Dilution is a natural part of the growing process of any startup, and typically if you're experiencing dilution it's because you are gaining something in return - cash, in the case of investors, or sweat equity in the case of employees. There isn't an exact science to dilution/valuation in most cases, especially in the very early stages. You need to sell as much/as little of the company as is required in order to secure the resources you need to be successful. Owning 100% of something that isn't particularly is always going to be worse than owning 1% of a billion dollar company.

That said, there are generally some norms around percentages for co-founders, and employee option grants can be benchmarked against comp data that you can find in Carta or Pave.

Happy to chat more if that would be helpful!

The main goal is to balance the need for capital with the desire to maintain ownership stakes. This is a worth reading https://eqvista.com/calculate-dilution-in-cap-table/

Dilution sucks.You need to min, and/or bootstrap. It's prob more popular a notion now (since 20-21 funding cohorts for VCs are flarked- I think it is the 2022 cohort that fund commits are 40^ than normal 60- so VCs aren't spending like it's...1999).

I have made free excel sheets to explain dilution, cap tables, conv note, SAFE, etc.

I invented something called the future fundraise model. The idea is to set your exit goal and work backwards so you can plan your raise plan (and dilution) till then - so you know how much you need to raise in this round to get to s-a and raise x with y traction and so on.

The idea is to create a framework to think about what you are doing if you go down the VC path (and ow to deliver).

There are things to consider- first, if you C level= earn less. When hiring staff less likely to ask fro more than CEO... Staff go in a bucket which VCs negotiate as it affects the px (make a hiring plan)