Ask HN: How much ownership is reasonable for a technical co-founder?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3912212

by Jeremy007 • 14 years ago

1 4 14 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Typical scenario: I am potentially about to partner with 2 other gents who will be the "business" half of our proposed startup while I will be tasked with building and launching the actual app. How much ownership is reasonable here?

Jeremy0072• 14 years ago

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated, Thanks!

NonEUCitizen• 14 years ago

Why do you need the business types to be co-founders? Why do they get shares at all? Why not hire them as employees (or temporary contractors)? Is your prototype done? If not, why do you need business-types now? What value do they add?

You should retain majority if not 100% of the shares. That way you have more shares left in the pool with which to recruit engineers.

sebg• 14 years ago

If it's 3 people contributing 100% of their time to the project then it should be 33% for each. If you don't think they will contribute enough to the project for their 33% then perhaps you should be looking for other founders/partners.

Jeremy0072• 14 years ago

Thanks, this is along the lines of what I was thinking.

Ask HN: How much ownership is reasonable for a technical co-founder?

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