I disagree that most ventures fail because of problems between founders. That is fairly common, but the commonest cause of failure is that the product is a dog.
This guy is a senior lecturer at Sloan, called his point "the reality" and even underlined it. You gotta admit when you're beat, pg.
Next you'll be saying founders' primary concern is whether the startup will survive, when the reality is that equity allocation is their primary concern. It's right there in the article.
I think this is as hard as you make it. Only key for me when I start a venture with multiple people is how trustable and logical the partners are. That way you know if you ever have to re-do the ownership at any point, you might not get exactly what you want but you will still get something very close to fair.
I've just read a book where the author is a successful entrepreneur, but a greedy sod too. He stresses that ownership is not the important thing, but the ONLY thing that matters. Taking into account that he started up in the 70s and it wasn't a technology company, he got away with owning 100% of the company's equity - and still does today.
I've never heard of this happening: all the best technology companies (Google, Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo, HP etc.) split the equity at the very beginning fairly evenly.
Is this even possible today to own a company outright with web startups, or is it even a good idea?
"Equity is like shit. If you pile it up, it just smells bad, but if you spread it around, wonderful things will grow." - Jerry Kaplan talking at Stanford
