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"If you apply to YC with someone who knows the YC partners better than you and your co-founder decides to push you out, your co-founder will be supported by YC

"If you apply to YC with someone who knows the YC partners better than you and your co-founder decides to push you out, your co-founder will be supported by YC against you" What? One founder worked on the company for almost 3 years and the other party in question worked on the company for one month, yet this is a huge YC conspiracy? How do you get this crap out of the written complaints in any way?

danso 11y ago
Uh, how do you not get that from Guillory's counter-complaint, unless you believe that Guillory is lying? He claims to have been forced out. The YC app has him listed as a 50% co-founder. Altman's blog post and the complaint against Guillory don't dispute that fact.
- jamiequint 11y ago
  I don't know, because I'm not delusional maybe? Even if he was forced out how does this involve YC in any way. Everything in both timelines With regard to Jeremy and Kyle ceasing to work together happened prior to YC even agreeing to invest in the company.
  - snowwrestler 11y ago
    It has the appearance of involving YC because the president of YC posted an aggressive blog post about it.
  - danso 11y ago
    Because YC accepted the application with the names of both founders and a 50/50 split. Vogt has not produced documentation that, at the time that YC accepted Cruise or shortly afterwards, that they formalized the fact that Vogt was sole founder. A couple of years later, just as it is on the verge of sharing in a big payday, only now does YC take an interest in saying that Guillory is an extortionist who shouldn't get a co-founder's due. If you're someone who believes Guillory's side of the story -- that he was forced out -- then yes, you might see YC and Vogt conspiring against Guillory.
    - jamiequint 11y ago
      Even if he were forced out, do you honestly believe that someone who was fired after 1 month at a company is entitled to full 50% ownership in that company? Can you honestly not see how that claim, given its timing, is being construed as extortion?
      - danso 11y ago
        I didn't say that I believe that Vogt and YC claim of extortion is false. You asked, "How do you get this crap out of the written complaints in any way?", because you seem surprised why any reasonable person could consider Guillory's side, given the facts stated in the complaint and counter-complaint. Well, his counter-complaint claims that he was integral to the development of the company. To back that claim, he has actual paperwork, the existence of which has not been disputed by Vogt. Of course, there's plenty of time for Vogt to produce documentation showing that Guillory's stake was rescinded, but we haven't seen it yet, not even in Altman's principled "screw the lawyers" blog post yesterday.
        jamiequint 11y ago
        As someone who has worked in early stage startups for 9 years now, I'd be hard pressed to believe that anyone who worked at a company for one month at its beginning was 'integral to the development of the company'. That's just not how startups work. The value isn't in the initial idea, or the detailed initial plan. It's in the hard work, the long nights writing code, the prototyping and testing, and prototyping and testing again, the recruiting, the sales, the fundraising, the deal-making. So no, I don't believe that anyone who has worked for 1 month at any company at any stage deserves 50% of that company. That is fundamentally unfair.
        msandford 11y ago
        Fundamentally unfair happens all the time, especially when the law is at play. But unfair doesn't mean immoral, illegal, or even "mean". Further I would dispute the notion that the value is in the hard work, long nights, etc. Value definitely does lie there and that's definitely measurable. But there's TONS of value in outlining the correct approach, dividing the problem correctly, etc. That's called architecture and I've worked on projects with none of it and it's a disaster. For the starkest example of how this plays out, I would invite you to watch the NOVA special "The Great Robot Race" which outlines how all the competitors worked on getting "the best X hardware" where X was the piece that they thought was the most crucial to success including now giants like CMU. In the end it was folks from Stanford who recognized that the exact car, exact LIDAR, etc weren't the crucial missing link, but rather that the software was the problem. And they won based primarily on that insight and then successfully executing.
  - forgetsusername 11y ago
    >I don't know, because I'm not delusional maybe? The fact that you find it unfathomable that maybe, possibly, some rich SV-types could be the bad guys here is delusional.
snowwrestler 11y ago
Would Cruise have been accepted to Ycombinator at all if it had just been Kyle applying? Put another way, if Jeremy didn't contribute anything, then why did Kyle start working with him in the first place? Put him in the YC video? List a planned 50/50 equity split in the YC application? These seem to be at least reasonable questions IMO. All that said, I think the issue here is that Sam Altman personally invested in Cruise, which creates a subtle conflict of interest. It's in Sam's best interest as a Cruise director to crush Jeremy, but perhaps (as the parent suggests) it would be in YC's best interest to just stay out of it (above the fray).
- sandGorgon 11y ago
  They did get accepted into YC without Jeremy (who had already parted by the time the interview was done). Perhaps your question should have been "would they have been shortlisted". Given Kyle's background... The answer is yes.
- jamiequint 11y ago
  > Would Cruise have been accepted to Y Combinator at all if it had just been Kyle applying? Are you seriously asking if YC would have accepted the former co-founder of a company that sold for over a billion dollars? Isn't the answer to that question obvious?
  - snowwrestler 11y ago
    Well, answer the other questions then. Granting 50% of equity is a lot, and as an experienced entrepreneur, Kyle would know that. But he wrote it down as the plan. Why? These are the sorts of questions a court will be asked to ponder.
    - karamazov 11y ago
      The answer is, Kyle was entirely comfortable granting 50% equity because it was subject to standard vesting, and everyone involved understood that Jeremy would own no part of the company if he left in the first year.

danso 11y ago

Uh, how do you not get that from Guillory's counter-complaint, unless you believe that Guillory is lying? He claims to have been forced out. The YC app has him listed as a 50% co-founder. Altman's blog post and the complaint against Guillory don't dispute that fact.

jamiequint 11y ago
I don't know, because I'm not delusional maybe? Even if he was forced out how does this involve YC in any way. Everything in both timelines With regard to Jeremy and Kyle ceasing to work together happened prior to YC even agreeing to invest in the company.
- snowwrestler 11y ago
  It has the appearance of involving YC because the president of YC posted an aggressive blog post about it.
- danso 11y ago
  Because YC accepted the application with the names of both founders and a 50/50 split. Vogt has not produced documentation that, at the time that YC accepted Cruise or shortly afterwards, that they formalized the fact that Vogt was sole founder. A couple of years later, just as it is on the verge of sharing in a big payday, only now does YC take an interest in saying that Guillory is an extortionist who shouldn't get a co-founder's due. If you're someone who believes Guillory's side of the story -- that he was forced out -- then yes, you might see YC and Vogt conspiring against Guillory.
  - jamiequint 11y ago
    Even if he were forced out, do you honestly believe that someone who was fired after 1 month at a company is entitled to full 50% ownership in that company? Can you honestly not see how that claim, given its timing, is being construed as extortion?
    - danso 11y ago
      I didn't say that I believe that Vogt and YC claim of extortion is false. You asked, "How do you get this crap out of the written complaints in any way?", because you seem surprised why any reasonable person could consider Guillory's side, given the facts stated in the complaint and counter-complaint. Well, his counter-complaint claims that he was integral to the development of the company. To back that claim, he has actual paperwork, the existence of which has not been disputed by Vogt. Of course, there's plenty of time for Vogt to produce documentation showing that Guillory's stake was rescinded, but we haven't seen it yet, not even in Altman's principled "screw the lawyers" blog post yesterday.
      - jamiequint 11y ago
        As someone who has worked in early stage startups for 9 years now, I'd be hard pressed to believe that anyone who worked at a company for one month at its beginning was 'integral to the development of the company'. That's just not how startups work. The value isn't in the initial idea, or the detailed initial plan. It's in the hard work, the long nights writing code, the prototyping and testing, and prototyping and testing again, the recruiting, the sales, the fundraising, the deal-making. So no, I don't believe that anyone who has worked for 1 month at any company at any stage deserves 50% of that company. That is fundamentally unfair.
        msandford 11y ago
        Fundamentally unfair happens all the time, especially when the law is at play. But unfair doesn't mean immoral, illegal, or even "mean". Further I would dispute the notion that the value is in the hard work, long nights, etc. Value definitely does lie there and that's definitely measurable. But there's TONS of value in outlining the correct approach, dividing the problem correctly, etc. That's called architecture and I've worked on projects with none of it and it's a disaster. For the starkest example of how this plays out, I would invite you to watch the NOVA special "The Great Robot Race" which outlines how all the competitors worked on getting "the best X hardware" where X was the piece that they thought was the most crucial to success including now giants like CMU. In the end it was folks from Stanford who recognized that the exact car, exact LIDAR, etc weren't the crucial missing link, but rather that the software was the problem. And they won based primarily on that insight and then successfully executing.
- forgetsusername 11y ago
  >I don't know, because I'm not delusional maybe? The fact that you find it unfathomable that maybe, possibly, some rich SV-types could be the bad guys here is delusional.

snowwrestler 11y ago

Would Cruise have been accepted to Ycombinator at all if it had just been Kyle applying? Put another way, if Jeremy didn't contribute anything, then why did Kyle start working with him in the first place? Put him in the YC video? List a planned 50/50 equity split in the YC application? These seem to be at least reasonable questions IMO. All that said, I think the issue here is that Sam Altman personally invested in Cruise, which creates a subtle conflict of interest. It's in Sam's best interest as a Cruise director to crush Jeremy, but perhaps (as the parent suggests) it would be in YC's best interest to just stay out of it (above the fray).

sandGorgon 11y ago
They did get accepted into YC without Jeremy (who had already parted by the time the interview was done). Perhaps your question should have been "would they have been shortlisted". Given Kyle's background... The answer is yes.
jamiequint 11y ago
> Would Cruise have been accepted to Y Combinator at all if it had just been Kyle applying? Are you seriously asking if YC would have accepted the former co-founder of a company that sold for over a billion dollars? Isn't the answer to that question obvious?
- snowwrestler 11y ago
  Well, answer the other questions then. Granting 50% of equity is a lot, and as an experienced entrepreneur, Kyle would know that. But he wrote it down as the plan. Why? These are the sorts of questions a court will be asked to ponder.
  - karamazov 11y ago
    The answer is, Kyle was entirely comfortable granting 50% equity because it was subject to standard vesting, and everyone involved understood that Jeremy would own no part of the company if he left in the first year.