Fair and Square: Perfect Equity Splits for Startups

by Mike Moyer

Entrepreneurs and early-stage company participants get taken advantage of so frequently that we hardly notice. Bad equity deals are the rule, not the exception. Fair & Square outlines a framework for perfectly fair equity splits for early-stage, bootstrapped startup companies. Based on model popularized by the book Slicing Pie, it is the companion guide for the online Pie Slicer application at SlicingPie.com. Fair & Square will help you determine the right share for people who contribute the things you need to start your company including help, equipment, supplies, rent and even credit. You will learn how to fairly allocate equity when people contribute and how to fairly recover equity when people leave the company.

146 pages, Paperback

Published November 4, 2014

About the author

Mike is a career entrepreneur and investor who has started and run companies in a variety of industries ranging from clothing manufacturing to marketing technology. Today he runs Slicing Pie, a SaaS company that helps startup founders create perfectly fair equity splits, and MosquitOasis that makes pop-up mosquito net tents for kids.

He teaches entrepreneurship at Northwestern University and has held other faculty appointments at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and MIT. He has written eight books with a focus on business and entrepreneurship including Pitch Ninja, The Slicing Pie Handbook, and Will Work for Pie.

He has an MS in integrated marketing from Northwestern University and an MBA from the University of Chicago. He lives in Lake Forest, Illinois with his wife and three kids.