Your cap table
tells investors
more than your deck.

Equity should reflect contribution, risk, and role. Use a framework like Slicing Pie or hold an honest conversation about full-time commitment, domain expertise, and who brought the idea. Unequal doesn't mean unfair.

Standard four-year vesting with a one-year cliff, applied to every founder — including the CEO. Most GCC investors will not proceed without this. It protects everyone, including the founders themselves.

Advisors should typically receive 0.25–0.5 percent on a two-year vest with clear deliverables. If an advisor isn't actively opening doors or contributing expertise monthly, renegotiate or buy back the equity.

This is why vesting matters. For existing dead equity, negotiate a buyback or restructure before you raise. Investors will ask about every name on the cap table — have a clean answer for each one.

Build a pro-forma cap table that models every scenario: what happens when each SAFE converts, what fully-diluted ownership looks like, and who sits where after the round. If you can't build this yourself, get help before you raise.

Before approaching institutional investors, review every term sheet and side letter from previous rounds. Renegotiate or sunset problematic clauses. A clean structure is worth more than the awkward conversation costs.

Reserve 10–15 percent for an employee option pool before you raise. Investors will often ask you to expand it anyway — but zero shows a lack of planning. It's one of the simplest things to fix and one of the most noticed.