Praise for Slicing Pie

Thank you for writing the book! Seriously has changed my life for the better. Having worked with Start-ups for a few years now I feel like a giant elephant just got off my back.

Alesha Bishop, www.AleshaBishop.com

 

Thanks for this eye-opening and understandable book for enthousiastic starters. It’s wonderful.

Felice van der Sandt, Netherlands

 

Slicing Pie is brilliant! You’ve cracked the code on a big problem for startups. I read this just in time!

Dave Linhardt, Founder & CEO, LegitLead

 

This book was a pleasure to read. It didn’t waste any time and got straight to point. The Grunt Fund is a great way to build a team in the gap phase of a startup, allowing for flexibility, while being equitable to everyone contributing resources. This book is a must read for anyone in my position building a team to turn an idea into reality.

Barnabe Geis, Communications Lead, Centre for Social Innovation

 

Really interesting read, which I luckily discovered at just the right time. We’re currently discussing equity splits and have covered a whole range of convoluted or inequitable methods. After reading this it seems like we have our solution!

Ben Day 

 We had a nightmare that involved a shareholder who held a sizable portion of the company, and there was no buyout clause on his shares.  We ended up paying way more than we should have to get his shares back.

 Jay Margalus, Lunar Giant 

I’m just begining with my new startup, and this Grunt Fund method is just what I needed! I’ve quit another startup where I was collaborating because the method for slicing the pie was not fair. So I felt the need for this, and found your book. Perfect!

 Rui Gil, Blog 

Your book is a great read and VERY inspiring! it has given me many new ideas on how we can collaborate and pool our resources to help each other. My goal is that all our consultants should be happy and motivated to do great work at our clients and be able to use portions of their time to develop their own ideas and with your pooling ideas, the grunt fund and other equity plans I believe that we could do great!

Johan Bartholf,  ONETED

One of the best books I’ve read at making sense of the awkward and confusing process of dividing up equity in a new startup. Slicing Pie clearly demonstrates how poor of a decision it is to make the classic mistake of dividing things evenly.

Seth Kravitz, Co-founder, Technori.com 

I have advised dozens of startups and founded a few myself. Early distribution of equity is always a touchy subject and rarely done correctly. Slicing Pie proposes an equity distribution philosophy that should improve the likelihood of success for any company by fairly compensating all founders and early contributors. Whether a company adopts the philosophy in full or chooses select elements to incorporate into its equity distribution practices, Slicing Pie provides substantial insight for all company founders.

Jacob Babcock, Esq.

I found Slicing Pie after reading an introduction about the book and realizing that the partnership dispute scenario that I just went through is unfortunately all too common. Like many, my business partner and I split equity too early during the formation of the company. Things were great until my partner abandoned the company without cause and this left us in an unfortunate battle for how to move forward. I wanted to buy him out, but he demanded a ridiculous amount of money even though the business had almost no revenue yet. This put an immense amount of stress on the business.

I read the entire book in one sitting. Everything resonated with me as I reminisced over the past 7 businesses that I’ve been part of over the years. Even though the most recent business is the only one where I had a serious partnership dispute, all the past partnerships could have been handled better and more fairly if we had the kind of moral and pie slicing agreements that this book discusses.

I really like the fact that the book distills the most common partnership scenarios down to basic formulas for determining everyone’s slice of the pie. I see myself using Slicing Pie as the moral operating agreement for future ventures. It really covers a lot of scenarios in a much more simple way than any other business structure advice that I’ve heard before.

Ryan McGeary Founder, BusyConf.com

I have been desperately looking for resources like the ones in your book, Slicing Pie. I’m currently the sole founder of a start-up and I haven’t been lucky enough to have had an old friend or co-worker who was interested in the crazy start-up world. So I’m now in a position where I need to go out and find someone. I have some ideas about where to go and find a partner, but one of the main reasons I’ve hesitated has been that I didn’t know how to engage them and not seem like a jerk.

If I really take on a partner, I want to be fair with them, and we don’t yet have the revenue to pay them fairly. I’ve learned a bit about how to offer equity with a 1 year cliff and 5 year vesting, but I have never discovered a framework for how much equity to give them. After voraciously reading your book I now understand a really fair framework for creating a realistic valuation of my company, and a really fair way to offer equity. Its brilliant because this framework evolves as a start-up evolves, making it really fair, and clear. And since it ties equity to actual contributions over time, it makes it easy to evaluate “how someone is doing” and provides a clear way to communicate it. This is an essential read for any early start-up.

Marc Teer, Founder, Black Spectacles

So how do you start a company with no money, and motivated associates who will attempt to bring the idea to life? Mike Moyer has traveled this path many a time, both successfully and unsuccessfully. He has developed a model that is both fair and workable, and it is called “Slicing the Pie.” In lucid prose, he will guide you on how to bring people along for the journey, how to treat them fairly, and how to handle both success and failure. An excellent guide for anyone desiring to start a company.

Verinder Syal Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship, Northwestern University

I really enjoyed reading Slicing Pie and felt that it gave me a lot of valuable insight into start-ups and how to handle making decisions in the early stages of building a business. As your book suggests, there really aren’t many (or any…) books out there right now about that awkward “gap” period between thinking of a great idea and actually becoming a business. Instead most start-up or entrepreneurship books give more insight into the legal aspects of how to build a business or how to build your brand, market your product, sell your product, etc. Yet, I loved that your book approached entrepreneurship from a perspective that not only addressed the logistics of building a business, but also the more personal aspects of business, which you can rarely find guidance for. I think that every person who has ever had an idea that they wanted to grow into a business comes across the questions you address in the book and it is truly a great guide for young entrepreneurs!

I also really love that this book is short, to the point and easy to read. Many people who have great ideas and want to start a business don’t have a background in economics, and this book is a simple step by step guide to building equity in a company. It isn’t overwhelming with useless information. Instead, it seeks out the most important aspects in building equity. The pie metaphor is also a great an easy way to relate the idea of building a company in a simple way. For people who become easily overwhelmed by all of the different aspects of building a business, I think the pie metaphor really helps to simplify things! I also really enjoyed your personal anecdotes in the book. It made me feel like I’m not just taking advice from an anonymous source, but instead it gave you a lot credibility and made me think, “hey, this person has a lot of experience and really knows what they are talking about.”

I think that the book gives a really novel look at start-ups and I think it’ll really appeal to a huge market!

Meredith Hamilton, Student, Northwestern University

Just starting company where by one con-founder can only contribute part-time, as continuos income is need for his family we were wondering how to divide and split ownership once we become successful down the road. This book gave us the answer… the grunt fund.

The book is well written, compared to other business books actually fun to read! The book gives a very good explanation on what the risks are of early equity splits and the often used standard 50 / 50… it provides a module to value the different aspects of value, from time, to cash, to office space etc. It really is a clever way of working with a number of people towards a new start up and allowing everyone to get a fair share, without the need of contracts and lawyers to begin with. The examples provided help to create a similar process for my own start up.

I will be using the grunt fund!! Great BOOK!

Jos Schapp, Partner, stayNtouch

I had every intention of going to bed at a reasonable hour last night, but stayed up until 2AM reading a good portion of Slicing Pie. It couldn’t have come at a better time, as I finally acknowledge that I can’t get my company across the gap alone…and already learned the hard way how NOT to bring people on board.

In my first venture we split the pie too early and, after I put in much more than my slice accounted for, tried to say “shouldn’t we redistribute the equity according to what people have put into the company?” That conversation went poorly for two reasons: i) it had been suggested too late (once the new worked mostly in my favor), and ii) even if everyone agreed, we had only a vague idea of how to structure dynamic equity.

With Slicing Pie, I won’t mess things up this time.

Further, I love that the book is so well balanced: seriousness and levity, big picture and details, etc. I am also amazed that Mike Moyer offers electronic tools, a refund guarantee, and “upgrades” – and is humble (and wise) enough to solicit and incorporate feedback. Every startup needs this book. This means you.

Please omit my last name for the time being (this is a startup that I don’t need my full-time employer to know about just yet)!

Alex