r/startups • u/ripper2345 • Sep 19 '16

What topics should be discussed when coordinating expectations among co-founders?

Without going into any of the details, what are the essential topics that should be discussed among co-founders?

E.g.

  1. Equity & vesting (e.g. 50%/50%, 4 year vesting with 1 year cliff)
  2. Roles (e.g. Kate is CEO, John is the CTO)
  3. Scope of the venture (“Solve the 'too many cucumbers’ problem in Japan”) …
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3

u/jstandard Sep 19 '16

  • What happens when someone leaves (ex. equity repurchase)

  • IP assignment

  • What are the high-level milestones you all agree to hit, what happens when you don't hit them (we plan to validate our market hypothesis within 6 months, generate 20k MRR within 12 months)

  • How much money/time everyone is willing to commit. What are the consequences if they actually don't

  • What specifically will each person be doing. How is success evaluated for that person

  • Bone white with Silian Grail or eggshell with Roman

1

u/ripper2345 Sep 21 '16

Thanks for the comprehensive answer.

IP assignment

Is there any option other than "all IP goes to the company"? What are some highlights to discuss on this topic?

1

u/jstandard Sep 21 '16

Everything is generally assigned to the company. I find it's useful to just make sure everyone is aware of it and understands the consequences.

It can become important if you have founders/employees who are contributing to multiple projects/companies at the same time.

A few examples: An engineer writes a library to solve a problem at your company and wants to release it under an open license or, even trickier, an engineer wrote a library BEFORE your company, makes large changes to work for your company, then who owns the library? That engineer might want to license his/her library to other companies after they leave yours.

No need to get bogged down with details here, but it is good to have high-level consensus on how important open source contributions are. If it's VERY important or contentious among the founders, you may need to ask your lawyer to invest some more time adding nuanced language to your founders and employment Agreements.

In a related conversation, as u/faddat mentioned, discuss about launching other ventures / moonlighting.

2

u/faddat Sep 20 '16

My current cofounder used a template for this and it's pretty solid:

  • the goals each of you have for the startup

  • the goals each of you have for yourself;

  • duties, job descriptions, and hour commitments;

  • who pays for what;

  • who gets paid first and why;

  • what happens if one of you wants out;

  • what happens if one of you wants to sell the company, raise capital, or end it;

  • what happens if one of you gets disabled or dies

  • what happens if things take longer than expected; and

  • whether launching other startups, i.e. “moonlighting,” is ok.

1

u/sigma_noise Sep 19 '16

Long term plan/exit strategy