Startup Equity Calculator
Welcome to the Co-Founder Equity Calculator! Based on years of discussions with entrepreneurs and the Silicon Valley Startup Conference.
- Fill out as many questions as possible.
- If a question doesn't apply, leave it blank.
- For multi-founder questions, select only one or two founders.
Also try the Venture Capital Funding Calculator to find out if your startup is ready to talk to VCs.
More reading: Startup Trends / Google Salaries / Co-Founder Issues
The Team
Suggested Equity
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FAQ
The equity numbers assume a typical 4-year vesting for all founders including the CEO, with no cliff. It also assumes that no significant salary is provided to any of the co-founders (if that is wrong, you are entering into an employee relationship, not a co-founder relationship). If a founder leaves, vesting applies and they forfeit the shares that have not vested yet.
Splitting 50/50 is often recommended by some incubators and online articles. But it's a bad idea. You avoid a painful discussion today, but at the cost of a very costly, often fatal breakup later. Read these co-founder stories for some famous examples.
Having a "weak CEO" means that your CEO may not be getting their hands dirty enough to make the startup take-off. This typically occurs when the CEO is the "idea person" and expects others (such as the developers) to implement their vision.
The fact that a founder has been working on the project for significantly longer than others (one year or more) is not justification in itself for more equity. Instead, consider adjusting the vesting schedule.
Actually, no. Most startups have one or two co-founders, total. A few have three. Usually, when people ask for 4, 5 6 or more co-founders, it's a sign that someone (the CEO) is not willing to make the hard decisions. Do you really think all 6 potential co-founders are critical to the success of the company? Try to be honest and separate the real co-founders from the friends who are happy to join for the ride.
You should treat founders who put significant cash separately. Consider them as co-founders and fill out the questions ignoring the cash contribution. By the way, if most of their contribution is cash, they are not really co-founders, either they are investors who want to tell you how to run your business, or you are their cheap employee. Once you figured out how much equity their work deserves, do projections for a normal round of funding and see how much their cash would be worth.
Read everything about how to find a cofounder here.
For projects that are heavily design-oriented, it's ok to replace the questions about development by design, but keep in mind that you need developers as well.
⚠ What this calculator doesn't do: it doesn't handle salaries, co-founders who invest significant cash, or co-founders who join long after the first version of a product has shipped.
This calculator is experimental. If you don't like the results, send feedback and I'll try to improve it.