Ask HN: What's a good "developer's guide to startup equity" book? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What's a good "developer's guide to startup equity" book?

5 pointsrpwilcox2 comments

I need to understand things like:

  1. how vesting works (and what that means if you leave/get fired before the vesting period)

  2. Prefered vs common stock in a buyout situation

  3. How stock options work

  4. Good dilution vs bad dilution and what that means when I have a N% equity stake

etc.

This is, "As a co-founder/CTO in a startup" not "as a founder I want to give equity away to bring on money/a cofounder/whatever"

This should be a good primer http://answers.onstartups.com/questions/6949/forming-a-new-s...

Most of those questions can be answered by reading articles online and running some scenarios in a spreadsheet. if you want to get deeper into the financial side, I recommend the book Handbook of Financing Growth: Strategies, Capital Structure, and M&A Transactions. [1] It assumes some background in corporate finance, but it is a good primer on growth financing with a lot of good case studies from which you can develop some spreadsheet models.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/The-Handbook-Financing-Growth-Transact...

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