Intermediate team
ESOP — Employee Stock Option Pool
An ESOP is a reserved pool of equity set aside to grant stock options to employees, advisors, and early hires as non-cash compensation.
#founders
20 results
Glossary
Intermediate team
Good Leaver / Bad Leaver
Good leaver and bad leaver clauses define how a departing employee's unvested and vested equity is treated based on why they left.
Beginner equity
Vesting Cliff
A vesting cliff is a threshold period — typically one year — before which no equity vests, protecting companies from early team departures.
Beginner equity
Vesting
Equity vesting is how founders and employees earn their shares over time, ensuring long-term alignment between the team and the company's success.
Guides
Intermediate team
10 min How to Build a Compensation Framework
Learn how to create a fair, transparent compensation framework that helps you hire, retain, and build trust across your startup team.
Beginner finance
8 min How to Budget as an Early-Stage Startup
Learn how to build a practical startup budget when resources are scarce, priorities shift monthly, and the business model is still evolving.
Intermediate team
14 min How to Make Your First 5 Hires
A practical guide to hiring your first employees — how to define the roles, run the process, set comp, and avoid the mistakes that derail early teams.
Beginner finance
9 min How to Read Your Startup's P&L
A founder's guide to understanding the profit and loss statement — what each line means, how to interpret it, and what to fix.
Beginner team
8 min How to Run Effective 1:1s
A step-by-step guide to running 1:1 meetings that build trust, surface blockers, and help you develop every person on your team.
Concepts
Beginner team
Radical Candor
Radical Candor is Kim Scott's management framework that combines caring personally for people with challenging them directly and honestly.
Intermediate team
Situational Leadership
Situational Leadership teaches managers to adapt their style — directing, coaching, supporting, or delegating — based on each employee's needs.
Articles
Beginner founders
11 min The Founder Mental Health Crisis
50% of founders experience mental health conditions. Here's why founder burnout is structural — and the specific tools that actually help.
Intermediate team
9 min Equity for Early Employees Explained
How to structure stock option grants for early hires — covering grant sizes, vesting, strike prices, and how to communicate equity fairly.
Beginner finance
7 min Revenue, Profit, and Cash Flow Explained
Most founders confuse revenue, profit, and cash flow. Here is what each means, why they differ, and why getting this wrong can kill your startup.
Beginner team
12 min How Startup Culture Gets Built
Culture isn't ping-pong tables — it's what behaviors get rewarded and punished. Here's how founders actually build it.
Beginner equity
13 min Startup Equity Explained
Equity is ownership — but most founders and employees can't do the math. Here's exactly how startup equity works, dilutes, and pays out.
Intermediate fundraising
12 min Startup Exit Strategies Explained
A complete guide to startup exit strategies — how acquisitions, IPOs, and secondaries work, and what founders need to know before planning an exit.
Beginner strategy
10 min The Stages of Startup Growth
The five stages of startup growth explained — from ideation to scale — with key milestones, exit criteria, and common failure modes for each phase.
Beginner operations
14 min Startup Legal Basics for Founders
Four legal decisions — incorporation, co-founder equity, IP assignment, and the 83(b) election — can make or break your company. Get them right early.
Beginner strategy
11 min Why Most Startups Fail and What to Do
90% of startups fail. The data reveals it's rarely bad luck — it's specific, avoidable mistakes most founders repeat.