Solo Founders: Give More Equity!
Solo founders have a massive structural advantage that most of them are wasting: equity.
When you start a company solo, you own 100% of it. No co-founder split, no 50/50, no negotiation over who gets more. According to Carta data in our State of Solo Founding report, solo founders hold substantially more absolute ownership through early fundraising stages — roughly 50% greater personal stake by Series B. By exit, the gap widens to 75% greater median ownership than lead founders in multi-founder companies.
Here's what doesn't make sense: the same data shows that median equity grants for the first five employees are nearly identical between solo and multi-founder companies. In other words, solo founders have far more equity to work with and they're not using it.
Daniel Francis, the solo founder of Abel Police, thinks that's a huge mistake. His take is direct: "Solo founders in this data are being too greedy."
The math that should change your mind
Consider the position of a solo founder who's raised a seed round. They might own 75-85% of their company. A comparable two-founder company might have each founder holding 35-40%. The solo founder has roughly double the equity of any individual founder in a multi-founder setup.
Now look at the hiring side. A typical early engineering hire at a venture-backed startup might get 0.5-1.5% equity. Francis argues that a solo founder should be offering substantially more — not out of charity, but out of strategy. If a multi-founder team is giving 1% to their first engineer, a solo founder giving 4-5% is still retaining far more equity than any individual co-founder would have.
The difference for the employee, though, is massive. At 1%, they're a hire. At 4-5%, they start to feel like a co-owner.
What generous equity actually buys you
Francis's CTO is someone who could have started his own company. He's technically excellent with a strong product sense, the kind of person that every startup is competing for. He didn't join Able because of the salary — Francis matched what he was making at his previous job. He joined because the equity grant made him feel like a partner in the business.
That feeling isn't just emotional, it changes behavior. When someone owns a meaningful percentage of a company, they think differently about trade-offs. They're more likely to push back on bad decisions, more willing to do the unglamorous work, more committed to the long game. They stop acting like an employee and start acting like a co-owner — which is exactly what a solo founder needs.
Francis uses a six-year vesting schedule as a counterbalance to larger grants. Julian Weisser, who hosts the Solo Founders Podcast and compiled the State of Solo Founding report's field notes, independently recommends the same approach — longer vesting (six years vs. the standard four) paired with more generous grants. The logic: if you're going to give someone a significant equity stake, you need them committed for a significant period. The longer vest protects the company while the larger grant attracts the caliber of person you'd actually want around for six years.
Why solo founders default to stingy
There are a few reasons solo founders under-allocate equity to early hires, and none of them hold up under scrutiny.
Pattern matching. Most equity guidance is written for multi-founder companies. When a solo founder googles "standard" equity ranges, they see numbers that were designed for entirely different ownership structures. They follow the template without adjusting for the fact that they have dramatically more equity to work with. As Peter Walker, who leads Carta's data team, put it in the State of Solo Founding report: "Little difference in equity grants — counters the theory that solo founders are generous with ownership. Underused strategy."
Fear of dilution. Solo founders are acutely aware that they don't have a co-founder to share the cap table burden with. Every percentage point feels more personal. But this fear is "penny wise and pound foolish" as Daniel says in his conversation with Julian. Hoarding equity while hiring mediocre talent — or losing great talent to a competitor who offers more — costs far more than the extra points on the cap table.
Not realizing the opportunity. Some solo founders simply haven't thought about it. They're too busy writing code, talking to customers, and raising money to realize that their ownership structure is itself a recruiting weapon.
Contracting as an on-ramp
Francis also uses contracting as what he calls a "sneaky" hiring tool. Instead of making a full-time offer right away, he brings people on as contractors. They start working on real problems, seeing real customer impact, falling in love with the mission.
His CTO started as a contractor picking up tickets. His wife probably would have vetoed a full-time offer from an early-stage startup. But contracting felt lower-risk, and by the time the full-time conversation came up, the work had already sold him.
This matters because the hardest people to recruit are exactly the people solo founders need most. The willingness to give meaningful equity isn't generosity — it's a signal of how seriously you take the work and the people doing it. Stingy equity tells your best candidates that you view them as hired hands, not partners in the outcome.
The report data hints at another dimension too. Solo founders already hire their first employee earlier than multi-founder companies — they don't have the built-in capacity of a co-founder, so they need help sooner. That first hire carries disproportionate weight. They're not joining a team; they're becoming the team. The equity grant for that person should reflect the reality that they're stepping into a role closer to co-founder than employee number seven at a company with three founders and a head of engineering.
The combination — contracting as an entry point, generous equity as the commitment mechanism, six-year vesting as the alignment tool — gives solo founders a hiring playbook that most multi-founder companies can't match. You just have to be willing to actually use the equity you have.
The bottom line: if you're a solo founder and you're giving the same equity grants as companies with two or three founders, you're leaving your best hiring advantage on the table. You have more to give. Give more. Get better people. Build a better company.
This insight comes from a conversation with Daniel Francis on the Solo Founders Podcast. Listen to the full episode →
