I'm a solo, technical founder and have recently released my app to the Apple app store. I've gotten good traction, and I'm trying to grow my startup to be bigger but I'm running up against the limit of what I can get done by myself in my spare time after work. Because of that, I've decided to go after a co-founder.
I recently interviewed a former coworker to be my co-founder/CTO which would free me up to focus on scaling up other aspects of the business, but I'm not sure how to go about splitting equity.
Now for addtional context, I've been working on the startup on and off for about four years, and have spent the majority of that time releasing an MVP, getting user feedback, marketing the app, building a following, and releasing the "alpha" version. I had asked this former coworker to join me at a previous point when I had first started out building the business but he was unavailable due to other commitments.
My potential co-founder is currently asking for a 50/50 split on account of all the technical value he'll be producing for the startup (he's a great software developer), but given the sweat equity and personal capital that I have put in to the startup (roughly $3,000), I'd prefer to have a controlling share of the equity, something like 60/40. Is this reasonable of me? Or is it egotistical? Is it generally best to ensure all co-founders share the same amount of equity or is it fine to have different amounts based on contributions like sweat equity, capital investment, etc?
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