What to do in an equity disagreement in a startup
ltbarcly: 4% of 0 is 0, so I wouldn't worry about it too much.  If you don't have a no-compete, which it sounds like you don't since there isn't any company to have an agreement with at this point, I would offer him a full 40% and walk away.There is no such thing as 'very knowledgeable in technology and the web'.  Either they know how to program or they don't.  If they don't, odds are they will be expecting you to put in long long hours while they surf news sites and dick around and pretend to be really busy.And if they knew all about business they wouldn't have needed to take 50k from an angel, since they could have written a check with the proceeds of all their prior business success.  50k would pay for a single programmer to work for 4 months or so...Oh, there is an alternative.  Agree that when you get a first round of funding or make a profit that you'll be paid for all the hours you work at some reasonable rate (maybe $60 per hour).  They should get paid for the hours they work also, but obviously since you are the only one actually doing anything I wouldn't let them bill more than 5 or 10 hours a week.