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What if the technical cofound has contributed significantly to the business idea & is doing more than his share of product development? This chart seems to be u

• nathanh 16y ago
  You're absolutely right. The chart is biased toward the non-technical cofounder. I'm assuming they've done significant work on the business before recruiting a technical cofounder. I say it in the assumptions section, but I should probably make it more prominent.
  • YuriNiyazov 16y ago
    The point is that the "assumption that they've done significant work on the business" is simply not valid. Before you have a product, all the "significant work done on the business" (usually listed as 'doing market research, incorporating, and having an email from an investor that says 'I am interested in talking more when you have a product' which is investor-speak for 'please go away') is just as much of a risk and a liability as software that will inevitably be rewritten. When you launch and all those business assumptions change later on and you need to pivot, rendering null all the business work you did previously, it's not like you would go back to your technical cofounder and say "I was wrong about that market, all the work I previously did is now worthless except for the 'lessons learned' part, so here's the extra 20% I subtracted from your equity originally".
• shasta 16y ago
  If you've already done "significant work" on the business idea without discussing the split, you've got problems.