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