Re:The Median Level of Founder Ownership at Exit
by acjohnson55 on Friday November 04, 2016 @09:28AM
(#12872360)
Yep. It totally depends. At the end of the day, if the company exits for $1B, whether I've got $110M or $470M is big in some sense, but immaterial in other senses. And how that money is raised is subject to so many factors that interact with where the business is and where the external market is. The way I look at it, the big differences in ownership stake are 51% vs. 30% vs. 3% versus 0.3% versus 0.03%. Do what you gotta do to be successful in the first place, don't worry about percentages of percentages.
For example if your market requires large capital investment, e.g. insurance, banking, you could expect to part with a good proportion of your equity at every raise.
If you're a non-capital-intensive business and you still ended up with 10% at IPO I really wouldn't beat yourself up too much... You still did what very few people in the world have managed.