When it comes to equity refresh grants, are Founder CEOs getting more than their Founder CTO counterparts? Or are they treated as one class and generally receiving equal treatment?

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Let’s think about this in two ways:

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1. Equity Participation – what percentage of eligible Founder CEOs receive a refresh grant? What about Founder CTOs?

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2. Equity Refresh Grant Size – for the lucky Founder CEOs and CTOs who receive a refresh grant, how do grant size benchmarks compare?

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Let’s dive in.

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Equity Participation Findings

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Eligible Founder CEOs tend to receive refresh grants more frequently than eligible Founder CTOs, though the difference isn’t dramatic. It seems that in most cases, if the Founder CEO gets a refresh, the Founder CTO does too assuming both are still around.

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The later stage the company, the higher percentage of eligible Founders who receive a refresh grant–both for Founder CEOs and Founder CTOs.

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Eligible in the above chart means that the Founder has fully vested their initial grant and is still an active employee of the company they founded. Also, this study only looks at private companies. 

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Equity Refresh Grant Size Findings

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Generally, Founder CEOs tend to get larger refresh grants than Founder CTOs.

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The median refresh grant for a Founder CEO is 2.0% of the company on a fully diluted basis at the time of grant. For a Founder CTO, the median is 0.8% though the graph has a right skew.

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Ultimately, there is no one-size-fits-all answer—it all comes down to company dynamics.

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