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Ask HN: Why has YC 6x their legal staff in headcount in past few years?

2 points by O__________O ↗ HN
After YC’s announcement of layoffs been looking at their staff page to see if I noticed anything and noticed YC have 6x their legal staff in past few years. Any idea why?

https://www.ycombinator.com/people

5 comments

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JohnnyHerz
Is this a surprise to anyone?

There are 1.35 million lawyers in America (4 lawyers per 1000 people in the sad State of California) and they are all looking for someone to sue.

If you have a visible business footprint you are a target and have to lawyer up.

Just a Fact of life - Not really a reflection on YC or any other company.

O__________O
It’s notable in the sense YC up until few years ago had two legal staff and YC had been around 15 or 16 years. There’s reason, just like there’s reason they are expanding their software development staff.
rftyuikdjhgvcf
money dried up. they will pivot from being gold-mine wisperers to more mudane shovel-sellers.

I expect they will announce either some startup backoffice/HR/admin tool, or some centralized vetting/investment for the masses, like robinhood but for pre IPO. The former is more likely. maybe start as something crap but hyped out of propo,rtion like a founders master classes by subscription.

dang
I believe that one reason is that YC started funding more international startups and it can be legally complicated to onboard internationally-founded companies into YC's standard deal. YC's legal team spends a lot of time helping founders with that and similar issues.
O__________O
Agree, that makes sense — thanks for taking time to take share a guess.

Seems like “conducting legal due diligence on prospective portfolio companies” is also likely large aspect of YC’s legal department’s efforts; though I would think YC’s Continuity Fund would have been a much larger internal consumer of due diligence services than early stage fund; this based on recent YC job listing for a “Legal Analyst” position:

https://www.ycombinator.com/careers

https://archive.ph/2CitR