toolkit / equity grant calculator
How much equity for this hire?
What founders typically grant to an advisor, one of the first ten employees or a contractor, from Carta's grant data and the Founder Institute's advisor template. With the instrument and vesting that usually go with it.
carta and founder institute fast, dataset v2026.10.3, reviewed 2026-10-19 · not legal or financial advice
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How large should your Employee Incentive Plan be?
List the grants you plan over the next year or two. The plan is sized from the same market data, with a buffer, and compared with the pools of companies at your stage.
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the guide
Advisor equity: what advisors ask for, what founders grant
Advisors often open with "one percent". The market does not. Among 1,019 US advisors who received equity from pre-seed startups in 2025, the median grant was 0.24% of the fully diluted shares. 64% received under 0.3%; 9.2% received 1% or more. One percent for advice is the exception, and it tends to go to an advisor who does hands-on work or opens a market.
The grant falls as the company matures: Carta's advisor medians run from 0.24% at pre-seed to 0.1% to 0.12% at seed and 0.05% to 0.07% at Series A (the seed and Series A figures are 2023 to 2024 data). The later the company, the more each point is worth, and the less of it an advisor receives.
source: Carta, 2026-01-29
The FAST grid
The Founder Institute's Founder / Advisor Standard Template (FAST) is the structured alternative to a negotiation from scratch. It puts the grant on two axes: the company's stage and the advisor's level of involvement. Standard is quarterly strategy meetings, 5 to 10 hours a month, and promotion and introductions through the advisor's network; Strategic adds plus monthly strategy meetings, recruiting help and at least one meeting with a potential customer, investor or partner; Expert adds plus hands-on work on at least one strategic project, bi-monthly meetings and marquee customer and partner introductions. The grid below is version 3.0, published in July 2026, which renamed the stages after the funding rounds and moved every cell: the earliest cells rose, the later ones fell, and the time commitment is now the same at every level.
| stage | standard | strategic | expert |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pre-seedOne to three cofounders, little or no revenue, an MVP or mockups, friends and family money at most. | 0.5% | 0.75% | 1% |
| SeedFull-time founders, initial revenue, a product built and validated by paying customers. | 0.25% | 0.5% | 0.75% |
| Series AFull-time founders with employees, significant revenue and traction, a commercially scalable product. | 0.1% | 0.25% | 0.5% |
FAST's cells sit above Carta's medians at every stage: a Strategic advisor of a pre-seed company is at 0.75% on the template against a 0.24% pre-seed market median. That gap is the negotiation. The calculator shows both numbers side by side and never suggests above the Expert cell for the stage.
FAST's default terms are the norm for advisors: 24-month vesting, monthly, with a 3-month cliff; single-trigger acceleration if the company is sold; non-qualified stock options priced at fair market value on the effective date; 5 to 10 hours a month whatever the level; and a commitment from the company to deliver the definitive grant documents within 90 days of signing. That last line matters more than it looks. An advisor agreement that promises a grant is not a grant; until the board approves it and the paperwork is signed, the advisor holds a promise, and the company carries an unauthorised-grant finding in its next diligence.
source: Founder Institute, 2026-07
Early employee equity, by hire order
The first hires take the most risk and receive the most equity, and the curve is steep. Carta's data on 4,473 engineers who were among the first five hires at US tech startups (grants made Q1 2024 to Q3 2025) puts the first engineer at 1.54% at the median, inside a wide range of 0.61% to 4.13%. By the fifth engineering hire the median is 0.48%.
| engineering hire | 25th pct | median | 75th pct |
|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | 0.61% | 1.54% | 4.13% |
| #2 | 0.43% | 1% | 2% |
| #3 | 0.28% | 0.61% | 1.45% |
| #4 | 0.25% | 0.5% | 1% |
| #5 | 0.24% | 0.48% | 0.98% |
source: Carta, 2025-12-10
Across all functions the medians are lower, because business roles sit mid to low in the range while engineering sits at the top: 1.49% for hire #1, 0.85% for hire #2, 0.5% for hire #3, 0.44% for hire #4, 0.34% for hire #5, then about 0.30, declining with each hire for hires 6 to 10. The first five together take 3.62% at the median, the first ten under 5%. Carta also notes that solo founders grant more, and that the first hire in biotech (2.01%) receives more than in SaaS (1.45%).
source: Carta, 2024-11
Equity packages have been rising: Carta's State of Startup Compensation puts the median equity package up 13% since January 2024 while salaries rose 5.1%, and AI engineering packages up 31% over eighteen months. The median seed company employs 5 people besides its founders, so the first-ten-hires table is, for most seed companies, the whole team.
source: Carta, 2026-05-06
Equity only, and cash below market
Carta's employee data describes salaried hires. A person who joins for equity only, or well below a market salary, is outside that sample and can defensibly land above the median for the same seat. The calculator moves the range toward the 75th percentile in that case and says so; it does not invent a figure the data does not hold.
RSA or ISO, and the two clocks
Very early, when the fair market value of common stock is close to nothing, the first one or two hires often receive restricted stock awards (RSAs) rather than options: they buy the shares at that low price and file an 83(b) election within 30 days so that the later growth is capital gain, not ordinary income. That deadline cannot be extended. Once the company has value, employees receive incentive stock options (ISOs), which only W-2 employees can hold. An option's exercise price must be at or above fair market value on the grant date, so the company needs a current 409A valuation before it grants; one is generally good for 12 months or until a material event. ISOs that first become exercisable in one year are limited to $100,000 of grant-date value; the excess is treated as non-qualified options (NSOs).
Contractors, with or without equity
A consultant or contractor is not an employee, so they cannot receive ISOs: NSOs or restricted stock, with the same 83(b) clock on restricted stock. When part of the fee is paid in equity, the usual arithmetic is the value of the services divided by the 409A fair market value per share, with a premium the founder sets for the risk the contractor takes by deferring cash. Vesting follows the engagement, by month or by milestone. And equity does not transfer the work product: the consulting agreement needs an IP assignment, or the company pays twice for the same code.
Sizing the Employee Incentive Plan
Investors will ask for a pool before the round closes, and the easy answer, "fifteen or twenty percent", is usually too large. Carta's own guidance, from 4,736 employee option pools at US software startups that raised in 2025: Start the pool at 8 to 10% and expand it at each raise. At seed the pool after the round is 9.3% at the 25th percentile, 12% at the median and 16.4% at the 75th; it grows a few points at each later stage.
| stage | 25th pct | median | 75th pct |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seed | 9.3% | 12% | 16.4% |
| Series A | 11% | 14.5% | 19.2% |
| Series B | 12.5% | 16.2% | 20% |
| Series C | 14% | 18% | 22.2% |
| Series D | 15.2% | 18.2% | 22.4% |
| Series E | 15.1% | 20.2% | 26.2% |
source: Carta, 2026-01-20
Why the size matters: a pool created before a priced round is sized into the pre-money valuation, so its dilution lands on the existing holders, not on the new investor. That is the option pool shuffle. A pool large enough for the next eighteen months of hiring, with a little room, costs the founders less than a pool sized for a plan that does not exist yet, and it can be topped up at each priced round, which is what the market does: the employee pool reads 12.1% of the company right after a seed round and 18.2% after a Series D, while founders go from 54.8% to 10.4%.
| after the | founders | pool | this round | earlier investors |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Seed | 54.8% | 12.1% | 20.6% | 12.5% |
| Series A | 35.6% | 14.4% | 20% | 30% |
| Series B | 21.8% | 15.6% | 16.5% | 46.1% |
| Series C | 16.1% | 16.8% | 12.6% | 54.5% |
| Series D | 10.4% | 18.2% | 10.2% | 61.2% |
source: Carta, 2026-03-09
The Size your EIP module above runs this on your hiring plan, and the SAFE Calculator shows the pool top-up inside a conversion, on your own numbers.
Why this matters at the exit
Most startups that get acquired never raised much. Of 3,903 US startups acquired from 2024 to the first quarter of 2026, 80% had raised under $50M in total; in 2025, 46% had raised under $10M. At those sizes there is no later round to grow into, and the percentage an advisor or an early employee negotiated is close to the percentage they cash. Which is why a quarter of a point, granted to the right person on the right terms, is worth getting right, and why a pool sized for a hiring plan that never happens is dilution for nothing.
source: Carta, 2026-04-27
For informational purposes only. Not legal, tax or financial advice. Benchmarks describe what the market did. They are not advice on a grant. Pages say 'founders typically' and 'the market median is', never 'you should grant'. The dataset behind this page is public at /equity-benchmarks.json (version 2026.10.3, reviewed 2026-10-19); BVJ Consulting has no affiliation with Carta or the Founder Institute. Use of this calculator is subject to our terms of service.