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Comment by daanlo | Hacker News Reader

I have a bit of a radical view on this: In order to be successful you have 10 years full of work ahead of you. In comparison, whatever is there today is nothing. If you are co-founders, then it should be 1/3 each and each with the same salary. At least this should be the default. You may have different needs, experience and skill sets and can of course speak about these openly, but 1/3 each should be the default imho.

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This is the right answer.

The biggest thing they're bringing to the table is the (supposed and impending) funding. The idea itself is nearly worthless until executed.

Good Tech Founders ARE the hardest founding team members to find.

If you accept notably less, you're always a lesser member of the team. The best founding team keeps equity and salary equal. That's the least chance for friction and resentment.

What I've noticed when talking to non-tech co-founders that come with domain expertise/contacts or business chops is that they tend to figure that they can build an MVP and likely find product-market fit through a combination of founding engineers and contractors out in eastern europe. So they really don't want to give up equity. And later on bring in an external CTO to tidy up if necessary.

I wouldn’t say this is radical, I think PG wrote an essay years ago with this as the core thesis!

+1 for shining light on the decade necessary for success

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