Hi, I was wondering if anyone knows what vesting schedule is 'typical' for founders shares. I know that for employee options, 4 year vesting schedule with a 1 year cliff is standard. Is it the same for founders shares?
Thanks for the feedback. I also pinged another entrepreneur who had offered this opinion:<p>Often 1/4 to 1/2 is vested immediately. Typically you will have accelerated vesting in the event of an acquisition. This can come in the form of a single or double trigger (first trigger is when the acquisition happens and second trigger is if you are fired or quit from the acquiring company).<p>Assuming your non-immediately vested shares have a one year cliff (no vesting until 1 year worked) and 4 year vesting (month by month after the first year), you should consider not having any vesting in the event of an acquisition.<p>Acquisition probably won't happen until you've been going for a couple years at least, and much of your shares were vested immediately so fractional vesting of the balance won't make a big difference to you. On the other hand the fractional vesting might make a big difference to an executive you hire between founding and acquisition and you can assume that a big time hire will negotiate to match your accelerated vesting provision (might really erode the value to the acquirer to not have that exec with golden handcuffs).<p>If you have FF shares, those should represent 1/4 to 1/10th of your total holding and you should make sure that these shares are all vested immediately at founding.
4 years vest with 1 year cliff for 25%, quarterly or monthly vesting after that first year. Be careful, though, when you grant these. If you don't structure things right (assuming I understand correctly), there could be tax consequences when they vest.