[NewHermes]

Completely agreed. I recently applied to YCombinator and one of the questions asks how you plan on sharing equity.

Here was my response:

Everything I have seen, read, watched and smelled has made it clear that it is much better to be over generous with equity than to be stingy.

With that in mind I plan on following the Sam Altman model as follows:

Founder(s): 10%

First 10 employees: 10%

Next 20 employees: 5%

Next 50 employees: 5%

Vesting would happen after 5 years with a 1 year cliff.(I chose 5 instead of the 4 in Altman’s model because of the growing trend of companies taking longer to reach liquidity)

Not only would this model differentiate a startup from competitors to potential hires, like you mentioned, sharing the growth with those who put in the work is the right thing to do.

Besides, what can the gal who owns 10% of Google do that the guy who owns 1% can't?

[jldugger]

> Besides, what can the gal who owns 10% of Google do that the guy who owns 1% can't?

Vote herself President of the Board.