It really depends on the state of your company, your product, and what you're bringing to the table vs. your employees. If you've got two non-technical founder

It really depends on the state of your company, your product, and what you're bringing to the table vs. your employees. If you've got two non-technical founders and you're going to need an engineering team of 40 to bring your product to market, then excluding the dilution of investment, you probably want %50-%70 of the company in your pool. Of course, if you're looking for a rule of thumb, it is usually %15-%20, and it doesn't matter what the state of things is, you offer senior engineers a fraction of a percent and no anti-dilution clauses.... Oh, and you split the stock enough such that this fraction of a percent sounds like a large number of shares.