Not the person you were asking the question of, but if I can jump in...

These documents were created by a collaboration of attorneys from Orrick, YC, and a few other places. They are as proven as any forms you're going to get from any reputable startup lawyer.

Please forgive me: I know you are probably a great attorney and this is a relatively simple part of the law.

When I say "proven", I'm thinking "has been tested in court" or "has withstood challenges by shareholder lawsuits".

That may very well be the case with these documents. I'm just not qualified to make that determination and neither is my esteemed colleague.

Completely understand - it's actually something that I've thought a lot about as an attorney.

Any specific form is extremely unlikely to have been tested in court. Especially with startups and VCs. Law suits are incredibly rare because people like to fix things quietly. There have been a few though - and every good startup lawyer makes sure their forms account for those outcomes. But if you define "proven" to mean tested in court - there are probably no current forms out there that meet this definition (although on occasion, specific provisions may have been tested as part of a predecessor form that made it to litigation). The lawsuits are so far and few in between that it's hard to imagine there'd be a form out there that has not been updated since it was litigated.

I guess what I was trying to say is that the forms on our system are as proven as any forms you'd find elsewhere. And we're constantly getting feedback from lawyers to ensure that we always have the current best practices and market-standard terms in the forms.

Thanks and I appreciate the response.

And I mentioned Eduardo earlier in the thread only to highlight a point: for most orgs, these forms will be fine. There won't ever be enough money on the table to make an expensive lawsuit worthwhile. But once there is real money at stake, you had better be sure that you have everything buttoned up in your formation documents or someone will find an enterprising attorney to point out your mistake.

Zuckerberg had great attorneys. Maybe the best. He still had to settle with two different parties who felt they had a case.

Yes, it's an unfortunate state of affairs that even if there is nothing wrong with your documents, you may still get sued and it may still be in your best interest to settle (not saying that's the case with FB, but just speaking generally).

And I completely agree that if you need something custom or need advice, you should definitely talk with an experienced startup attorney. We refer customers to attorneys all the time!

Just to be clear though - it's definitely not an either-or proposition. A lot of our customers will go to their attorney, explain their situation, and ask "so, are the standard forms YC uses ok for us?" And because these documents are very standard (plain vanilla, as we lawyers like to say), startup attorneys are often either already familiar with them (especially so if they already represent YC companies) or it takes them very little time to review. Best of both worlds :)