You're right, if nothing else, I have learned a LOT about biz relationships through this. I've always wondered why equity is traditionally hammered out in adva

You're right, if nothing else, I have learned a LOT about biz relationships through this. I've always wondered why equity is traditionally hammered out in advance. You never know who's going to actually contribute work. Instead it'd be cool to treat it like contract work, agree on each person's 'rate' in advance, log your hours, and then after a year / whatever 'vesting' period, the equity is allocated based on invested value. You could still have problems where somebody was incompetent but put in lots of hours, but it seems so much cleaner than cliffs / pre-allocated guesses as to contribution. You should own the company based on what you contribute in reality, not what you thought you might contribute on day 0.