Article · 10 min read

How to Navigate a Cofounder Equity Split Successfully

Qapita Free Beginner India

From an India and Southeast Asia cap table platform, this walks through the common approaches to splitting between co-founders and where early employees and ESOPs fit. It is grounded in how Indian startups actually run their cap tables. A useful local companion to the global frameworks.

  • Base the split on value created and risk taken, not just role
  • Keep the co-founder split separate from the employee ESOP pool
  • Revisit the plan as contributions and the team evolve
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The question it answers

  1. What equity should I offer a technical co-founder vs. an early engineer?

Read with it

  1. The definitive, data-driven book on early founding-team decisions, drawing on quantitative research covering nearly 10,000... Princeton University Press Book · ~480 pages The Founder's Dilemmas Noam Wasserman
  2. The canonical dynamic-equity framework for fairly splitting ownership based on real contributions before funding, when nobody... slicingpie.com Tool · Framework + software + handbook Slicing Pie: Dynamic Equity Split Model & Calculator Mike Moyer
  3. Altman's condensed operating manual for founders, including sharp guidance on focus, spending your time on what only you can... playbook.samaltman.com Article · long Startup Playbook Sam Altman
  4. This is the essay to read first, from a YC partner who co-founded Justin.tv/Twitch and has done equal splits across his own... Y Combinator Essay · ~8 minute read How to Split Equity Among Co-Founders Michael Seibel
  5. A free, no-signup calculator that forces you and your co-founder to actually weigh the inputs (idea, roles, who is full time,... Foundrs Tool · ~10 minutes to work through Foundrs Co-Founder Equity Calculator Foundrs
  6. When a term sheet lands and you are tempted to fight over the last point of valuation, this is the essay that reframes the... paulgraham.com Essay · 12 min read The Equity Equation Paul Graham
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