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Ask HN: Start-up Equity For UX co-founder

1 points by arjunkumar ↗ HN
I am currently building a mobile app with the help of two friends (One UX guy and one coder). These guys are working on deferred payment basis and will help me transition to an in-house team. (They will not transition to a full time position)

Plan is to get a working prototype and initial customers + seed funding from a known angel. Then bring on a UX person as a co-founder. How much equity should I be giving out to this person? P.S : There will be no salary initially.

2 comments

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formosa
If you've developed it to the point of product and seed funding, then you can justify holding out equity pretty easily. I would suggest that you offer a third. You need to be generous because if they're going to be a co-founder then you're going to need them to have a honest stake in the company otherwise they won't take it seriously.

It might suck because you feel that you did all the work, but you're going to need a long term view.

I had a hard time accepting this in my past experience partnering with people so the venture eventually failed.

arjunkumar
Thanks for your views formosa.

What if this person comes on board just for UI/UX? How much would you give him?

My problem is that this UX person will come through references. And its risky to make someone co-founder (i.e. give a reasonable stake in the company) without having worked with them in the past.

Thanks Arjun