Nothing's done until the papers are signed. This goes for all things in life, too, from investing to renting apartments. If you don't have a signed piece of paper, you have no deal.
One of the main selling points of YC is that they promise not to legal obnoxious things. Saying "nothing's done until the papers are signed" is completely missing the point.
is this comment a non-sequitur or am I missing something? The deal we're talking about was between the author of the piece and Airbnb. YC may have made the offer to fund the whole round, but they're not the ones who made the decision to pull out between shaking hands and signing the paper.
In any case, I apparently place too high a premium on paperwork. In another comment thread on this story, someone pointed out that the remedy for breach of contract is to unwind the wrong party's situation to the position they were in before the contract was signed. In this case, until the check has been deposited and spent, it's trivial to tear up the paperwork.
Nothing's done until the papers are signed. This goes for all things in life, too, from investing to renting apartments. If you don't have a signed piece of paper, you have no deal.