As Niki started her software business, she raised two rounds of financing, $500,000 from angel investors in exchange for 30 percent of the company’s equity, and later, a Series A round from a venture investor of $8 million in exchange for an additional 40 percent of equity. These modest investments and the 15 percent of shares in the company she put in the employee option pool and distributed to team members meant that, upon sale, she owned 15 percent of the company she started. That’s slightly higher than the median startup founder, who owns only about 11 percent of his or her company’s
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