_pygv

Thank for you opinion. Factoring in the fact that Dan is quitting his current job at a big FANG with total comp in the 400-500k range (this creates a higher equity cost for him). Most of us used to be software engineers, but with nowhere near that kind of comp. How much this consideration would that impact the equity?

So far, no one took salary. Everyone would start having similar salaries at the same time

Pros for choosing it were:

  - In europe (easier to go there)
  - Low cost of living
  - Low corporate tax rate
  - Good social life

Cons:

  - There are many annoyances with doing business here regarding corporate law and taxation. Moving our company from France to here is a nightmare. (Although most of the troubles, but not all, are related to France)
  - There is political risk if things become unstable whenever we want to move elsewhere
  - Not much of a crypto/ML scene
  - Personally, I don't feel very good here, regular headaches. Don't know that is the cause (this we couldn't have known before)
  - A bit polluted (not horrible, but not amazing either)

We also got bad luck with Covid, restrictions (most businesses closed & curfew) started 4 days after we moved here. But we could have anticipated this, seeing that Hungary has high covid rates.

Thanks for the advice.

In my life I did move a few times and never experienced symptoms like this, and it definitely took me by surprise. Before moving there, we considered "just trying it" by renting an airbnb. But we figured that there is not much difference between "just trying it" and actually moving there because we were only two back then. And our company was just us + our desktop computers. So we did move, but we kind of forgot we were in test-mode in the process.

Budget definitely is not the issue to move places, but visa/covid/taxes are. It might also make my french tax non-resident status harder to get if I'm moving all over the place. But as you said, my top priority now is getting better.

One of the reasons for this whole relocation operation was to bring more of us together. But at that point I'm willing to question that, because my top priority now is to get better.

Thanks for your input. I agree with this. One thing that's not obvious is how to weigh work in the past vs work in the future (I would weigh that equally) Another thing is how to weigh the amount of risk taken. B "gave up" his studies and a personal project he had, and B and myself (A) both work for a long time with the doubt that we could make the project successful. I think A and B should be rewarded somewhat for this, the question is how much.

It's not that big of an issue, we can all talk calmly about these things. I just want a reference point to make sure what each one suggests is not unreasonable

The disagreement is mostly between C and B, and C and D. I'm actually the only one being fine with C having as much as A and B. And I want everyone to feel the equity split is fair.

Also to clarify, until now we only kept separate trading accounts, so there wasn't really an issue about who own what. Only now we want to put everything under a company.

Very informative, thanks. I feel like I need to both cut my losses short as a co-founder and be supportive as a brother, which is a delicate thing to do.

The other guy has his own project and he is kicking ass (good coder, works a lot, interested in roughly the same topics as I am). So I doubt he would switch from his project to mine, although I thought he may when we started flatsharing. I think this is a possibility if my project takes off and his flattens out, but I'm not counting on that. The most likely scenario is that I continue on my own for a while.

The situation has been slowly been getting worse and worse (it has a boiling frog aspect to it). And I think that's why I put up with it for a long time. But if I compare what I had in mind (startup mode in which we spending the vast majority of our time working) when we started working and the current situation, it's night and day.

I still get the feeling that he has no bad intensions of "free-riding", just that he tries but cannot deliver. That's why I'm willing to give him a chance.

I agree with the "fail mode system" though