[Doctor-R]

Years ago, I watched a Y Combinator startup school video. The presenter was talking about their standard company structure, registering the company in Delaware, standard vesting schedule (four years, one year cliff, 1/48 per month).

One of the audience members interrupted, his co-founders had discussed their vesting schedule alot and thought it was better, he started to explain.

The presenter interrupted, asking why are you wasting time, energy, and brain cells on discussing vesting, and not spending it on THE PRODUCT, product market fit, MVP, customers, schedule, and THINGS THAT WILL MAKE YOUR company succeed. Vesting is binary, it either pays off, or more typically is worth zero. Don't waste the group's time and certainly don't waste VC's time on vesting. During your pitch, vesting should be exactly one sentence, the standard. Anything different makes you look clueless and not focusing on the PRODUCT.

There are a number of actual matchmaking services in San Francisco and Silicon Valley.

[7e]

If you’re focusing on the PRODUCT, why hire at all? If talent helps a company succeed and vesting helps acquire top talent, isn’t it worth considering?

Anecdotally, I know I consider expected value as part of TCO and vesting figures into that.

If you’re just looking to hire entry-level, generic, naïve talent (and this is YC, so perhaps that fits) then sure, do vanilla vesting. But you better hope you bring something else to the table, because talent isn’t going to be a competitive advantage.