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Comment by snowwrestler | Hacker News Reader

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).

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> 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?

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.

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.

Not without begging the question. Because we could rephrase your sentiment as, "Are you seriously asking whether a co-founder of a billion dollar company should list some unknown engineer as his 50/50 co-founder on a YC application?" Most people would say, "Of course not", and yet it is currently undisputed that Guillory's name is listed as such.

And so no, the answer is not obvious.

> we could rephrase your sentiment as, "Are you seriously asking whether a co-founder of a billion dollar company should list some unknown engineer as his 50/50 co-founder on a YC application?"

Please don't, that is a completely different question. I'm honestly not sure how you managed to conflate the two.

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.

> Would Cruise have been accepted to Ycombinator at all if it had just been Kyle applying?

Yes, without a doubt. He's previously YC by way of Justin.tv / Socialcam / Twitch. If you're good enough to go through YC once and have a track record of success you're a shoe-in for your next venture.

Realistically Kyle would have been accepted to YC without any idea and he would have been wildly successful with Cruise even without YC.

So then why include Jeremy and state his 50% ownership?

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