At the end of the day, you really have to trust your cofounders. Betrayals happen but you can't found a company with people you don't trust.
A cliff still makes sense in cases when a cofounder abandons a start-up and stops working. Maybe the safest way for everyone involved is to only apply cliffs for the first 3 months or in the case of voluntary departure. That still leaves room for abuse but at least the temptation is more limited.
I'm sure the folks at YC have experience with just about every permutation of this scenario. I wish the video had also covered protecting the founders on the other side of a split up.
For the most part, my cofounders and I followed the advice in this video—with the one exception of founder salaries. To be honest I really regret the vesting cliff.
I worked without pay for 6 months. I had no indication anything was wrong. We raised a seed round were about to finally start paying ourselves the cofounders booted me. Suddenly they weren't happy with my performance, though days before they'd praised it. Worst of all one of them still hadn't quit his full-time job!
The vesting cliff protects those who stay from a founder leaving early, but it also creates the possibility of a founder getting strategically booted once the business is less risky and/or starts getting traction. To be perfectly honest after going through this, I'm not very inclined to do a founder vesting cliff again.
A cliff still makes sense in cases when a cofounder abandons a start-up and stops working. Maybe the safest way for everyone involved is to only apply cliffs for the first 3 months or in the case of voluntary departure. That still leaves room for abuse but at least the temptation is more limited.
I'm sure the folks at YC have experience with just about every permutation of this scenario. I wish the video had also covered protecting the founders on the other side of a split up.