@vaksel You're also right that if you're reasonably comfortable with planning on a 200%+ return on an ad, your founders will likely agree to invest in the ad r

@vaksel You're also right that if you're reasonably comfortable with planning on a 200%+ return on an ad, your founders will likely agree to invest in the ad rather than take the split. But it's best to have (and propose) that clear use for the money opposed to making people sacrifice out of principle. The later point of my post was that founders should be able to agree to their "buffer" and shared expenses. What you don't want to do is reserve money based on the philosophy the company COULD use it better, but not actually execute on that. You can quickly demoralize quality people by saving up a war chest for ads, while people are trying to do their best work on "ramen" draws after the release (and reality sets in). When intelligent people know they get a percentage of the profit at weekly checkpoints, they can do the math on how their time is being spent in the present (opposed to thinking it will rain money at the finish line; which maybe it will, but it's rarely that easy).