The Startup Equity Calculator (Udemy.com)
Learn to use a simple framework and my robust calculator to help you and your cofounders to find a fair equity split.
Created by: Symon He
Last updated June 2020
What you will learn
- Use systematic and fair approach to dividing company equity
- Understand the two different frameworks for splitting equity
- Use custom built calculators to arrive at fair splits
- Understand the key factors in initial equity consideration
- How to use milestones and actual contributions to calculate a founder's equity
- Learn which framework is better suited for your situation
How it compares
Against the other 418 rated Udemy courses in Digital Marketing on CourseDuck:
- Rating4.3 out of 5higher than 26% of them
- Reviews358#221 of 419 by number of reviews
- Length4 hoursshorter than 50% of them
- Last updatedJune 2020earlier than 77% of them
Course Description
Instructor Symon He hosts near daily LIVE office hours on TikTok 10:30PM PDT. Find him @SymonHe.
Kristen Barker - 5 Stars
“Clear and understandable. Excellent, useful excel templates. I appreciated the optional modules that clarified terms as well as more advanced information.”
Dan Heffley - 5 Stars
“Clear, concise, excellent pacing, with great examples, and numerous other resources.”
Noelima Salama - 5 Stars
“Good presentation and message transmission. Factors in those who already have the knowledge and those who don’t.”
Who is the Startup Equity Calculator for?
• New business owners
• Startup founders
• Co-founders
• Entrepreneurs
So, you have a great business idea.
You grab your two best friends, get all excited, and then start a company together.
In your haste to get started, you and your two cofounders decided to divide the equity evenly in thirds--it seemed the obvious and fair choice at the time.
Two months later, just as you're starting to get some traction, one of your friends changes his mind and drops out entirely. But for the work that he did initially, he believes he should still get to keep his 1/3 share of the company.
The two of you left are now essentially doing all the work, but for only 2/3 of the company. Still worth pursuing? Maybe. But you definitely won't be happy.
'Deadweight' cofounders with significant equity stakes can make it difficult to attract new team members or investors, among other issues.
Don't make this easily avoidable mistake. My course and my calculator will allow you and your cofounders to have a collaborative and transparent conversation about how much of the company each person should get.
_____________________________________________
Juan Campos - 5 Stars
“The resource materials are worth the course ALONE. On top of that, everything is explained clearly and with very good examples. You end up not only owning the knowledge, but also having the toolkit to act upon it.”
Guarav Bansal - 5 Stars
“Excellent course and explained in a very simple manner. Perfect use of text, side-video, traversing the excel workbooks, etc.
The excel workbooks are extremely helpful for understanding the concepts and for ready plug n play.
Thanks!”
Look, starting a new venture is hard, but having to figure out what is fair for each cofounder shouldn't be.
By taking this course and utilizing my easy-to-use Startup Equity Calculator (UPDATED to handle up to 7 cofounder slots--more than what 99.99% of you will need), you'll learn how to avoid this unfortunate, yet totally avoidable, situation.
You and your team might even have fun with the pie slicing exercise!
Through this course, you'll learn what you should factor into your equity pie considerations and how to use a systematic approach for calculating each founder’s fair share, both collaboratively and openly.
While this course isn't intended to provide you with the "correct solution,” it will give you and your team a great starting point to move your important conversation forward.
More importantly, it'll make it easier and less awkward to talk about who should get how much and why.
Deciding and agreeing on how to divide the initial equity pie is no trivial task, but this tool will help get the conversation going on the right path by forcing you and your cofounders to decide on what are the key milestones for your venture and how each of you are going to be making your contributions.
What if your starting a more traditional business?
Whether you're going for a high-growth type of startup or a more traditional startup with known benchmarks for revenue and cash flow, I've got you covered.
I'll explain to you which of the two frameworks and tools you should use depending on the type of venture you're starting up.
Feel free to take a look at the preview lectures to check out the calculators in action, and you'll see how they can help you and your cofounders have a smart equity conversation.
Good luck and happy slicing!
~Symon
Instructor Details
- 4.3 Rating
358 Reviews
Symon He
Symon He is the author of the Rental Property Investing QuickStart Guide, Amazon best-seller Real Estate Investing QuickStart Guide, and the co-author of Airbnb for Dummies, all available now on Amazon and in bookstores throughout North America.
He is also co-founder of LearnBNB, a leading online educational destination for all things Airbnb hosting and short-term rentals. His works have been cited or featured on the Wall Street Journal, Reuters, Forbes, CNBC, Entrepreneur, and SKIFT. Through his training and coaching programs, he has worked directly with thousands of aspiring Airbnb hosts to jumpstart their short term rental journeys. His training programs have been featured by prominent third-party partners, including a joint venture with RichDad.
As a licensed broker, Symon previously helped private real estate investors with their acquisitions and deal structuring. As an angel investor, he also advises and invests in early stage startups.
Previously, Symon worked in several corporate real estate and finance roles at large private and Fortune 80 companies, including at a private equity investment firm covering a wide range of commercial real estate acquisitions in the western USA.
Symon received dual degrees in Computer Engineering and Economics with Honors from UC Irvine and an MBA from Stanford University.
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Reviews
By Grehdeep Sood on 3/23/2021
Good course but I could use a bit more clarification on the financial terms used. Even with the provided extra materials, the concepts had to be googled for better understanding. Great effort though & a good course for people trying to understand how to equate a new business. A follow up course with the HR or communication aspect of it would be well appreciated.
By Augusto Garcia Leal de Almeida on 4/30/2020
As explicações são boas, mas muitas explicação são repetidas e desnecessárias, o curso poderia ser ministrado em menos de 2 horas. O material para baixar é praticamente o mesmo, mas colocado em várias seções diferentes para dar "volume".
By Horacio Javier Lampe on 3/4/2019
Muy buen curso, además es muy práctico con los excels que brinda. Muy bien explicado la división del pastel de participaciones en un startup. Muy necesario tener en cuenta cuando estás trayendo inversiones a un start up y la división de acciones entre socios y founders Muy recomendable. Gran instructor. Felicitaciones Symon He. Muy buen trabajo.
By Chris Miller on 11/26/2018
General fine. At the end there can be a lot disagreement about the weights. I think this is an issue and should be discussed with some real world examples or interviews with founders who went through this. But I didn't expected it although it should be included to make it a proper course.
By Christopher Aiello on 9/17/2017
Another Outstanding finance/modeling course from Symon He. I bought this last year but just got around to viewing the course this weekend. Symon has a great teaching style and provides a powerful combination of explanation and visuals and examples to make the key points in a clear manner. Great Course!
By Ryan on 5/9/2017
5-Star -- Absolutely Fantastic! This course is designed for new business owners who are unsure of how to split up equity amongst partners in a equitable way. Symon presents the information in a very clear and concise manner so that you can easily understand the underlying concepts in a practical way. This was one of the few Udemy courses that I felt was worth my time and money.
By Charles Du on 12/31/2015
I really wished I had this course when I had my startup company Symon does an amazing job breaking down all the hidden landmines that founders face when they have the difficult conversation of "how to split the equity." If I took this course earlier and split my equity the right way, I would've saved thousands of dollars on lawyers and skipped out on all the headaches of fixing it later.
By Manoj Mahadevan on 1/6/2014
If there's one takeaway from this course is that a founders need to understand the different stages of the startup, the tasks involved and the founders' responsibility at each stage. The weights and how the pie is distributed is highly subjective, one that WCI has tried it's best to explain.
By Stephen on 5/10/2013
Takes approximately 40 minutes of your time to provide a mathematical model to fairly represent allocation of ownership in the startup - potentially a very messy & awkward exercise with other founders who really want to just focus on getting up and running and making the millions they are dreaming of. I would recommend having a 2hr session alone where you perform this course together then start to work through the categories and stages and later work out the results.
By John Sax on 11/27/2012
Thanks for the short but thorough look at how to split the founder's pie. Only problem I have is that I couldn't figure out how to download the files from udemy. I had to get it from their website. Absolutely love the model--easy to use but robust enough to test out all my start-up equity scenarios.
Quality Score
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Overall Score : 86 / 100












