With regards to roles, it's good to lay out what both of your strengths and weaknesses to figure out who should do what. In my personal opinion, both should really get good at sales and building relationships.<p>With regards to determining shares, it's a tough one and I hate to say it but it really depends on many things such as your relationship with your co-founder, what his motivations are, how willing is he to work his ass off knowing he has less equity than you, how hungry you are in ensuring the entire startup takes off regardless of what the equity split is, etc.<p>For our startup, we're a team of 2 and I'm the one who came up with the idea and convinced a buddy to join me. I'm also the technical person and have a better understanding of the problem we're trying to solve. Although, I've been putting in most of the work at this point in time, I need a team to succeed and I value my buddy's skills and future contributions. I need him to be interested enough to stay in the game because ideas are essentially worthless while execution is everything. I've decided to make him an equal founder to keep him onboard. Am I leaving money on the table? Quite possibly - but if I have no team, my startup will fail for sure. In the long run, if we do make it, our shares are going to be diluted but it's better to have 10% of a $100 million startup than it is to have 100% of a $1 startup.<p>Hope that helps. Good luck!