Equity · Lesson 1 · 12 min
Your first cap table
Who owns what, why it matters more than almost anything else you decide early, and how to build a clean founder cap table you will not regret at your first round.
What a cap table actually is
A cap table — short for capitalisation table — is just the list of everyone who owns a piece of your company, and how big that piece is. Shares are the unit you slice ownership into, and the absolute number doesn’t matter: issue a thousand shares or ten million, what matters is the percentages.
Why the founder split is the one you can’t undo
Most founder fall-outs trace back to an equity split decided in an afternoon, on a feeling, before anyone had done the work. Equal splits often are the right answer — but “fair” should survive one question: who is taking the real risk, full-time, for the next four years? Whatever you decide, decide it on purpose, write it down, and pair it with vesting (the next lesson) so the split tracks work actually done.
The two numbers to watch early
Founder ownership — the fraction you and your cofounders hold together. It only goes down from here, so start clean.
The ESOP pool — shares set aside for employees. Investors usually ask you to create or top it up before they invest, which means it dilutes you, not them. Knowing that in advance is half the negotiation.
Now build yours
Put your real founders in. Watch the ownership move as you change the shares. When it looks right, keep it — it becomes your startup’s actual cap table, in your own workspace.
Build your cap table
1,000,000 shares| Holder | Type | Shares | Ownership | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
60.0% | ||||
40.0% |
Founders keep 100.0%
What just happened
That wasn’t a worksheet. The cap table you built is a real document in your 0to1 workspace — the same place you’ll model your first round, add an ESOP pool, and check a term sheet against reality. It’s yours; do with it what you like.