On the demo round, the option pool is £500,000 of founder value
Dilution and Cap Table Calculator
The investor’s share is simple arithmetic. The quiet part is the option pool created before the money lands, which comes out of the founders alone.
Dilution and Cap Table Calculator
What a round does to founder ownership, including the option pool that gets created before the money lands.
The clause that moves the money
The investor's share is simply the raise over the post-money. The pool is the quiet part: created pre-money, it dilutes only the existing holders, so it is founder value transferred before the negotiation appears to start.
On the demo round the 10 per cent pool is worth £500,000 of the post-money company, and all of it comes off the founders' side of the table.
The counter is to size the pool to the actual hiring plan before the round, not to a round number the term sheet suggests.
Take the workbook
The cap table before and after in Excel, with the pool's cost in pounds on its own line.
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