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 !
Sales trumps engineering. This is gonna piss a lot of engineers, but an amazing product without sales gets you nowhere. A shitty product with great sales still gets you somewhere.
So, if you think you can line up clients, deals, have a great network, then sure, this is an insult. If not, 23% of something kicking off is so much greater than 50% of zombie mode.
Your partner obviously values his skills for this business more than your contributions. It’s up to you to understand if that’s valid.