Ask HN: What's a fair amount of equity for a technical co-founder?
For context, the product is technical. The company is pre-seed in very early stages (rough prototype). What would be reasonable for a third co-founder or a fourth co-founder joining?
* vesting across 4 years, one year cliff: So the OP don't come here weeping next year because they got a moron that now has a big chunk of the company.
* Equal to all other founders: So the technical cofounder don't come here weeping next year because after building all the company was fired and only got a bag of peanuts.
@OP: Some additional questions: Do you have clients? Do you have a working prototype? What happened to the person that build it? Is the new cofounder going to get salary? Do the other cofounder get salary now? Are they full time cofounders or still have another job?
Probably more than the rest unless you're a baller with great friends and family connections ($$$) to raise capital.
Just an idea and a prototype isn't worth anything. A great technical co-founder can make big bucks already working for big tech with less effort and no risk.
You might end up with an bad technical co-founder if you want to keep more control of the company, and the product being technical means your company will never be successful, as if it's a great idea, you'll have competitors and fail either now(more likely) or later down the road, as you'll have a tech. cofounder on board that isn't very good.
As you've mentioned, it's pre-seed so everything is worthless. Instead of thinking "how much do I give to my tech co-founder", I'd think: how do I get a great technical co-founder at all that will help us build this business? What can incentivise somebody that can work 10 years for a big tech company and retire... to come here and work his ass off to take this company off the ground?