If you own your staffing company or work for one in which stock ownership is an important aspect of recruitment and retention of key employees, then you might find as I did this lecture by Fred Wilson helpful. Key takeaways for me:
- Good fences make for good friends. If you get your company set up in the right way, you can better avoid or minimize the painful and emotional ownership related issues that have poisoned relationships in many a staffing company. As the French would say, “Les bons comptes font les bons amis.”.
- Stock ownership and the vesting of options can play an important role in recruiting and retain key employees including your co-founders.
- The match behind stock ownership and dilution is not simple. If you watch the video carefully, you’ll notice that Fred himself and his students that I presume are in an evening graduate MBA class make repeated arithmetic errors in their calculations. In other words, if you set your startup terms over beers, make sure a competent legal and accounting advisors get your final documents right.
