You’ve founded a company and you want to bring on some helpers and compensate them with equity. How much equity should you give them?
Most founders pull a number out of a hat when making this decision and hope for the best. This can lead to lots of problems, especially when you give different amounts to different people. Someone who gets less than someone else might feel undervalued and lose motivation. Hurt feelings and resentments can poison the company culture.
One of my clients recently told me about an approach to this issue called Slicing Pie. Slicing Pie works by tracking everyone’s contributions of time, money, resources, etc. and does not split the equity until a trigger event, such as raising money from investors, occurs. This means that the equity you receive reflects the actual contributions you made to the company.
I recently drafted a legal agreement for Slicing Pie. The way it works is that all early company helpers receive an equal amount of equity, but the equity doesn’t vest (i.e. become truly owned by the shareholder) until a trigger event. The amount of equity that vests depends on how much time, money, and resources each helper ACTUALLY contributed before the trigger event.
This method of dividing equity makes so much more sense because everyone understands up front what they need to do to earn more equity – there is nothing arbitrary or unfair about it. It also serves as a great motivator for contribution.
To your success!
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You’ve founded a company and you want to bring on some helpers and compensate them with equity. How much equity should you give them?
Most founders pull a number out of a hat when making this decision and hope for the best. This can lead to lots of problems, especially when you give different amounts to different people. Someone who gets less than someone else might feel undervalued and lose motivation. Hurt feelings and resentments can poison the company culture.
One of my clients recently told me about an approach to this issue called Slicing Pie. Slicing Pie works by tracking everyone’s contributions of time, money, resources, etc. and does not split the equity until a trigger event, such as raising money from investors, occurs. This means that the equity you receive reflects the actual contributions you made to the company.
I recently drafted a legal agreement for Slicing Pie. The way it works is that all early company helpers receive an equal amount of equity, but the equity doesn’t vest (i.e. become truly owned by the shareholder) until a trigger event. The amount of equity that vests depends on how much time, money, and resources each helper ACTUALLY contributed before the trigger event.
This method of dividing equity makes so much more sense because everyone understands up front what they need to do to earn more equity – there is nothing arbitrary or unfair about it. It also serves as a great motivator for contribution.
To your success!