Founding Teams Checklist
This Founding Teams Checklist will help you understand some of the key founding team dilemmas. After going through this you should be able to set up your founding team along sound team governance practices. There are 22 questions to answer in the checklist. After each one you will receive some guidance on your decision. At the end you will receive a personalised founding team map and checklist, highlighting potential areas to be aware of. You will be able to print this out, as well as a generic pdf of the checklist and the guidance.
Congratulations, you have now completed the founding team checklist. Below is your founding team map, which highlights possible zones for attention in orange and red.
Beneath the map is your personalised checklist for you to print out.
Founding Team Composition |
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1. Will you found this venture with co-founders? |
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2.Are your co-founders family or friends (prior to founding this venture)? |
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3.Do the co-founders have complementary (i.e. diverse) skills (e.g., based on key functions, industries, contacts,...) needed for the venture? |
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4.Do the co-founders have similar values (e.g., what you value in life, priorities (e.g., money, ethics,…))? |
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5.We have discussed and are aligned concerning our key goals for this venture (e.g., growth path, willingness to take on external financing and/or to internationalise, type and time of exit). |
Founding Team Roles |
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6.We have discussed which co-founder will take on what role |
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7.We have made clear agreements on how much time each of us will commit to the venture |
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8.We will all be equally involved (in terms of time invested) in the venture |
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9.Will all, or the majority of, co-founders have C-titles? (e.g., CEO, CTO, CFO) |
Founding Team Decision Making |
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10.Will important decisions always be taken by unanimity/consensus ? |
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11.We have defined what we consider to be "important decisions" |
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12.Do we have a mechanism in place to deal with deadlock (i.e. no consensus on important decisions)? (e.g., majority/minority voting, CEO who has the final vote, a mutually trusted independent arbitrator) |
Founding Team Equity |
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13.We have explicitly discussed how we will split the equity and why this way (i.e. we have clarified which criteria we use, how important we find each and how much we think each founder (has/)will contribute(d) to each criterion) |
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14.We have split our equity equally amongst co-founders |
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15.In case of a non-equal split, we all feel comfortable with the difference in percentages |
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16.We have divided the equity primarily based on who had the idea and/or patents and the amount of money put into the venture |
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17.We have agreed upon buy-out terms amongst founders, i.e. terms regarding the transfer of founder shares when a founder would leave the venture or change their role |
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18.Are your founder shares subject to vesting? (i.e. you have to earn your shares over time) |
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19.In case you do have buy-out terms and/or vesting schedules, you have differentiated those terms for 'good leavers' versus 'bad leavers' |
Founding Team Other Remuneration |
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20.We have decided on what the rest of the founder remuneration package will look like (i.e. amount of cash remuneration, variable pay, dividends) |
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21.If performance is used as a basis to determine founder remuneration (e.g., vesting, cash), then we have agreed upon how this founder performance will be evaluated and by whom (e.g. by external advisors, by the founding team themselves) |
Legal Standing |
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22.All agreements among founders have been made legally binding and are signed by all founders |