How to manage your cap table using slicing pie / dynamic equity allocation?
Interview with Floris Van Hoogenhuyze
Behind unfair equity splits are 9 out of 10 cases the inflexible cap tables frameworks founders are forced to work with, not evil intentions.
Since coming across the dynamic equity split option - allocating founders’ shares based on actual contributions (measure over defined time) - I became a huge fan. Why? Because it helps founders. To build better teams. And better teams build better businesses.
Check what motivated Floris van Hoogenhuyze, a serial entrepreneur and founder of We.Vestr - an equity management platform built for founders, by founders, to include slicing pie dynamic equity option as part of the platform.
Being a successful, serial entrepreneur, I imagine you have had some valuable experiences building co-founding teams?
Well that may be a bit of an exaggeration, since I feel like I’m only just getting started:) In the course of my career I’ve certainly had many good experiences and equally some bad experiences, which were just as valuable in the end. It’s wonderful when you have a good match between your co-founders, and I’ve been very privileged to see what happens for your business when you have great co-founder chemistry. But as you get more experienced in the job you also learn to identify quicker when co-founding culture is not complementary - and you become more confident in acting quicker.
Looking back - what were the most important lessons learned on this topic?
To look precisely for the differences between the co-founders and their personalities and not to get carried away by the similarities. Remember, differences in personalities is not necessarily a bad thing either. It introduces a richness and diversity of thinking that can strengthen the team and create real and complementary synergy between you. You should recognize differences and value them highly. For myself and my co-founder at least, it's where we value each other most.
Why did you decide to start WE.VESTR?
Because I recognized from my experiences at my previous ventures how much time I was spending on reporting to shareholders and fundraising. I’d say it took at least 70% of my time in the first 3 years. That’s 70% of the time of a time-poor founder. So much of my tasks could have been simplified if all the data lived in one place, and if shareholders could have a secure and live view of everything. This is a problem we see with other founders all the time. What we do, could really make a difference for their time management and shareholder management.
How did you discover slicing pie?
Our investor, who was involved with WE.VESTR from the beginning as a Venture Builder, pointed us to this model to fairly distribute equity between founders and early, key employees in the early days.
Why did you decide to include slicing pie as an option to WE.VESTR?
As I began to learn more about it, it was a revelation! We immediately embraced the model. As a third-time founder, I've encountered plenty of problems with inflexible Cap Tables and all the negative consequences it gave in turbulent times. Slicing Pie, I saw very quickly, will solve problems before they became problems. Especially for first-time founders. We were so excited that we decided to develop Slicing Pie as a feature we could offer to pre-investment ventures. It’s a natural extension of our WE.VESTR mission to provide an accessible equity management platform for founders all the way from incorporation to exit.
How can European founders interested in WE.VESTR’s Slicing Pie tool, use it?
Quite simply, go on our WE.VESTR site, book a demo and sign up! It’s as simple as that:) And it’s free as part of our mission to support early-stage founders. We’ve already done an extensive amount of work to set founders up for success when creating their Pie. We’ve developed the feature, shared it with our Slicing Pie ambassadors network and Mike Moyer himself (inventor of the methodology). We are now setting up a European Slicing Pie Alliance with each other as the method is becoming increasingly popular and we will have legal solutions for 15 countries in place. What this will mean is that European founders will have easier access to both the legal and technical side of setting up their Slicing Pie through the joint firepower of our Slicing Pie ambassadors and WE.VESTR. These are exciting times and hopefully the beginning of a co-founding and equity management journey made easier for founders.
What are the main reasons founders should use it?
We see a few clear problems in the European Startup Ecosystem. Inflexible & complex ownership and lack of transparency & fairness. Slicing Pie solves these problems by offering a very flexible and dynamic way to distribute your equity at an early stage until the turmoil ends.
And finally, what is your long-term vision for WE.VESTR?
We want to provide a platform that relieves founders of their equity management needs. I’d love to see founders of today and founders of tomorrow not face some of the challenges I had in my earlier businesses when it came to cap table management, stakeholder management and all the admin that went with it. This is our long-term vision - from incorporation to fundraising to exit, we will create collaboration and financial inclusivity in startups to power up the next-gen global ventures!
Thank you and how to ..
Thank you Floris for sharing your story and your why!
For founders interested to check the cap table management using dynamic equity allocation: