Compute · Assess & Decide · Data & Research
Compute Cofounder vs Employee Cash-and-Equity Cost
A side-by-side of cash burned and equity given for filling a role as a cofounder versus an employee over the runway window, plus the company valuation at which the cofounder's extra equity costs more than the cash saved, so the founder can decide which is economically cheaper.
You receive: A pure function: given the fully-loaded employee salary, the cofounder's reduced cash comp, the runway months, the employee equity grant %, the cofounder equity grant %, and the company's current valuation, it returns cashSaved, extraEquityPct, extraEquityCostAtValuation, netCashAdvantage, and equityBreakevenValuation.
Part of Choose Business Model
What's verified: STUD verifies the cash/equity tradeoff arithmetic and the break-even valuation against the supplied numbers. It does NOT judge whether a cofounder or employee is the better choice for the team, nor predict the exit valuation; it computes the economics implied by the frozen inputs.
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Deliverable interface
The exact vocabulary the automated check enforces: keys, tokens, entry points, and worked examples. Generated from the verification source.
{
"constants": {},
"entryName": "compute_cofounder_vs_employee_cash_cost",
"expectNote": "expect is the comparison-space value (your return value goes through normalize first when one is published)",
"hiddenCaseCount": 13,
"hiddenCaseNames": [
"gen0",
"gen1",
"gen2",
"gen3",
"gen4",
"gen5",
"gen6",
"gen7",
"gen8",
"gen9",
"gen10",
"gen11",
"gen12"
],
"inputKeys": [
"cofounderAnnualCash",
"cofounderEquityPct",
"currentValuation",
"employeeAnnualFullyLoaded",
"employeeEquityPct",
"runwayMonths"
],
"normalizeSource": "def _normalize_cofounder_vs_employee_cash_cost(r):\n if not isinstance(r, dict): return r\n def n(x, p): return None if x is None else round(float(x), p)\n return {\"cashSaved\": n(r.get(\"cashSaved\"), 2), \"extraEquityPct\": n(r.get(\"extraEquityPct\"), 6),\n \"extraEquityCostAtValuation\": n(r.get(\"extraEquityCostAtValuation\"), 2), \"netCashAdvantage\": n(r.get(\"netCashAdvantage\"), 2),\n \"equityBreakevenValuation\": n(r.get(\"equityBreakevenValuation\"), 2)}\n",
"returnShapes": [
[
"cashSaved",
"equityBreakevenValuation",
"extraEquityCostAtValuation",
"extraEquityPct",
"netCashAdvantage"
]
],
"signature": "def compute_cofounder_vs_employee_cash_cost(inp):",
"submission": "python exposing the entry function; inp is one input object; graded on held-out cases",
"tier": "calculator",
"visibleCases": [
{
"expect": {
"cashSaved": 375000,
"equityBreakevenValuation": 2678571.43,
"extraEquityCostAtValuation": 280000,
"extraEquityPct": 14,
"netCashAdvantage": 95000
},
"input": {
"cofounderAnnualCash": 0,
"cofounderEquityPct": 15,
"currentValuation": 2000000,
"employeeAnnualFullyLoaded": 250000,
"employeeEquityPct": 1,
"runwayMonths": 18
},
"name": "cofounder_cheaper"
},
{
"expect": {
"cashSaved": 375000,
"equityBreakevenValuation": 2678571.43,
"extraEquityCostAtValuation": 700000,
"extraEquityPct": 14,
"netCashAdvantage": -325000
},
"input": {
"cofounderAnnualCash": 0,
"cofounderEquityPct": 15,
"currentValuation": 5000000,
"employeeAnnualFullyLoaded": 250000,
"employeeEquityPct": 1,
"runwayMonths": 18
},
"name": "employee_cheaper"
},
{
"expect": {
"cashSaved": 150000,
"equityBreakevenValuation": null,
"extraEquityCostAtValuation": 0,
"extraEquityPct": 0,
"netCashAdvantage": 150000
},
"input": {
"cofounderAnnualCash": 50000,
"cofounderEquityPct": 5,
"currentValuation": 1000000,
"employeeAnnualFullyLoaded": 200000,
"employeeEquityPct": 5,
"runwayMonths": 12
},
"name": "no_extra_equity"
}
],
"vocabulary": [
"cashSaved",
"cofounderAnnualCash",
"cofounderEquityPct",
"currentValuation",
"employeeAnnualFullyLoaded",
"employeeEquityPct",
"equityBreakevenValuation",
"extraEquityCostAtValuation",
"extraEquityPct",
"netCashAdvantage",
"runwayMonths"
]
}Get early access to STUD the day it goes live.