Uganda’s first first start-up grind
Slicing the pie, more so when every one wants a piece and you are not King Solomon will definitely not come easy. So how do you go about slicing this pie? This was the question at the first start-up grind event that was hosted in Kampala to mark the annual Google for entrepreneurs week running from October 20th to 25th.
Of-course we aren’t talking just about pie, the “pie” analogy as described by, entrepreneur and author; Mike Moyer, in his book, “Slicing Pie: Funding a business with no funds.” Is about the challenges met by entrepreneurs as they split equity at the inception of the business.
A chat with Mike Moyer (Video)
Mike Moyer propounds the Grunt Fund approach to fairly split equity. It provides a method for the daunting task of allocating equity, herein, referred to as pie. He emphasizes that equity should be allocated according to the contribution made by each individual. It further attempts to give criteria on how to weigh certain types of contribution, such as, cash contributions (this includes equipment that is converted to their market cash value), are given twice as much slices as other contributions such as time and developer sweat.
The Grunt fund approach, heralds three important concepts when managing a start-up, first that hard work should be rewarded, secondly, results from this work should be retaliated with extra slices of pie and finally, that fair is equal to fun. A fair approach, therefore, when splitting equity is how you keep fun in the start-up.
The event culminated with a hands on lab that simulated start-up teams, going through the equity distribution using the Grunt Fund methodology. The Grunt fund provides a practical approach for any founder, planning to use equity to get his start-up on the ground running, or, as the subtitle of Moyer’s book puts it: Funding a business with no Funds!
Want to learn more?, get a free copy of the book from here. We think you should!
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