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Comment by vitovito | Hacker News Reader

Can a mod change the date? It's a repost of his original answer from 2011: https://web.archive.org/web/20110416041922/http://answers.on...

There's been a lot of discussion since, including https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2445447 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3489719.

Also, at the time, Dan Shapiro argued against it here: http://www.quora.com/What-do-you-think-about-Joel-Spolskys-a...

I also think the share distribution Wizards of the Coast (Pokemon, Magic the Gathering) accidentally used was interesting: founders had no shares, and worked their way up into the single digits, which supported small, individual investors, but it's probably not recommended if you're planning for traditional investment: http://www.peteradkison.com/blog-entry-2-wizards-of-the-coas... and http://www.peteradkison.com/blog-entry-3-wizards-of-the-coas...

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The "if you're going to argue yourselves to death, do it now" advice seems incomplete to me. It presumes a model where a team is either going to argue itself to death or not; the outcome is predestined, and so it's better to know early. But reality as I've experienced it is that arguments degrade teams (and relationships of all sorts). A team that might have survived can be killed by inviting a pointless argument.

A team has a capacity for arguments that depletes over time as arguments exhaust the team members. Arguments happening in rapid succession set up a vicious cycle, because there's a migraine aura of bad communications surrounding any big argument, and difficult decisions that happen in that aura spark needless new arguments. Lots of arguments also carry a potential for resentment, which creates a longer-term communication problem which sometimes insidiously builds as the company runs.

The "trial arguments" theory that Quora comment suggests seems to me a little like those parents who throw "chicken pox parties". It's probably fine and maybe even pragmatic, but it's a risk.

Off topic: Given the existence of a chicken pox vaccine. A chicken pox party is not even pragmatic. :)

Also, some people prefer to avoid conflict, and this approach maximizes conflict avoidance. Not saying you should seek out conflict, but you can err on the side of going too far out of your way to avoid it as well.

Why do I say this? Oh, no reason.. I just like typing things in boxes on the Internet!

"at the time Dan Shapiro argued against it" -> and still do. :) To summarize the key points, I think:

- Joel confuses "easy" (50/50) with "fair" (working out the right number)

- It is better to argue yourselves to death early, when nobody else is affected, than later, when people are depending on you

- The expected value of an IOU is negligible because investors usually force you to waive them as a precondition of investing and they go to zero if the company fails

But perhaps I'm wrong. I'm expecting a round of innovation in equity allocation as companies heed sama's advice and try new things. I'm very curious to see how it works out!

WOTC's share distribution was interesting in the sense that it was terrible for the founder.

What did work out well was Garfield's equity share, etc.

Can a mod also fix his name in the title? SpoLsky, not Sposky...

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