I don’t think unequal equity is the problem. Misaligned expectations are. I have seen 50/50 partnerships fail just as fast because one founder eventually did 90% of the work.
Picture this: an experienced professional has a bright idea to start a tech business to disrupt [insert industry]
Quickly vibe codes an MVP, registers the company and starts fundraising.
Along the line, realises she needs tech cofounder and another to help wi5 go to market.
But because she’s been going for 18 months and is the original founder, she proposes the other two founders take 10% each leaving her with the rest.
This is one of the biggest mistakes I see in startup founding teams.
Fair or not? How do you think ownership stakes should be structured in this scenario?
Has a heavily skewed founder equity worked for you?
I don’t think unequal equity is the problem. Misaligned expectations are. I have seen 50/50 partnerships fail just as fast because one founder eventually did 90% of the work.
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This is a pretty generalized take, there's a lot of factors you haven't expanded upon. Primarily what has happened over the course of those 18 months. As someone who has taken a technical role for a originally vibecoded product I was happy with <20% only because of the customer acquisition work that was done in the prior year before I got involved. Building was never the bottleneck for start ups.
As usual it really depends on what you’re building and who are founders are and what they bring to the table not to mention equity dilution during fund raising, who’ll sell a part of their stake first
wtf is this post lol If a solo founder spends 18 months on a company, builds an mvp, fundraises, and pushes on by themselves, then they've taken on the biggest risk, put in a ton of work at the start, and of course anyone coming later will take a smaller chunk of equity, FAR smaller.
Never ever is a pretty dumb claim to make
What is your perspective based on? I've been in the startup world for almost two decades, and it's almost never equal equity, with the exception of the situations where 2-3 people genuinely conceptualize it and build it from scratch together. Almost every successful startup you see has unequal equity.
Do you have examples of a very skewed split that ended up successfully?
What a strange claim to make. Go and find 100 successful startups and look at the equity split. You’ll see anything from the dominant founder getting 90%, all the way the 50-50. It really just depends on the situation.
Do you have an example to share? Google, stripe, Airbnb, Apple (the two Steves) were all roughly equal.
I have never seen a startup that didn't have a skewed cap table. The original founder is making an offer to bring on talent. They can take it or leave it. It's business.
Do you have an example where it’s worked out well? It’s a civil discussion
Most of the problem posts here -- you could have read them -- are about the halfsies split. Part of the problem is that locks in decision deadlock, thus robbing the startup of the only advantage they have: Nimble Decision-Making. Fair is very confusing in this situation. What is fair about equal shares without earning the sweat equity? When one partner is the business partner, then bringing in funding out-of-pocket and providing venture capital contacts is an argument. Since that is rarely the case, such arguments for 'equality' fall flat. As somebody who essentially agrees with Mike Moyer's equity model Slicing Pie, I must disagree. I don't know what you're going on about, but from what is posted you are the one advocating unearned, and thus skewed funding. Aside from that, my own objection is based on the mistakes wantrepreneurs keep making of over-simplification. Doling out equity upfront doesn't treat equity as valuable. When these partnerships collapse you will often find the halfsies equity split followed by the pinky-swear founder agreement -- written nowhere. Basically this red flag often leads to many more.