Real talk: how much equity do Founder CEOs actually own in their own startups?
For the bootstrapping path, it's easy - 100% (if they are solo founder CEOs).
For those taking venture capital, that share reduces down as the march through the venture stages and bring more capital into the business.
Data below is from 10,774 US startups using Carta that raised a primary priced round from 2020 through 2024. The big circle is the median percentage owned by the founder CEO after the round.
We excluded companies that swapped founder CEOs for outside CEOs to keep the data clean.
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The number of cofounders is highly impactful to CEO ownership over time (duh). However, the medians do converge between founding teams of different sizes as more funding comes into the business.
About 48% of 2-founder teams split equity equally at the start (for companies founded in 2023 or 2024). Many of them will end up with unequal splits over time however as founders depart the company or roles change.
The data shown here is total equity allocated, so it includes both vested and unvested in many cases. Typical vesting schedules for founder CEOs remain around 4 years, but more founding teams are choosing 5 or even 6 years than before.
There are many ways to change this percentage outside of fundraising (founder grant refreshes, founder secondaries, etc). This is in some ways a simplified view.
If you'd like to see more specifics about equity benchmarks for founder CEOS in your industry, your cash position, your valuation, etc - come say hi to our Carta Total Compensation team! Shout it out in the comments for a link.
All of this data (and much, much more) in our recently released Founder Ownership 2025 report, which you can read in full here: https://lnkd.in/gC2Y-xfR
Pls share with your favorite founder π
#startups #founders #CEO #founderequity #venturecapital
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