I’m a single Founder. Just incorporated my company. What would be the decent percentage of shares I should issue myself?

AAnonymous ·June 27, 2016 ·4 answers

Hey guys, I have incorporated a company recently in Delaware. Authorized shares is 10 million.

Currently my product is under development. It might take 4 more months. I have incorporated my company sooner to file patents and trademarks under my company name. I’m planning to bring more people on board after 4 months once my product is ready and once i get some investment.

I don’t want to be a greedy founder who takes everything. So can someone tell me what would be the ideal percentage for a single founder?

4 answers from the community

AAnonymous· Jun 28, 2016

typically you should leave 10-20% of the authorized shares for an option pool to be issued to future employees.

unless you intend to have a co-founder, which case, depending how much if he/she brings in IP or money, you should leave another 20-30% block for co-founder.

either way, you should keep 60-80% initially as you WILL be diluted later as your raise more money and should try to stay above 51% as long as possible.

AAnonymous· Jun 30, 2016

This is a meaningless question and if your lawyer and accountant didn't explain to you why, you should switch lawyer and accountant.

Seriously. Ask a lawyer what "authorised shares" means.

AAnonymous· Jul 9, 2016

What percentage? Single founder = 100%.

AAnonymous· Jul 18, 2016

You're just wasted your time asking yourself questions like that.

Get a CoFounder

A match cannot light itself

I’m a single Founder. Just incorporated my company. What would be the decent percentage of shares I should issue myself?

4 answers from the community

More Questions

I’m a software engineer at a startup, and I’m clueless about how to get a date. What should I do?

I’m tired of technology

How horrific is it to realize the tech accelerator manager who sexually assaulted a founder might be the one from your program?

How to deal with the impostor syndrome?