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Welcome to Phase Two of a four-part Splitting Equity Series. If you missed it, start your journey here: Introduction - Early Startup Equity — Getting it Right before continuing on if you haven’t already, and go in order from there.

Phase One - Startup Equity - Avoiding Early Mistakes

Phase Two - Part 1 - How Startup Equity Works

• Part 2 - Startup Stock Options

• Part 3 - Startup Stock Vesting ( ←YOU ARE HERE 😀)

• Part 4 - Startup Stock Valuation

Phase Three - How to Split Equity

Phase Four - Equity Management

Let's continue!

Vesting is a way to allow members to "earn" their stock over some period of time or per specific milestones. A common "4-year vesting schedule" means that a member of the company will earn 25% of their stock or stock options per y...

Great companies are born from dumb ideas.

That's now how we think about them, though. We all have this fantasy that great companies start with a clear, genius vision for the world, and the rest of our time is spent just realizing that vision. That sounds awesome, but that's not at all the way ideas work, and that fundamental misunderstanding by Founders prevents a lot of great companies from ever forming.

No Shame in Dumb Ideas

The reason as Founders we prevent ourselves from finding great ideas is that we're ashamed of pursuing dumb ideas. Facebook was a dumb yearbook app long before it became the most powerful social media tool in history. In fact, before I go listing a ton of examples of every major company you've heard of that was a dum...

Our "How it Works" slide is where we begin explaining the mechanics of our solution in a pitch deck presentation. It's notably different than the Solution Slide of a pitch deck which sometimes confuses startup founders. We'll explain how the best pitch decks walk venture capitalists and angel investors step-by-step through their products.

How Potential Investors view the How it Works Slide

When raising money from potential investors, a successful pitch deck focuses on the needs of the audience first (read: investors). Every word in our pitch deck should be tailored to the 2 unique selling point goals they have.

Investor: "Do I understand how it works?"

In our solution slide, we explained what the product does. Now we have to begin convincing in...

We all know how much of a toll being a Founder takes on us, but what about everyone around us?

It'd be nice to think that our journey, and the personal hell that is trying to be a Founder overall is limited to just our own world, the reality is our world radiates out to everyone around us. Our long hours, intense stress, and sometimes total failure doesn't just blow up our world, it has a strong ripple effect on everyone around us.

Startups Aren't Exactly "Marriage Enhancers"

If you ever want to truly test your marriage (or any relationship for that matter), try running it through the grueling gauntlet that is a startup company. While it's hard enough to build a strong relationship, mixing in a giant dose of anxiety and uncertainty does not...

App development is not a straightforward process, despite how much "process" developers add to the equation. There are basically 3 things that are never working in our favor:

First, the idea is in our head, not in the developers head, so the translation is a huge, time consuming challenge.

Second, we're building an app that has never existed before, so we don't actually know how people are going to use it or what features are required.

And last, we're assuming that our developer is capable of completing a working app. All of these are giant issues that should give us pause (and keep our cash in the bank for a minute!).

Focus on Milestones

We have to think about building an app in stages — not the whole enchilada all at once. To do that, w...

Sales leaders tend to have a strong opinion on the value and use of incentives. Their views are based on firsthand experiences and beliefs, and are often unconscious. As a result, their approach to sales compensation design can be biased toward past experiences, dismissing a broad range of options and philosophies available to drive the desired behaviour.

For example, most organizations believe salespeople possess a binary motivation to maximise their earning potential. However, other companies are purpose-driven and reward their sales teams based on group performance. We frequently hear how the millennial is “purpose-driven”, but the key to any incentive plan is to define the word “purpose”.

I recently asked a millennial sales leader if h...

In the early years of your startup, you may feel like a one-person show. You have infinite faith in your product or service, but how do you translate that commitment to investors and stakeholders? How can you raise brand awareness before you have the funding necessary for marketing and PR?

Despite these obstacles, you must find a way to gain traction in building a community or generating sales. Otherwise, you risk stalling or, worse, folding. Fortunately, this is where “strength in numbers” comes into play. Find out how you can get your show on the road with a strategic startup partnership.

Getting ahead with a strategic startup partnership

1. Instant Street Cred

Validation by large enterprises generates the credibility and exposure you ne...

EDITOR’S NOTE

Ah, rejection. The early-stage Founder’s bread and butter.

When you’re building a company from the ground up, you kind of get used to hearing the word “No.”

But Saasmetrics Founder Leo Faria: he didn’t just get used to it. He broadcast it for everyone to see.

A few weeks ago, Leo published a post on Medium that he called “Lessons learned from a startup rejected by 500 Startups, Techstars and Y Combinator.” In the post, Leo digs into his experience applying for the US’s three most prestigious accelerators — and (spoiler alert) getting rejected by each and every one. He even goes as far as to include the actual text of the actual emails he received from each accelerator, and you can just imagine what it must have felt like to se...

Stealth mode startups. They’re the cool kid’s club of the startup world. Who doesn’t want to know the secret, awesome, disruptive company that the latest 22-year old tech hot shot is working on?

Stealth mode is an excellent psychological trick that founders employ with the hope that the even cooler kids — i.e. the venture capitalists — will be intrigued and want to come join their club.

Problem is, it’s kind of BS.

Look, I’m not saying that no founder should ever have a stealth mode startup. There are legitimate reasons to choose to keep things quiet until you feel like your baby is ready for the world.

However, for most startups, the benefits of being out in the open — from finding the right product/market fit to locating your first 100 c...

If idea validation is about taking your business idea for a test-drive, then pricing your product is where the rubber really hits the road.

This is it. You’re done piloting. You’re done validating. You’re really done living on Ramen in an apartment you share with five roommates. You’re ready to come out and tell the world: “I have a product or service that provides value – and this is how much my product is worth.”

Needless to say, product pricing strategy is an essential piece of the startup puzzle – and it’s a notoriously tricky piece to get right. There are about a dozen moving pieces you have to take into account. Getting them all aligned just right is like unlocking the most complicated combination lock ever.

Britt Crawford knows a thi...