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Why not just use the standard four year vesting with a one year "cliff" for the full 5-10%? If your co-founder isn't a good fit or isn't hitting milestones you can part ways early and retain all or most of the stock.

More on founder vesting here: http://cdixon.org/2009/04/21/founder-vesting/ http://venturehacks.com/articles/get-vested-for-time-served http://venturebeat.com/2010/01/04/ask-the-attorney-founder-v...

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Time-based vesting implies full-time participation. In my case (and probably a lot of other cases), we are both part-time until the product gets traction. Then we will take the risk of going all-in.

If I tie the vesting to milestones instead of time, I should be able to fairly compensate the other person's part-time efforts without walking down the 'you aren't working enough, your shares aren't fully vested' path if/when we divorce.

Why not base the first 1% or so on an hourly vesting schedule? So if he is working part time he can rack the up the hours all year or however long it takes. Make the milestones 'hours worked'

'Rack up the hours all year' just sent chills down my spine! That's exactly what I want to avoid. :)

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