

Ask HN: How to structure a startup with five founders? - ivan_ah

We recently won a StartupWeekend event with a promising new idea. We&#x27;re a team of five (3 devs, a business woman, and the idea man who is fairly versatile). Everyone is into the idea and happy to continue with it, but we don&#x27;t know how to structure the company. Can someone with experience help?<p>The idea man proposed to incorporate the company and then give us shares as we build the project which seems unfair. On the other hand 20%-for-all split is bad too because we haven&#x27;t done anything---most of the work is yet to come.<p>Can we somehow structure the company so that every member&#x27;s share is proportional to their participation in the coming months?  Are there standard solutions for this? I&#x27;m looking at Assembly[1] in another tab and it is very interesting. Anyone know of similar projects (ideally a self-hosted one)?<p>The other alternative would be for the idea man and the lead dev to go with the more traditional 40% + 40% + 20% employee pool, and the rest of us pull out, but this would break the team chemistry completely.<p>[1] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;assembly.com&#x2F;helpful&#x2F;partners
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gus_massa
Similar discussion: "Ask HN: How to split equity?"
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8078356](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8078356)
(81 points, 10 days ago, 50 comments)

I think that the technical term you are looking for is "vesting". Read the
linked discussion.

I don't understand the 40%+40%+20% split. It means 40%+40%+0%+0%+0%+( _maybe_
20% later)?

