This computes in your browser and posts nothing. There is no fetch in the page. You are typing your own cap table, and it stays on your machine. There is also no valuation here, for the same reason our candidate-side equity check refuses one: nobody honestly holds that number, and it would be incoherent to deny it to your candidate and hand it to you.
Where you are now
Your own holding, before this round.
The round
The pool
Expressed the way a term sheet expresses it: a percentage of the company after the round.
A grant, in the pool
Optional. Founders think in share counts and candidates read percentages; this converts.
Later rounds
A pool is not diluted once. Whatever is left in it gets diluted again by every round after this one.
The pool costs you
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points of the company
Who funds this
Your stake, step by step
The pool is shown as its own line, not folded into the round.
What the pool buys
Copied. It is plain text, so it will paste anywhere.
Sizing a pool is downstream of knowing what the roles actually pay. The salary checker gives you the base, and the cost to hire gives you the loaded figure.
Talk to us about the hiring plan →A term sheet that says "a 10 per cent option pool" almost always means the pool is created before the money lands. The arithmetic that follows is not intuitive, so it is worth doing slowly.
Take a 3 million dollar raise at a 12 million pre-money, so 15 million post. The investor ends up with 20 per cent. The pool is 10 per cent of the company after the round. Somebody has to give up those ten points, and pre-money it is not the investor: their 20 per cent is 20 per cent whatever happens. So the ten points come entirely out of the 80 per cent held by everyone who was already there. They keep seventy eightieths of themselves.
A founder on 40 per cent lands on 28 per cent. Had the same pool been carved out post-money, with everyone diluted alike, they would have landed on 28.8. That is 0.8 points of the company, and it scales: on an 80 per cent stake it is 1.6 points, and with a 15 per cent pool it is 2.4.
Now compare that with the number everyone actually argues about. Pushing the pre-money from 12 million to 13 is worth about half a point to the same founder. The term nobody negotiates is worth more than the one everybody does, and it is worth more precisely because it is presented as an administrative detail rather than as price.
None of which makes a pre-money pool unreasonable. It is the market standard and an investor asking for one is not doing anything sharp. It is worth knowing what you are agreeing to, and worth sizing the pool to a real hiring plan rather than accepting a round number, because every point you put in it is a point you are funding by yourself.
The pool exists to pay for specific hires. Ten per cent is a convention, not a calculation. Work out who you are hiring before the next raise, what each of those people would expect as a percentage, add the refreshers for the people already there, and see what that comes to. If it comes to six, ask for six.
The tool above will tell you how many grants of a given size the pool actually holds, which is the sanity check that rarely gets run. A ten per cent pool sounds like a lot until you notice that four senior engineers at one per cent each and a head of engineering at two is already six of it, and you have not hired anyone junior yet.
Then remember that whatever is left is diluted again at the next round. A pool sized for two years of hiring, in a company that raises twice inside those two years, is worth a good deal less by the time the last of it is granted. The shortfall lands on the people hired last, which is a real and avoidable source of internal unfairness.
A pool created before an investment lands, so it dilutes only the shareholders who were already there. The incoming investor's percentage is calculated after the pool exists and is unaffected by it. This is the standard term sheet ask. Post-money, the pool is created after the investment and everyone is diluted pro rata, including the new investor.
Big enough for the hires you will actually make before the next raise, and no bigger, because every point in it is funded by you if it is carved out pre-money. Ten to fifteen per cent is the convention at seed in Australia, but the convention is not a calculation. List the roles, put a percentage against each, add refreshers for existing staff, and use the total. If that number is smaller than the ask, it is a reasonable thing to negotiate.
Not if it is carved out pre-money, which is the usual arrangement. The investor's stake is worked out after the pool is in place, so the whole cost falls on existing shareholders. On a 3 million raise at 12 million pre with a 10 per cent pool, that is worth 0.8 percentage points to a founder holding 40 per cent, and 1.6 points to one holding 80.
It depends entirely on stage and seniority, and a number quoted without the stage attached is not useful. What matters more is that you and the candidate are talking in the same units. Founders think in share counts and candidates read percentages, and an offer stating a number of options without the fully diluted share count cannot be evaluated at all. Give the percentage in writing; a candidate who has to ask for it has already learned something about you.
Because that answer needs an exit price and a probability, and nobody holds either honestly for a specific private company. Our candidate-side equity check refuses to produce that number for the same reason, and it would be incoherent to deny it to your candidate and then hand it to you. What is determinate is who gets diluted and by how much, so that is what this computes.