Year One

Corgi: The IP Scandal Every S26 Founder Is Ignoring


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A YC-backed insurtech called Corgi shipped its Dataroom product on June 24th and was facing a public plagiarism accusation within twenty-four hours. The stakes were immediate: an AGPL-licensed open-source competitor posted side-by-side screenshots, Corgi blamed vibe coding, then sent cease-and-desist letters to the accuser and a founder who tweeted a joke about it. In this episode of Year One, Miles and Grant talk to an S26 founder who admits they can only explain sixty to seventy percent of their AI-generated codebase and never ran a license audit before shipping — which turns out to be Corgi's exact problem at a smaller scale. They break down the four-layer IP exposure every vibe-coded startup carries: AGPL strict liability, the Copyright Office's January 2025 ruling on AI-generated output, and the invention assignment gap that quietly kills YC Series A deals before founders know what hit them. If you're shipping with AI-assisted tools and haven't thought seriously about license scanning or invention assignment agreements, this one is required listening.

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