This post is wrong. The central issue around equity splits is preserving equanimity and founder happiness as long as possible, in as wide a variety of situations as possible.
That is the fundamental purpose of a co-founder equity split in fact -- to allow founders to happily sacrifice and risk for corporate value building.
The niggly thises and thats this author suggest may be arguably fair day 1, but they miss both the psychology of nerd co-founders (or a nerd and a business guy), and they take absolutely nothing about the future into account.
Anyway, if this works for you and your team great, but I would bet 10:1 that with Joel's rules, the amount of time you spend fighting about equity in your first year is close to zero, definitely measured in hours.
With these rules, you will probably spend that long agreeing how much each of the multipliers is worth day two of your new startup, not to mention re-jiggering when some low-percentage (by this setup) co-founder has the actual big idea that gets you launched.
That is the fundamental purpose of a co-founder equity split in fact -- to allow founders to happily sacrifice and risk for corporate value building.
The niggly thises and thats this author suggest may be arguably fair day 1, but they miss both the psychology of nerd co-founders (or a nerd and a business guy), and they take absolutely nothing about the future into account.
Anyway, if this works for you and your team great, but I would bet 10:1 that with Joel's rules, the amount of time you spend fighting about equity in your first year is close to zero, definitely measured in hours.
With these rules, you will probably spend that long agreeing how much each of the multipliers is worth day two of your new startup, not to mention re-jiggering when some low-percentage (by this setup) co-founder has the actual big idea that gets you launched.