Startup equity for your first ten hires: the 2026 benchmark guide

Equity is the most expensive currency a founder spends and the one most often mispriced. Give too little and the senior candidate you spent six weeks chasing walks. Give too much and you dilute yourself, your co-founders, and your next round out of alignment. Yet the "how much equity should I give?" question still gets answered by folklore, a friend of a friend's cap table, or a decade-old blog post written when interest rates were zero.

This guide is the 2026 refresh. It draws on offer data from more than 400 seed and Series A hires we have seen closed on the Startup Roles platform over the last twelve months, cross-checked against published benchmarks from Index Ventures, Carta, Pave, and Ravio. It is written for founders at pre-seed through Series A hiring employees one through ten.

The one rule that governs every band

Equity is a function of three things and only three things: risk carried, scope owned, and market alternatives. A candidate joining a pre-seed with £250k in the bank carries more risk than the same candidate joining a Series A with 18 months of runway, so they should be paid more equity. A hire who will own an entire function carries more scope than one who will contribute inside a function, so they should be paid more equity. And a candidate with three competing offers has more market alternatives than one who has none, so they will be paid more equity.

Every benchmark table below is a starting anchor. Move up when the candidate carries more of any of the three, and down when they carry less.

Benchmark bands for the first ten hires

The bands assume a UK Ltd or Delaware C-corp with a standard EMI or ISO plan, a four-year vest with a one-year cliff, and a strike price set at the last 409A or HMRC valuation. All numbers are fully diluted percentages at the moment of grant.

Hire	Stage joined	Equity band	Common title
Employee 1 (founding)	Pre-seed	1.00% – 3.00%	Founding engineer, founding designer, founding AE
Employee 2	Pre-seed / seed	0.75% – 2.00%	Second engineer, first PM, first designer
Employee 3	Seed	0.50% – 1.50%	Third engineer, first growth, second AE
Employees 4–6	Seed	0.35% – 1.00%	Senior IC or team lead
Employees 7–10	Seed / Series A	0.20% – 0.75%	Senior IC, mid-level IC, first specialist
Executive hires (any slot)	Seed / Series A	0.75% – 2.50%	Head of Sales, Head of Product, VP Eng

Two calibration notes for reading the table:

• An executive hire — someone who will build and own a function — is priced by role, not by hire number. A Head of Sales who joins as employee eight is still priced against the exec band, not the "employee 7–10" band.
• The lower end of every band assumes the candidate has meaningful competing offers or joins after the round closes. The upper end assumes they are the first person in the door for that scope and are underwriting real risk on runway.

How to size a specific offer in five minutes

Instead of grinding a spreadsheet, use this rubric. Start at the midpoint of the band for the role and then adjust:

1. +25% if pre-seed with under 12 months of runway. They are underwriting binary risk.
2. +15% if they are the first of their function. Head of Sales with no sales org, first designer with no design system.
3. +10% for each competing live offer, up to two.
4. −20% if they join within 60 days of a priced round closing. Risk has just re-priced downward.
5. −10% if the base salary is at or above the top of market. Cash and equity trade off.

If the resulting number is above the top of the band, either accept that you are paying a premium for a specific reason, or step back and ask whether the role scope has quietly grown into an executive slot.

Dilution math you have to internalise

Every founder underestimates dilution in year one. A useful mental model: assume you will grant a cumulative 10% to 15% of the company across your first ten hires before your Series A, and plan for a further 10% to 15% primary dilution at Series A itself. That means a founder who owns 45% post-seed round should model themselves at roughly 32% to 36% post Series A, before any secondary.

If those numbers scare you, the fix is not to under-grant employees. The fix is to raise a slightly larger option pool at the seed round so the dilution is absorbed by the incoming lead rather than by you and the team. Most seed leads will pre-fund a 10% to 12.5% option pool without argument. Ask for it.

Refresh grants are part of the plan

A four-year grant is not a lifetime grant. From year three onwards, budget a refresh grant of roughly 25% to 50% of the original for high performers on standard four-year vesting. Companies that do not budget refreshes end up losing their best early hires exactly when they become most productive.

Vesting terms that are now expected

Four-year vest with a one-year cliff is still the global default. What has moved in the last three years:

• Double trigger acceleration on change of control (acquisition plus involuntary termination or material role change) is now the expected default for founding hires and executive hires in the US and increasingly in the UK.
• Extended post-termination exercise windows — 7 to 10 years instead of the historical 90 days — are still a differentiator but no longer exotic. Stripe, Coinbase, and Ramp all offer them. Candidates who have worked at those companies expect the same.
• Early exercise is common in US C-corps and helps with QSBS timing. It is not available under UK EMI in the same way; do not promise it without checking with your solicitor.
• Back-dated vest start for candidates who worked as advisors first is fair and common. Anchor the vest start to the first day of real engagement, not the offer signature date.

UK EMI vs US ISO vs NSO in one paragraph each

UK EMI (Enterprise Management Incentive): the most tax-efficient option scheme available to UK employees anywhere in the world. Strike must be at market value at grant, capital gains treatment on exercise-plus-sale, and Business Asset Disposal Relief can drop the effective rate to 14% for qualifying holders. If your company qualifies for EMI, use it. Every other UK scheme is a distant second.

US ISO (Incentive Stock Options): qualified for favourable long-term capital gains treatment if the holding period rules are met, subject to AMT on exercise. Best for early employees who can afford to exercise early.

US NSO (Non-Qualified Stock Options): taxed as ordinary income on the exercise spread. Used when a candidate has already hit the $100k ISO limit or is a contractor. Grant is fine, tax treatment is worse.

Do not let scheme complexity delay a grant. A signed offer with clear terms beats a perfect scheme drafted three months late.

How to talk about equity in the offer conversation

Senior candidates are worse at valuing options than they think, and better at spotting evasion than founders think. Two rules make the conversation clean:

1. Always give three numbers, not one. The percentage, the share count, and the implied dollar or pound value at last round valuation. All three together. If you only give the percentage, sophisticated candidates assume you are hiding a low share count. If you only give the number of shares, they cannot benchmark against other offers.
2. Show a downside, a middle, and an upside outcome. "At last round pricing your grant is worth £X. If we execute the plan and grow 3x by Series B, it is worth £3X. If we go to zero, it is worth zero. Are you comfortable with that shape?" Candidates who cannot answer the last question directly are not equity-motivated hires.

The five equity mistakes founders repeat

• Anchoring on a friend's number. Your friend hired a founding engineer at 2.5% and yours has to be the same. Different stage, different runway, different candidate. Use the rubric, not the anecdote.
• Under-granting the third engineer. The third engineer often carries the same scope as the second but is granted half the equity because "the round is closed now". If the scope is the same, the equity should be within 25% of the same.
• Skipping the option pool refresh at Series A. Every Series A term sheet asks for a top-up. Founders who negotiate it away from the lead end up cannibalising their own cap table twelve months later. Fund the pool at the round.
• Silent grants. Employees who do not understand what they own do not value it. Send a one-page grant summary at every review cycle showing shares, current strike, current 409A or HMRC valuation, and vested-to-date. It costs nothing and lifts retention measurably.
• Verbal equity promises before the paperwork. "We'll figure out the exact number after the round" almost always becomes a fight. Put the range in writing before day one.

Frequently asked questions

How much equity should I give a co-founder who joins after incorporation?

Treat late co-founders as a scope-and-risk calculation, not a title one. A late co-founder joining pre-seed with meaningful IP or customer relationships is commonly in the 5% to 20% range with full four-year vest and a cliff, sometimes with a small chunk vested at signing to reflect pre-joining contribution.

Should I give equity to advisors?

Yes, sparingly. The FAST agreement from Founder Institute is still the cleanest template. Standard bands are 0.10% to 0.50% over a two-year vest with no cliff, tied to specific deliverables (intros, hiring help, product review). Do not stack more than four advisors at seed.

What if a candidate asks for cash instead of equity?

Answer directly. Publish a cash-equity trade-off table for the role — for example, "+£10k base for -0.15% equity" — and let them pick. Candidates who trade all their equity for cash are self-selecting out of the founding pool, which is useful data.

Do I need a 409A / HMRC valuation before granting?

Yes. In the UK, an EMI valuation agreement from HMRC is standard and typically takes two to four weeks. In the US, a 409A from Carta, Pulley, or a specialist firm is table stakes. Do not grant options at a made-up strike price — it creates tax liability for the employee.

Is 0.1% still a "founding" number in 2026?

No. 0.1% for a first-employee grant is a senior IC number at a post Series B company, not a founding engineer number at pre-seed. If that is genuinely what you can afford, name the role honestly as an early IC hire and price the search against that pool.

For the full sourcing and JD context that surrounds a strong equity offer, read our founding engineer playbook and the 2026 JD framework. If you want live comp benchmarks by role and stage, our salary and equity benchmark tool is free.