Oh!. Equity, sweat equity, co-founders are enamored by this in a delightful way and lose their focus from vitamin “M” and get distracted by the shiny deals happening in the startup ecosystem. It is fair enough to take a calculated bet with an eye on the prospective future windfall, but one should take into account the present realities of life.

Co-founders should understand each other’s situation and try to be fair at all times, which doesn’t happen in most of the cases because of various reasons. The main founder feels that his or her idea is the most valuable asset in the deal and tries to extract the maximum out of the arrangement.

To a certain degree it is fair, but beyond a point, it shows the skewed view of the co-creating process. More often it has been proved that idea is not everything. Quite often we have seen that the execution of the plan by the core team matter the most, rather how exotic may be the pitch along with initial advantages.

All looks good, one can build the entire next unicorn company and its multi-million revenue stream on the paper, but the harsh realities are that one requires the core team to execute the plan on the ground on a daily basis, to see some effect in reality.

One always hears this gospel (directly or indirectly) i.e 101 reasons you should be on board
+ Next unicorn
+ You would make tons of money in the future….
+ Game Changer
+ One should think big and focus on the larger picture
+ I have experience and I know everything, it is going to revolutionize everything…..

But these things haunt the full time co-founder (in making / required / proposed) along with a rider thought – Everything seems great, but.. How I am going to pay my bills, till we reach the land of gold as promised?. Which is a multi-billion dollar puzzle that co-founders need to tackle every day during this journey?