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Most Common Early Start-up Mistakes

Both Sides of the Table

Founder vesting. Yesterday I wrote a blog posting on founder vesting (see here ). You should implement restricted stock with vesting at the earliest stages in your company -even before the VC’s ask. Founder vesting is an insurance policy for all team members involved.

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First Round Funding Terms and Founder Vesting

Both Sides of the Table

One very important item from Chris’s original post that wasn’t picked up by Fred or Brad is founder vesting. Chris writes that early-stage deals should have: Founder vesting w/ acceleration on change of control. Without proper vesting you also place a risk on all other co-founders.

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First Round Funding Terms and Founder Vesting

Both Sides of the Table

The meme was kicked off by Chris Dixon with this post saying that term sheets need to be simplified and align investor / founder interests. This is part of my ongoing series “Pitching a VC“ There’s a great meme developing this morning on the need to simplify funding terms and documents.

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How To Prevent Your Founder’s Shares From Vaporizing

Startup Professionals Musings

This is the purpose of a vesting schedule, which issues allocated stock over time. 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.

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The Co-Founder Mythology

Both Sides of the Table

Hire your co-founder. 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. Give them a large sum of equity. If you ever fall out of love you have a pre-nuptial agreement.

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How to Protect Your Startup Founder’s Shares

Startup Professionals Musings

These shares are allocated and committed, but not really issued and owned (vested) until later. Typically, vesting in startups occurs monthly over 4 years, starting with the first 25% of such shares vesting only after the employee has remained with the company for at least 12 months (one year “cliff”). Vesting with no cliff.

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The New Deal – A Founding CEOs Value is Non Linear

Steve Blank

As a founder I fought with VC’s over vesting as they brought in a new CEO and walked me out the door. As a board member I negotiated with founding CEO’s over vesting when I thought it was their time to go. The fallacy is believing that a founders value is evenly distributed over four years. Where’s My Liquidity Event.

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