Ask HN: Need help from outside in establishing initial equity picture

[dpnewman]

I am wondering if there is such a thing as a neutral 3rd party service that provides an outside assessment to help a team that is ready to incorporate come to a decision on equity division?

It's a scenario where there are different levels and types of input, where it's very positive, and the general spirit is it'd be good to get a neutral/outside take on how to set things up rather than haggle or negotiate internally.

Been trying to get an answer via Google search but have not able to make headway.

[JesseAldridge]

> "where it's very positive"

I don't understand what you mean there. The founders are feeling good about things?

I realize it's probably much more simplistic than what you're looking for, but I did run across this the other day: http://foundrs.com/ It's a simple calculator for dividing equity. Maybe good enough to use as a starting point?

Or you could just say fuck it and divide things evenly: https://web.archive.org/web/20131109064121/http://answers.on...

[dpnewman]

Thanks for the tips. I have the seen the calculator for equity. I am just curious if more robust services exist?

I meant "positive" in exactly the way you suggested.

[brudgers]

If the process involves haggling and negotiating then it is a game between founders rather than a business decision. Sure it was someone's idea and someone wrote the code and someone picked up the pizza and made the coffee and you could dig through the past and assign values to all those things. It's totally fucking stupid but you could still do it.

What matters is not how you got here but where you will go. What matters is not how much work you have done but what work each of you is going to do. If you pivot are you going to claw back equity from the idea guy? When the code base is rewritten in Go to support that pivot is the programming guy losing stock?

Allocate equity based on pots of coffee made [one of you will like this idea] or divide it equally and focus on trying to make so much money that an additional 5% equity split doesn't matter.

Good luck.

[amatix]

http://www.backofanapkin.co.nz/ provides some talking points (and an agreement if you want it) that you need to decide on upfront - even if you're going to incorporate later on.

[sharemywin]

just make sure stuff is vested over time so people aren't sucking up equity that they really didn't earn.