Is being offered 23% of a company an insult as a partner in a start up? I am responsible for building and designing the entire web app, coding the Frontend, backend, and digitizing all requirements for our proof of concept. My partner found me on LinkedIn. Its his idea, he will be running business functions, marketing, client onboarding, and he has a few real clients to do a trial run with. We’ve been working together for two months in a trial period and now we want to write up contract. How do I value myself?! ……This is my first start up !
I was in the same position as you and took 24%. As a new founder I had no idea what the CEO was going to do while I was writing code, but looking back, I’m glad we split the equity the way we did. My co-founder CEO did some amazing selling and I’m super happy with my 24%. There were actually 4 of us and we split it nearly equally between 2 engineers and two business side. In the old days, I think engineers got less, but more and more we are expected to have more business savvy like CTOs and so you kind of grow into that role and definitely earn your 24%.