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The Co-Founder Mythology

Both Sides of the Table

Hire your co-founder. Give them a large sum of equity. Vested over 4 years. Truly treat them like a co-founder. If you do decide to go down the 50/50 route, please at least consider: Make sure you have founder vesting for both of you. If you ever fall out of love you have a pre-nuptial agreement.

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How To Prevent Your Founder’s Shares From Vaporizing

Startup Professionals Musings

Typically, vesting in startups occurs monthly over four years, starting with the first 25 percent of shares vesting only after an owner has remained active for at least 12 months (one year cliff ). Key founder vesting should have no cliff. Accelerate your own vesting if pushed out or the startup is acquired.

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Finance Fridays: Getting Started – Allocating Equity and Founder’s Investment

Feld Thoughts

Finance Friday’s gets off the ground with today’s post by introducing you to an imaginary startup, the entrepreneurs that we’ll being following throughout the series, and their first challenges: splitting up the foundersequity and addressing the case where one of the founders provides the initial seed capital for the business.

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8 Keys To Maximizing Your New Venture Stock Net Worth

Startup Professionals Musings

Typically, vesting in startups occurs monthly over four years, starting with the first 25 percent of shares vesting only after an owner has remained active for at least 12 months (one year cliff ). Key founder vesting should have no cliff. Accelerate your own vesting if pushed out or the startup is acquired.

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The New Deal – A Founding CEOs Value is Non Linear

Steve Blank

I’ll offer that both entrepreneurs and VC’s have the wrong model for founding CEO equity compensation. The customary vesting model has founders vest their stock over 4-years , and when the founding CEO gets in over their head the VC’s bring in professional management.

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The Introvert Economy, the Case for Longer Founder Vesting Cycles, What Happens When Your Product Goes Viral on TikTok, and More [link blog]

Hunter Walker

Founder Vesting [Jared Hecht/USV] – Jared joined USV earlier this year and it’ll be interesting to see how his writing changes as he adds ‘institutional VC’ to his founder and angel investor knowledge. Stretching things out to a six-year vest helps to prevent co-founder abandonment.

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Dividing Founder Equity in the Very Beginning

Andrew Payne

I’ve probably had a thousand or more discussions about startup equity: figuring out how much to offer, negotiating, or advising others. In practice, most equity grants within a company are driven by broad calibrations with existing employees. For example, if four co-founders agree to equal equity, they each own 25% at the very outset.

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