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Ask HN: Freelancing for equity

3 points by vbsteven ↗ HN
Recently one of my freelance clients mentioned they want to offer me some equity in their company. They asked me to make a proposal for this equity deal.

Currently we are negotiating a support contract for a web & app platform I have built for them. I was thinking of reserving x support hours every month for the next year or so that are paid for by the equity deal. Is this something that has been done before? How do I define the value of the equity so I can put the correct amount of services against it?

3 comments

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dsschnau
It sounds like they're going a roundabout way of getting you to be an employee.
coderzach
Why not try to freelance for lottery tickets instead?
gus_massa
Have they already paid you the previous work in cash?

Do they have any investors? What was their equity price? How long ago did this round happen?

They will give you the equity in a written contract or only an informal oral promise?

Do you have to pay them ... because they need to ... in order to ...?

Just assume that equity is worthless. The company may flop, the new CEO may be a douchebag and use a loophole to dilute your equity, the fine print legal conditions may have unexpected surprises, ...

Get 95% of the contract value in cash and take a 5% in equity (just in case they are the next Google), but don't expect get too much value from it.