Raise Millions by Hustle Fund VC Page 32 Here’s the problem: joining a team with a high valuation means that the price for the stock options is also high. Employees will realize that they can’t actually afford to buy their options. Couple that with the low salary and long hours, and they won’t be incentivized at work. This can lead to ugly company culture and low productivity. The savvy people who are smart enough to ask about valuation and exercise price will realize that the opportunity isn’t as good as they thought. So if you have too high of a valuation, hiring those people will become very difficult. How cap tables, shares, and vesting all work together A cap table is a spreadsheet that lists all the people and entities that own pieces of your company. In the beginning, there may just be two lines for you and your co-founder. It’ll list your names and how many shares you both own. The shares in themselves are meaningless. But they are meaningful when you see how much of the pie they represent as a percentage. Every time you give a slice of pizza to an investor or a key employee, they will be granted shares and have some equity in the pie. Their hustlefund.vc / @hustlefundvc