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Comment by pickle-wizard | Hacker News Reader

From my personal experience.

I was a co-founder in a startup. It was split 50/50. I did all the development work and my partner did the business development work.

I had to drop out due to health reasons. I retained 1%, which I felt was fair. The main thing is they needed to bring in new people to replace me and needed equity to offer them. We did formalize it, and I have the legal documentation showing my shares in the company.

They have gotten investment so I'm sure my share is diluted quite a bit by now.

That was about 5 years ago that I left. At this point I'm ok if I don't get anything out of it.

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Thanks a lot for sharing your experience. From what others have suggested here, I guess it was your generosity that you've only retained 1% & got no cash. I understand that there have to be equity left for others, I just wanted to protect myself in case Jim sold the company a month after I left (without him doing any extra work that would "devalue" my contribution) when I suggested the initial 30% stake that would then go down sharply

In my case I felt the 1% was fair. We had brought on a couple of people to help and we had offered them 1%. So I ended up getting what they got. I should have mentioned that my post, but its been so long I forgot about that. I might should have fought for more, but I was having some pretty severe health problems I needed to focus on.

I think it is important to honestly look at it. Not with what if, but how likely something is to happen. How likely is it that it can be sold as is in a month? How likely is it is that it is going to be profitable? How likely is it that more development work needs to be done? My gut tells that the answer to the first two questions is pretty low, as if there was a really good chance of making a profit or selling, you wouldn't be wanting to leave. Instead you'd be looking forward to the incoming money.

Do you have any sort of a written agreement, or was it a handshake deal.

I understand. I hope your health issues are resolved now.

The funny thing is that the only way it would make sense for Jim to sell the company in a month is when I leave. Otherwise it doesn't in such time frame.

Yeah, we have a company together that operates the app, but as I've mentioned before it's unclear whether Jim couldn't simply establish a new company and operate the app under it (since the app development itself was paid for by Jim + has a contract about it stating that he's the one requesting the development)

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