Why is 1/3 dead? Usually if you own 1/3 of the company you paid for it with adding time, money, intellectual property, etc. You bought these and the correspondi

Why is 1/3 dead? Usually if you own 1/3 of the company you paid for it with adding time, money, intellectual property, etc. You bought these and the corresponding value should still be there. Same as with the car. If you buy a car, you pay for it, thereby giving back and assumed equal value. If you then never drive the car you don't stop other people from driving cars. They can buy their own cars. Maybe it's a confusion of how shares work? If you earn 1/3 of a company you earn 1/3 of what is considered the core value of the company (not sure how to call that in English). If a new investor comes he'll give you money to participate in your company. He gives you $1mio, then your core value grows by that amount and he gets a share of the company which equals $1mio/<old_value>. Nothing is lost. The only way to lose in these deals if you sell a share of your company for much less than what it's worth. That can happen, e.g., if you give someone 1/3 of the company because you expect him to deliver something in the future (e.g., code the software you want to sell). But in that case you should put that in the contract. "You work here for 3 years, and for each you get 1/9th of the current size of the company." or "When the software with feature x,y,z is finished, you get 1/3rd of the company as compensation". Make clear, legally enforcable contracts that state exactly what you want, and there's no problem.