Founding teams don’t fail at arithmetic.
They fail because the equity conversation is uncomfortable. So it gets shortened to a number nobody quite believes, and then never revisited.
Look at what actually happens to founding teams and a pattern shows up. Across 1,476 founders in 511 ventures, roughly a third split their equity equally — and the researchers put the value riding on that one decision at around a tenth of the company. Hellmann & Wasserman, Management Science 63(8).
An even split is sometimes exactly right. Reaching for it this often is something else: an even split is the fastest way to stop talking about equity, which is why teams reach for it when the conversation is the uncomfortable part. The same researchers are careful to say the pattern is not proof of cause — but the size of what is being decided is not in doubt.
There is no shortage of equity calculators. They are free, they are fast, and most of them are perfectly good at the arithmetic. What none of them do is the difficult part — getting several people to say out loud what each of them is bringing, hear what everyone else thinks of it, and commit to an answer together.
What we built instead
Pie Divide runs the negotiation. Everyone signs in separately. The team agrees what matters before anyone is scored on it. Each founder assesses themselves and everyone else, privately, and self-assessment counts for less than what your co-founders say about you. Nothing is final until every founder approves it, and anyone can dispute and reopen the round.
What you keep at the end is not a number. It is a record: the weights you agreed, who proposed what, who approved, and when. That is what makes the decision hold up two years later, in front of an investor, a lawyer, or a co-founder who remembers it differently.
Where we’re honest about the limits
Pie Divide is not a law firm and gives no legal, tax or financial advice. It will not incorporate your company, file your elections or draft your agreements. What it does is get you to a decision everyone has genuinely signed off on — and then introduce you to the professionals who handle the rest.
What Pie Divide does
- Runs the negotiation with every founder in their own account
- Makes the team agree what counts before anyone is scored on it
- Weighs what your co-founders say about you above what you say about yourself
- Holds the result until every founder has approved it
- Keeps the record: the weights, the proposals, the approvals, the timestamps
What it does not do
- Give legal, tax or financial advice — Pie Divide is not a law firm
- Incorporate your company or file anything with anyone
- Draft, sign or store a founder agreement
- Issue shares, or model vesting, cliffs or leavers
- Decide anything your founders have not agreed to
Run yours properly.
Walk the whole process free, on our standard weights. See what your team actually thinks.