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Ask HN: what percentage should an experienced technical co founder get?
Hi folks
This is (obviously) a throwaway account.
I am in a situation where I am trying to evaluate the share of the pie that I should get as a technical co founder.
Some background about me (without giving too much away:))
I am experienced, and successful in the corporate world and trying to make it in the startup world now (full time). I can do end to end development. Although I am a backend developer - I can do a decent UI design/work as well (mainly thanx to bootstrap). So I would consider myself an ideal technical co founder by all accounts (I also consider myself a reasonable guy but that would be a biased opinion of course).
I have a business partner with whom I have worked previously on two ideas. Suffice to say that we have not had an exit (though one of the ideas did land me some more shares of another private company who acquired our technology).
My partner is very reasonable by all accounts and I think he brings a lot of value. He is an innovative person who has a knack to come up with good ideas. He also is well connected and has been an executive on a big company before.
We started working on another idea where though he filed patents and all, I was not very convinced on the value of the idea itself. Given that both of us bring a lot on the table, what is the right split? I understand that I may have missed some other info here - so feel free to ask and I would try and respond as clearly as I can. We have no issues between us (except I recently started thinking that I am not getting a fair share)
It may be too late to make a decision on this particular startup since we have agreed on a split (mainly because I did not have any other co founder options) but I want to get some unbiased point of view from hacker news folks to see if I am being unreasonable or not.
My thinking is that we should split 50 50. Because he has filed for patents (I am not convinced the value of patents in this case), I would say that I should at least get 40% of the pie.
What do you guys think?
Thank you!
- stanleydrew 15y agoSplit it 50/50 and stop thinking about it. Get back to building stuff!
- throw_1234 15y agoI am familiar with that theme - thanx! I am not the guy who initiated the idea - so the decision in this case is not in my hands really.
- steventruong 15y agoInitiating should not matter. By that account, 50/50 partnerships should not exist in the majority of cases. After all, lets be honest, in almost all cases, only one founder can come up with the original seed of the idea. For the record, I don't believe in 50/50 as a standard at all. I believe that fair share should be divided accordingly. Having said that... Filing a patent (which is a lengthy process meaning he doesn't even have it approved yet) does not equate to having more equity. From what I'm hearing, it really should be 50/50 unless he has something more valuable he is bringing to the table i.e. experience scaling and exiting a company profitably before, lots of connections that actually leads to something and not just knowing a lot of folks (which people can attain just by going to a ton of events and meetups; some do), etc... Without knowing the full details, as you have said, and going just by the above, 50/50 should be fair in the scenario above.
- throw_1234 15y agoYeah, I agree. He does not have any big startup success behind him (not as a founding employee). His connections are genuine and he has the ability to raise funds. As far as patents are concerned - in general, I think it depends. There are cases where a patent is very valuable but these are few and far between, But even if there is an uneven split due to any of the above reasons, my gut feeling tells me that at least 40% should belong to the technical co founder (if there is no "salary" being paid).
- throw_1234 15y agoInitiating does matter in one crucial sense. The initiating person has the final say :)
- gamechangr 15y ago40/60 and 50/50 if it's hard to deploy technically