[pelle]

Thats a very good question. I myself would like to hear what others are doing.

Some conventional wisdom would probably say that they shouldn't receive anything, but I don't think thats contractually fair and it looks like you don't either.

Did you have any agreement about percentages before you got started?

As you yourself concluded I agree that retrospectively they should be treated as if they were consultants.

As consultants almost by definition aren't going to be working on your project for a longer time, I would think less shares than a non paid employee, but a project milestone based vesting period.

I've known one startup that had a group of 10-20 equity consultants. Everyone got to vote for I think it was 3 other people as who deserved more. The consultant equity pool was thereafter split according to this. It's certainly interesting, but not necessarily totally fair.

If we could work out a best practice, I'd be willing to workout an example contract template for this over on http://agree2.com