View from Seed

DECEMBER 4, 2014

You don’t really need to worry about how much common stock will be set aside for an employee option pool or how much preferred stock might be issued from raising future VC rounds in order to determine an equitable founder stock division. Both of these are typically reflected in the founder equity split. Ideation/IP.

Equity 315

Equity Founder Sweat Equity Cofounder 315

Agile VC

DECEMBER 4, 2014

You don’t really need to worry about how much common stock will be set aside for an employee option pool or how much preferred stock might be issued from raising future VC rounds in order to determine an equitable founder stock division. Both of these are typically reflected in the founder equity split.

Cofounder 255

Cofounder Equity Founder Sweat Equity 255

Agile VC

DECEMBER 4, 2014

You don’t really need to worry about how much common stock will be set aside for an employee option pool or how much preferred stock might be issued from raising future VC rounds in order to determine an equitable founder stock division. Both of these are typically reflected in the founder equity split.

Cofounder 173

Cofounder Equity Founder Sweat Equity 173

www.paulgraham.com

APRIL 28, 2010

Theyleave 20% as an options pool for later employees (but they setthings up so that they can issue this stock to themselves if theyget bought early and most is still unissued), and the three founderseach get 25%. But of coursetheir main job is to build version 1 of their software. Wethought software was all that mattered.

Technical Review 76

Technical Review Startup Software Review Angel Investor 76

www.instigatorblog.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

You can’t have an option pool that takes up 50% of the company’s shares, and you have to leave room for future employees as well. I do believe that early employees should trade salary for equity. And if the equity values increase, it provides more reasonable wiggle room between salary and equity.

Equity 41

Equity Employee Startup Vesting 41