throwaway-acct

A perfectly valid, if somewhat ominous, point...

> You call it your product? Did you meet with the customers? Did you build it in a complete vacuum? Is it completely unrelated to anything anyone else in the company was building? Did you pay your own salary?

I don't wish to be argumentative about this, but the answer to all of those questions except 'did you pay your own salary' is yes. I know quite well it's not my product in the sense that I own it; my legal ownership is that of my equity stake and no more. But in the "I made this" sense, yeah, I do feel just fine calling it my product.

> don't try to ruin it for everyone as your negotiating tactic. Why would you want to do that?

I don't want to do that. That's exactly why I'm asking this question. I am very much aware that if I don't like the deal and walk, I am free to do that, and I am equally aware that if I do that everyone loses: me, the founders, the angels, and the other employees.

I've been in successful startups and I've been in failed startups. Back-up plans are not a concern, I could walk and be just fine, personally. But I've never been in an acquisition before, and never in such a prominent role -- so I'm trying to get a sense of what expectations are reasonable and what aren't so that I don't accidentally screw everyone over by expecting too much, or get taken advantage of / end up in an unhappy situation by expecting too little.

I'm not sure of the exact number but it's somewhere between five and ten percent of the company, in incentive options (I'm not the first employee but a large stake was a condition of my agreeing to join the company in the first place, and they've added to that in two later rounds for various reasons.)

> I have to point out though your assumption is that the product is the key asset a buyer will be interested in. Is this the intention of the founders as well? Because counter-intuitive as it may seem, the new company might be more interested in the people who sold this product than the thing itself

This is a really good point, which I'm having a difficult time answering without going into more detail than I'm comfortable revealing even with a throwaway account.... Let me put it this way: I believe the tech staff, while skilled and a great team, is probably too small to be worth acquiring for its own sake -- (But maybe I'm wrong about that? It's 3 guys, one of whom is a long-term contractor rather than FTE) -- and the non-tech staff (including the co-founders) is, um, I'll just say not a likely acquisition target IMO.

I am a key employee; as I said I invented and built the product, and I'll be the one demoing it to potential acquirers.