I am part of a new startup that was built out of Start Up Weekend. Startup Weekend is pretty much a weekend sprint of software development. The group of 6 is continuing with the company. This has brought up the question: How should we divide equity. My question to HN is what are the consequences of equity division (Further investment, Member moral, etc.); from having 6 equal owners to one with 51% and the others with less.
Err on the side of equality. More important than the split is to have vesting with a cliff, because given the circumstances, some are likely to leave in the first year.
a) make sure there's a cliff
b) define roles and responsibilities. the cto should have final call on tech matters, business on biz dev,etc.
c) clearly designate someone to be a final call/leader type person. they should also have the board seat.<p>Equal equity is fine. It's the voting/power/decision making that comes with it. You'll end up with a startup bureaucracy where every decision needs to go through a 6 person committee. You will lose one of the ultimate attributes of a startup: speed<p>Personally, I'd also be asking yourself how you ended up with 6 founders and if all of them are "founders". Yourself included.