Ask HN: Percentage table for startups

[husky]

I'm keen to write a formula that clears up confusion about percentages for early-stage startups.

I don't want to repeat the wheel - does anything like this exist?

eg: instead of simply assigning 33% to each founder at the start (when you have no idea or commitment) you have a big pot you can assign percentage from:

All these percentages are made up as an example: Came up with idea: 5% Worked on initial prototype: 5% Built the v1 product: 20% Came on full-time to work on the product: 70% vested over year 1

If anyone fails to deliver or drops out then they lose their percentage up to the last stage.

For me this would solve a big issue of expectations and fairness.

What do you all think?

[tptacek]

Joel Spolsky wrote the canonical post on this:

https://gist.github.com/isaacsanders/1653078

Spoiler: "Coming up with idea", "working on initial prototype" doesn't earn you any equity. Also: vesting usually runs 4 years. One year is certainly not long enough.

[my_username_is_]

Do you think that 4 years is the right amount of time? Why do you reject one year as not being enough? Simply because it isn't what is usually done by other companies, or is there more to it than that?

Also thanks for sharing that link. It's a good read, although I don't entirely agree with everything in it

[taprun]

I think that such a thing would be very difficult to apply to all startups. When assigning percentages, it should be based upon value provided by each party. I've seen startups where the prototype is something that any developer could kick out in a week. I've seen others where the prototype took months of effort by people with very specialized knowledge.