Should employee equity be granted broadly across the company or reserved for a small top tier?

Miki Kuusi · Nov 28, 2022

The easiest way to make someone act like an owner is to make them a literal owner, so every employee should be a shareholder or option holder

If you don't incentivize people to be there for the company, you can't expect them to be there for the company — culture starts with compensation

Scope: compensation is the starting point; culture and hiring follow

16:34 20VC: Wolt CEO, Miki Kuusi on Leadership Lessons Scaling to a Reported $8.1BN Exit to Doordash, Building Teams not Families, The Difference Between Trust and Safety Within Companies, How To Use Compensation to Create Culture & Why You Should Not Be Lookin

Miki Kuusi · Nov 28, 2022

Broad-based equity — making every employee, including part-time customer support, eligible for stock options — is what makes ownership rhetoric real

If people are paid on narrow local metrics like restaurants signed in their own city, they have no incentive to act for the whole company; the Baltic manager who flew to Czech Republic to train a new hire shows what company-wide ownership looks like. If you want people to be in it for the company, the company has to be in it for them

38:21 20VC: Wolt CEO, Miki Kuusi on Leadership Lessons Scaling to a Reported $8.1BN Exit to Doordash, Building Teams not Families, The Difference Between Trust and Safety Within Companies, How To Use Compensation to Create Culture & Why You Should Not Be Lookin

Davis Smith · Dec 15, 2023

Founders should distribute equity broadly inside the company — including warehouse and retail staff — rather than holding sole ownership for decades or handing the company to a foundation

Wealth needs to be better distributed; he wants to create wealth many employees can pass to their children so those children get new opportunities

Scope: framed as his one criticism of Chouinard being Patagonia's only shareholder after forty years

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Avishai Abrahami · Jul 13, 2026

Employees should be given stock because they build the company and should be invested in the dream, and this practice should extend beyond tech to other industries and even government

Equity is a fair and effective mechanism for tying compensation to achievement; it's unfair that only tech does it

Scope: framed as his opinion

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Paul Erlanger · Jun 27, 2026

Founders should give top early non-founder employees the kind of equity percentage usually reserved for founders — more than 1% each

If those five to ten people build the business for the next ten years nothing can stop you; large ownership makes them feel the company is theirs and willing to push harder

Scope: aimed at the core original group, especially those who took no pay; top performers only

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Paul Erlanger · Jun 27, 2026

Because teams will be much smaller, it is fine to give away far more equity early

Fewer people doing the work means each one's ownership stake can be larger

24:43 20VC: How We Got Fred Wilson, Benchmark and Index to Invest $94M | Why Robinhood's Strategy is Wrong | Why 1-1s are BS and What Every Founder Gets Wrong About Equity | Why Taste Beats AI But How AI Kills Org Charts with Paul Erlanger, CEO @ fomo

Adam Foroughi · Apr 27, 2026

Equity should only be granted to the top 10-15% of employees who can afford to take risk; everyone else should be paid in cash with an optional discounted purchase program.

Employees living paycheck to paycheck can't absorb a 92% stock decline in a quarter of their pay, and companies give stock away too cheaply and broadly without understanding who actually drives equity value.

27:02 Reserve equity for the risk tolerant top tier pay the rest cash