ASk HN: second thoughts about joining startup - what to do?
anamax: > But my friend has other plans, it seems. Basically, he is about to be the sole founder and owner of the company.He's trying to grab the reward and shift the risk to you.Strict percentage deals often don't make sense, especially for minority partners.  They're taking as much risk, if not more, and they're getting short changed on reward.He's probably thinking big exit, say $100M, and doesn't see why you should get $25-50M.  However, the likely best case result is a $5-10M exit.  If you're putting in a couple of years, $1M is absurd.  (Note that the typical result is a $0 exit.)If he's fixated on the big score, he might agree to something like you get 50% of the first $5M and 10% after that.  That shifts the risk back to him.  If he's the genius that he thinks that he is, that's basically the same as a 10% deal.  However, you get a decent payout if there's any decent exit.However, I suspect that the right move is to walk away, as most of the other people are suggesting.