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Entrepreneur here not a lawyer, but as a startup you want to keep costs low. Legal fees can be $10k+ just to issue new shares.

Unless you are profitable, I'd try delay doing this until a funding event and do what the the other commenter Siegel mentioned. Just get the commitment in writing or in a contract and don't go through the messy process of issuing new shares unless your business has product/market fit and is stable. Because before product/market fit you should worry only about getting to product/market fit. You shouldn't worry about sharing % of nothing. NOTE: revenue =/= product/market fit.

But make sure you do it before, or at the same time you raise money.

If you can afford it, ask a lawyer if you can issue more shares to keep the %'s the same 50% shares outstanding and 50% common. Then adjust the amount owned by you and your co-founder. ie. issue another 10m shares, 2m go to your co-founder and 3m to you, then you have 20m outstanding, 10m common with 5m/5m. Get a price quote upfront for the work.

Again, I'm not a lawyer so this is NOT legal advice. I don't know if this is the most economical or easiest way to do it, but it's one way you might do it.



If anyone is charging you $10k+ to issue new shares, that's crazy!


most early early startups don't keep up with legal, so when it comes time to issue I know a lot of startups who had significant clean up to do




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