Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 1, 2023

I always tell entrepreneurs that two heads are better than one, so the first task in many startups is finding a cofounder or two. Giving a cofounder a salary won’t get you the “fire in the belly” you want. Each cofounder should get equity for value, based on these key variables: Lived a key role in a previous startup.

Technical Cofounder 247

Technical Cofounder Equity Distribution Cofounder 247

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 9, 2020

Your idea is not intellectual property yet, so it has no inherent value. If none of these five items is a clear differentiator in your case, a logical approach would be to assign each an equal weight of 20% of the total, and partition the total equity based on each co-founder’s correlation to each variable.

Cofounder 435

Cofounder Technical Cofounder Equity Intellectual Property 435

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 10, 2018

Your idea is not intellectual property yet, so it has no inherent value. If none of these five items is a clear differentiator in your case, a logical approach would be to assign each an equal weight of 20% of the total, and partition the total equity based on each co-founder’s correlation to each variable.

Equity 238

Equity Cofounder Technical Cofounder Intellectual Property 238

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 4, 2014

Your idea is not intellectual property yet, so it has no inherent value. If none of these five items is a clear differentiator in your case, a logical approach would be to assign each an equal weight of 20 percent of the total, and partition the total equity based on each co-founder’s correlation to each variable.

Cofounder 261

Cofounder Stock Founder Technical Cofounder 261

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 24, 2016

Your idea is not intellectual property yet, so it has no inherent value. If none of these five items is a clear differentiator in your case, a logical approach would be to assign each an equal weight of 20% of the total, and partition the total equity based on each co-founder’s correlation to each variable.

Equity 120

Equity Cofounder Technical Cofounder Intellectual Property 120

David Teten

JANUARY 28, 2019

I’ve listed the most common levers that universities use below, with some live examples from Yale: Strong technical departments : Computer Science , Math , Physics. Access to University’s Intellectual Property : Office of Cooperative Research. Marketing of tech community : Yale Tech News , Yale Entrepreneurship Magazine.

Affiliate 60

Affiliate Connecticut Programming Community 60