Your problem is that the YC terms are generous, and what you are complaining about is a hypothetical where you trigger a problem by causing an early valuation. If you choose to, you get given $375k by YC, that will usually convert at the price of your future round A valuation, also the SAFE doesn’t have a discount or onerous conditions from YC (YC has zero incentive to stiff you over a measly few hundred k, from their perspective). That is far more generous than most investors who want to capture the gains between angel and round-A (e.g. the angel below who wouldn’t ever consider an uncapped SAFE, for good reasons).
If you want your angels or $10k, get them into your Cap table before YC (just like you had prior investors?). Or ask YC for an exemption, which I would expect them to give you for a reasonable request (although I admit I am just guessing).
I suspect there are many ways that you can stiff YC out of their money, because the terms are founder friendly in comparison with most VC terms? Could someone sell 5% of the company to VC_BOB for “round A” at a ridiculous overvaluation (diluting YC’s SAFE’s), then shortly afterwards sell 15% to VC_BOB for “round B” at a normal valuation?
My intuition is that YC is playing an iterated game where reputation is everything, so YC has little interest in screwing over founders (YC seems wayyy more founder friendly than most VCs). YC probably wants unethical founders to show themselves sooner, rather than waste time on them. YC is interested in the few big IPO winners - and filtering for them and investing their time in them. YC might punish highly egregiously public cases to avoid having YC look like soft touches. YC can do the uncapped SAFE because they structure everything to get the round A valuation within months at demo day (they don’t seem to care so much about their gains as an “angel”).
Generally I found the points in your article to be fairly weak, and unfairly critical, and missing important details (e.g. your founder’s over-dilution). Disappointment is expected for over 50% of YC inductees, but I don’t see that YC has been bad for you. Some cash, access to resources, a lot of learning, and the ability to try again! Disclaimer: no love for YC, I just prefer people to be fair in their judgements.