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Younis: Silicon Valley secondary cash-outs before failure are borderline fraud

Qasar Younis · Inside the ex-YC partner’s $15B self driving car company | Qasar Younis · Aug 1, 2025 · at 46:48

Qasar Younis, founder of Applied Intuition and former YC partner, criticizes founder incentive misalignment and secondary share liquidations.

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“And so then the kind of the little bit of the fraud that's happening in Silicon Valley, which people often don't talk about, is like, goal is raise big rounds, take some secondary, and YOLO. And if the company goes to zero, or the company has a big downturn in the future, you quietly step out of the CEO role, and you took 10, 20, 30, fifty million dollars in secondary.”

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