, because people who aren't avid HN users have no idea of the conventions here, and there are other platforms where it's considered fine.
I've emailed the founders to tell their friends/teammates/etc. not to do this.
Hello, although we know HN's rules, some of our users don't. They just tried to help without telling us.
I guess we can be proud that they are our users and wanted to help. There was no intent to break HN's rules. We apologize for that happening, and we have told them about the rules so it doesn't happen again.
Launch HNs for YC startups get placed on HN's front page automatically - this is one of the things that HN gives back to YC in exchange for funding it. It's in the FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html.
Since the purpose of voting rings is to try to get on the front page, that construct doesn't really apply here, unless you want to call "automatic placement" a "ring".
edit: some of those comments have now disappeared. Make of that what you want.