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Equity for Early Employees in Early Stage Startups

SoCal CTO

I was asked by a reader how much equity he should give out to early employees and to service providers in a very early stage startup. Founders are likely not paid for a long time and have a sizeable equity percentage for early risk and having the concept. Same Value for Sweat Equity as Investment Dollars?

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Cliff Notes S-1: Kayak ? AGILEVC

Agile VC

Obviously most of these employees are working hard primarily for equity upside compensation, but Kayak’s personnel costs are roughly $200K/head so the company is highly productive on a per employee basis. Pre-IPO Funding History: Kayak has raised approximately $235M in VC funding to date. Pre-money valuation was approx.

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Founders Should Set Aside More Equity for Their Team & “Split the Pain” With Investors

Hunter Walker

But employee option pool is important enough that I wanted to briefly expand upon my comment above. While you should expect these sorts of hires to take below market cash comp versus what Google is paying them, this tradeoff needs to be replaced with equity upside.

Equity 94
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What is it Like to Negotiate a VC Round?

Both Sides of the Table

” Today I want to talk about how a VC thinks about equity pricing on your round and particularly if you’re coming off of a convertible note. In the old days VCs funded off of a “pre-moneyvaluation. How much is in the option pool? I can boil it down to how this tension plays out.

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How to Evaluate an Offer from a Startup Incubator

The Startup Lawyer

The following are some issues to consider and actions to take before accepting an incubator’s offer: (1) Calculate Valuation and Determine Value. Pre-money valuations startups receive from incubators are typically low…really low. Other incubators may want to set up an option pool.

Incubator 105
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Cap Table Clean Up

ithacaVC

There are many reasons for this, but fundamentally, it is impossible to calculate a share price for the investment round unless you have complete agreement on how many shares are outstanding pre-money. The share price is calculated by taking the pre-money valuation and dividing it by the number of shares outstanding pre-money.

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Comparing valuations between rounds

The Equity Kicker

From the perspective of existing investors the right way to calculate the valuation multiple is to compare the pre-money valuation of the new round with the post-money valuation of the last round, which is the same as the increase in share price. (As Venice Project'