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.

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.