Ask HN: How do YC group partners handle conflict of interest?

2 points by textread 2 years ago | 4 comments

Hypothetical example (Please Time travel with me to Dec-2015):-

Larry, Sergey and Dr Winograd were part of YC96. They have started Google.

Elon, Sam, Greg, Ilya, Wojciech and John have applied to YC15. They plan on starting OpenAI. One of plans all six of them agree upon is that they have a realistic and ambitious path towards disrupting Google.

In 2015, some YC partners are on the board of Google and have a moral obligation to give great advice to Google. In such a scenario, how do group partners handle OpenAI's cause fairly? Time travel ends here.

I apologize if I seemed to offend anyone with my example. I am just curious about this scenario.

Tangent:- If any readers are working in the legal space, and familiar with Attorney-client privilege; I would love to know of techniques you use for similar problems.

rogerkirkness 2 years ago |

If YC partners are on the board as YC rather than as individuals, then YC as a whole has a Duty of Loyalty to that company and could not sit the other board or invest as a Major Investor. There are scenarios though where the individual at YC is on a board as themselves, and YC invests in another company where unrelated group partners are the ones working on the investment and that is fine.

Disclosure: not a lawyer, YC is a Major Investor in my startup.

textread 2 years ago | |

> unrelated group partners

That is simple and neat solution. After all, there are ~89 people to choose from. Thank you for your reply.

ycombinator.com/people lists 66 employees, 14 group partners, 5 visiting group partners and 4 founders.

rogerkirkness 2 years ago | | |

Yes. Also, keep in mind, YC investing as a fund without taking a board seat has no Duty of Loyalty at all, they could fund every company in an industry and so long as the founders were cool with it there's no issue. So it specifically relates to board seats, which investors and YC tend to be prudent about.