[jjoonathan]

It's not always the friend that makes you choose.

Suppose Al and Bob have been accepted to ycombinator. Things don't work out very well and 1 month out from demo day they're pretty sure they are going to bomb. Al gets a spectacular employment offer -- contingent on a start date before demo day. Bob doesn't. In fact, Bob has faith that they'll be able to make <metric of the year> if they try hard enough. Through no fault of Bob (and possibly no fault of Al), Al now has an incentive to throw Bob under the bus.