Hey all. I'm working through a founder / founding-engineer deal for a pre-revenue startup and would love blunt feedback before we sign anything.
The business: lifestyle-tech platform (web + mobile) selling curated guides based on the user's habits, history, and other signals.
I am the founder and I've found the founding engineer I'd like to work with. We currently do not have any website/mobile apps. However, I have done the following:
- Figma specs
- V1 features
- purchased the domain
- 30 guides ready to be launched
- Put an initial investment of $5k and will assume the cost of everything until we have revenu
The apps will also have a premium subscription option for users who'd like access to premium features.
What the engineer will be responsible for:
- building the apps (web + mobile)
- DNS and AWS/infra setup
- third-party integrations (mailchimp, stripe, etc.)
- Performance considerations, UX polish, needs to feel slick
The founding engineer has 12 yoe of fullstack work. Has worked at enterprise and startups before.
The proposed deal I gave him:
- 20% equity at exist (4 yr vesting w/ 1 yr cliff)
- Tiered revenue share:
- 0-100k -> 35%
- 100k – 200k -> 30%
- 200 – 500k -> 17.5%
- 500k+ -> 15%
- Neither person is taking salary now
The founding engineer does not like this proposal. He's suggested a "royalty per guide sold" for me – the founder – is more "fair", then do a 50/50 split on the _profit_ and completely remove the tiered based revenue.
He also said 20% equity is inadequate because "there's a lot of work to be done" and "that his role will not be limited to just coding".
We are both good friends and we've known each other for a loooong time. Our intent is to keep the distribution as fair as possible.
Please provide your honest feedback.
Source: r/startups · by /u/musicomet