Jason sounds like you have been where I am now. When you found your co-founders, after all that work, how did you split the equity? I'm a business founder looking for co-founders and I want to be fair but fair to myself as well.
We ended up roughly splitting the equity. I think what I did in finding and validating the market was table stakes.
I could have made a strong argument for more equity, but when it comes to actually building the product, there is still a tremendous amount of risk, and if you want someone to be as dedicated to it as you are, I would generally advise being generous with equity.
Naturally, as things move forward, it makes sense to revise the equity if the situation drastically changes, such as you committing full-time, and them not being able to, or interested to, etc.
At the end of the day though, equity discussions are more of an art than a science, and everyone needs to feel happy and looked after - including, of course, yourself.
That makes sense and is somewhat my situation. I want the right people and think I might have them but they can not become full time without being paid and I'm all in already. I'm paying for the first mvp to be built over seen by the possible cto. I want them happy but how can someone part time end up with as much as someone full time and with money in? And "generous" is so subjective, give me a ballpark for generous cause that's where I want to be. But it has taken years of work and cost to develop things down to a business,and we know there will be other equity shares given out, and neither of us has said where that will come from. I see how this is a very common challenge.
Another issue for me is there are 2 other people wanting equity. If they got their initial request it would give them 2/3 of the company's voting stock. Kind of a problem to me and it concerns me they would want that position after knowing me only a couple of months. They knew each other before I met either of them.
Seems like I can't reply to your message, maybe we've hit the limit of tree replies.
That's a hard one... and it's hard to offer advice because it's very situation specific. I might be able to help, or at least act as a sounding board if you want to hop on Skype and have a chat. My email address is in my profile!
