News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith by nico on Tuesday January 21, 2025 @10:57AM (#42781551)
We were rejected from YC because we wouldn’t dilute to 0 some of the early people at the company

They first told us we were in, but that we would need to adjust our cap table so that only 2 founders would have equity. They gave us a phone call, we pushed back, and later they sent us a rejection email

Re:Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith by neilv on Tuesday January 21, 2025 @11:11AM (#42781734)
Commendable. We need more people with decency, principles, and backbone.
Re:Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith by auggierose on Tuesday January 21, 2025 @12:50PM (#42783097)
Interesting. Why would they care about something like that? Would it not just come out of the pockets of the 2 founders?
Re:Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith by nico on Tuesday January 21, 2025 @04:47PM (#42785544)
Your guess is as good as mine. My memory is a bit fuzzy about the details now, but I remember a very awkward phone call with one of the partners in which they were saying things like “the cap table is too busy” and that they only wanted founders having equity

We were willing to compromise to some degree, and the non-founders said they would give up most equity if that meant getting into YC

But after the call, we got a rejection email saying something weird like “your cap table seems to be in flux”, thus disqualifying us