<aside> <img src="/icons/promoted_yellow.svg" alt="/icons/promoted_yellow.svg" width="40px" /> The founding team should comprise of the people critical to the company’s formation and success, and have the most skin in the game through equity.

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VCs want comfort that the founding team they invest in is the team that runs the company and stays at the company. The simplest and best way to demonstrate that outside of pitching is the fact that the founding team, individually co-founders, all have equity, and therefore significant skin in the game for the long-term success of the company, regardless of how many games or products are created.

This also speaks to the practical reality of building a startup - it’s really, really hard, there will be big challenges along the way and most startups end up shutting down. Co-founders need to be equally and obsessively passionate about what they’re pitching to overcome all odds.

This structure creates better alignment for everyone involved, as the value generated by the business accrues to everyone through the equity, so everyone should be working towards the same outcome of an exit.

Here is a very useful co-founder equity split guide and calculator by Joakim Achrén, General Partner at F4 Fund.

“There are so many challenges on the way to building a successful company. If you’re doing it for the wrong reasons, you’re going to wilt. You simply won’t persevere. But if you’re deeply motivated by what you’re doing, you’ll keep going and you’ll overcome obstacle after obstacle. And so that to me is one of the key starting conditions: founder-market fit, founder-problem fit.” — Roelof Botha, General Partner @ Sequoia, investors in Unity, thatgamecompany, REC Room, Dream Games