hajiss

I know that the vesting period is the period of time before shares are owned unconditionally by an employee in an employee stock option plan. If his/her employment terminates before this period ends, the company can buy back the shares at their original price.

But if you award a co-founder x # of shares to be vested at x period of time during the critical phase of the start up life-cycle, how do you determine when to vest? 1, 2, 3 years... Assuming that the whole purpose of the process is to make sure that this person sticks around and earn their equity share. What if the person stop participating before the vesting period, do you have to buy back his/her shares or they just lost it?

After paying for the building of an application with a solid business model, I realized that i need a technical co-founder going forward--The application needs some polishing and fine tuning.

I have approach a developer who is just finishing graduate school. I told him about my intention of having an arrangement whereas i can pay some cash but also have a potential developer also work for some equity. He has told me how much it would cost to do the fix the bugs and little chinks in the application. He's also indicated that he's open to other offers. How much equity should i offer at this point? Should the equity share be contingent upon performance? Finding a co-founder is really tough... I want to do the right thing.