YC and Founders Pledge

by Sam Altman9/20/2016

Many of our founders ask us about how they can donate part of their equity or post exit proceeds, and now we have an answer: Founders Pledge.  

With Founders Pledge, founders can sign a pledge to donate some portion of their personal equity and then figure out the recipients for the donation later. Founders Pledge handles all the legwork. As a charity itself, pledges are eligible for tax relief at time of exit and funds can be deployed globally.

Founders Pledge (1) allows founders to decide now that charitable giving is important to them, (2) doesn’t impact other stockholders of their company and (3) requires only about 5 minutes of time and no participation costs. Founders Pledge also provides substantive post-exit support including cause area analysis, charity sourcing, deep due diligence, and impact reporting.

More than 500 founders have already pledged with Founders Pledge, including those from Jawbone, Shazam, SwiftKey, AvantCredit, Deepmind, Huddle, Farfetch, Hampton Creek, FundingCircle, Blockchain, Zesty, Vicarious, and Unruly, as well as 10+ YC companies. 

If you want to learn more, visit https://founderspledge.com/. If you have questions, you can reach out to Ben Clifford (ben@founderspledge.com).

Author

  • Sam Altman

    Sam Altman is the CEO of OpenAI. He was the president of YC from 2014-2019. He studied computer science at Stanford, and while there, worked in the AI lab.