The story of slicing pie in Switzerland

Once upon a time.. In the dark times of autumn in the land of the best chocolates, beautiful alpine sceneries and turquoise lakes … there was a rainy evening and a group of driven entrepreneurs, wannapreneurs and blow ins, spending the evening listening to my presentation on what is important at the start. For me it was in the early days, testing the concepts, building my know-how, experience and expertise. During the brake and in the old times of enjoying the smokers community - two cofounders asked me if I know the slicing pie concept. A bit embarrassed, I admitted that I had never heard of it before. They recommended me to check it as a very interesting alternative to traditional equity splits and let them know if I thought it could be implemented in Switzerland. These founders were at the beginning of they journey, liked the concept and wanted to use it for their startup. 

Few hours later I was ordering the slicing pie handbook and deep into Mike Moyer’s blog and founder stories. Few weeks later, after getting familiar with the concept and available materials, I was convinced it is the next best thing after sliced bread. 

I thought I would like to find out if it could be used in Switzerland (and Europe in general). At that time there were some basic US law based templates available, but having been based on common law and not taking into account any of the regulatory legal and tax complexities in Europe - they were of a fairly limited value to founders here. Even though at that time I had not really an idea how to go about it, I decided that the best thing is to start (and figure out the how later). Not the first (and probably not last) time in my life, I followed this approach. It might be not the most pragmatic or ROI driven one, but it certainly leads to interesting places. 

What followed was a call with Mike Moyer, author and inventor of the slicing pie method. I offered that given my solid legal and tax European network I would like to develop and coordinate the European templates for founders to be able to use slicing pie here. Mike has been very supportive of the idea - as for him what matters is that as many founders as possible can have the option to use slicing pie. So we got started. Over the next months, I talked to many, many, many lawyers and tax advisors, asking what they thought about the method and whether they think it could be adapted for local use. 

I got many reactions ranging from total disbelief (how could she even think that possible) to paternalising empathy (how do we tell her this is never going to work..) to interesting concept - let me think about it… - thank you Eric Kuenzi, at the time next to his own law firm also active in few own startups and as a legal desk expert of Impact Hub Zurich. And that is how we started. With Eric we developed the first template - focusing on before incorporation - lower hanging fruit. After we got on board Dominik Loew who has been instrumental in brainstorming the possible tax treatment and limitations for after incorporation. 

During my workshops and work with cofounders i was testing the method, promoting it and getting feedback of many enthusiastic - and many sceptical - founders. At this time, I was also very grateful to get feedback and opinions of other legal experts as Karim Maizar who is the head of the startup desk of Kellerhals Carrard, Paul Peyrot, Partner at Peyrot Schlegel Györffy Rechtsanwälte and others. 

Few months ago - thanks to the initiative and support of Ralf Kubli, director of CV VC, the startups residing in canton Zurich got a green light - under defined conditions - to be able to use the slicing pie also after incorporation. The next step is to obtain a confirmatory positive tax ruling for the first canton Zurich based startup who will decide to use the dynamic equity split based on the slicing pie method after incorporation. 

With a thank you to all the named and unnamed contributors, I firmly believe that having this option is a great development for startups and future contribution to more stable cofounding team and businesses.