Equity Split
topic on 4 shows · 12 statements across 10 episodes
the Y Combinator Startup Podcast 
Startups For the Rest of Us 
the Knowledge Project 
Top Founders
12 statements about Equity Split, every show
Latka: Defaulting to a 50/50 co-founder equity split is usually terrible
“Usually what happens is people get lazy. They want to start. They say, let's just do fifty-fifty. Usually terrible strategy.”
Taggar: Co-founders should default to an equal equity split
“You will have to decide on what the equity split will be, and my default advice here would be you should split the equity equally between yourselves, and the reason is if this startup is successful, you will end up working on it for the next 10 years or more, …”
Startup founders split equity equally because they are lazy
“A lot of people, in my opinion, founders at the beginning, they're lazy. They don't want to have tough conversations. So they split it evenly, right? If you have a tough conversation, usually someone ends up with a little more, a little less.”
Walling: Idea and domain expertise do not justify an equal equity split
“Having an idea and being a subject matter expert in a space is fine. But that's not even table stakes to me for an even split if you're going to go spend hundreds of hours building and marketing a product.”
Cubitt: Even equity splits fail because future dilution destroys founder motivation
“I don't actually. And so, and the reason is that at the earliest stages, you have to sort of forward look the cap table. In other words, I'm going to raise a seed and I'm going to get 20% dilution to Typically the Series A, another 20 to 30% dilution, and so o…”
Manalac: YC prefers funding startups with equal co-founder equity splits
“Ideally we like to fund things that have a 50, 50% split or, you know, equal among all the co-founders.”
Mathilde Collin: Co-founders should split equity equally to prevent frustration
“And so I would recommend that to every founder, even the one that maybe will join a few months after. If you look at the beginning of the company, it seems like it makes a difference. Maybe someone is investing a little bit more money, more time is joining a b…”
Nussenbaum: Y Combinator strongly encourages even co-founder equity splits
“Yeah, YC strongly encourages even or close to even.”
Latka: Equal equity splits show founders lack courage for tough conversations
“When I hear a founder go like we split at 50 50, all I think is, okay, so you don't have the balls to have the tough conversation with your co-founder about who actually is going to, you know, what you're actually bringing to the table because very rarely is i…”
Nussenbaum: Co-founder equity shouldn't be measured by individual contributions
“I don't feel that the equity split should necessarily be like, oh, you look at exactly what each of us is bringing to the table and then we measure it out exactly right. Like number one, you, this is going to be like a long journey and you can't always predict…”
Founders should avoid splitting company equity fifty-fifty
“I've certainly, I certainly wouldn't recommend doing fifty-fifty, but that was just what we had at the time”
Nathu: Startup co-founders should generally split equity more or less equally
“We generally say that equity should be split more or less equally between co-founders. That doesn't necessarily mean exactly equally, But we generally find that where there is an equity split that's very mismatched, you know, one founder has 90% and the other …”