Calculate Your Slicing Pie Equity Split

GHRR = your fair market annual salary ÷ 2,000 hours. Use the salary for the role you're actually doing at the startup, not your previous corporate salary. If you're a banker doing sales, use a sales salary. Mike Moyer recommends capping GHRR at $200/hour to prevent splits from getting skewed.

If you resign with "good cause" (e.g., illness, company breach) or are terminated without cause, you keep your slices. If you quit without good reason or are fired for cause, you forfeit your slices. This protects the company from people who bail, while protecting contributors from unfair termination. Define these terms clearly in your Grunt Fund Agreement before you need them.

Spreadsheets work for very early stages, but they become error-prone and hard to audit as your team grows. Common issues: forgetting to log hours, disputes about who entered what, version control problems. Dedicated equity tools like Equity Matrix automate tracking, handle recovery calculations, and provide an audit trail that holds up if disputes arise.

Slicing Pie is one specific implementation of dynamic equity, created by Mike Moyer. Dynamic equity is the broader concept of adjusting ownership based on contributions. Slicing Pie provides a specific formula and framework for doing this. Equity Matrix supports Slicing Pie and other dynamic equity approaches.

The book is helpful for understanding the philosophy, but you don't need it to use the model. The core formula is straightforward: contributions × multiplier = slices. Equity Matrix automates the calculations and tracking, so you can implement Slicing Pie without spreadsheets or manual math.

In the original Slicing Pie model, departing co-founders keep or forfeit slices based on whether they leave "for good reason" or not. However, this can create disputes and doesn't include vestingA schedule that earns equity over time instead of all at once. Standard is four years with a one-year cliff. or cliffA vesting rule requiring someone to stay a minimum time (usually one year) before earning any equity. periods. Equity Matrix adds loyalty protection features to address these gaps.

This calculator is great for understanding how Slicing Pie works and running scenarios. For ongoing tracking, you'll want a system that logs contributions over time, generates reports, and handles the complexity of real-world startups. That's what Equity Matrix does. Sign up free to start tracking.

A cap table shows fixed ownership percentages. Slicing Pie and dynamic equity show fluid percentages that change as contributions are made. Most startups eventually convert their dynamic equity to a cap table when they raise funding or hit a major milestone. Read more: When to Freeze Your Dynamic Equity.

Non-recoverable cash (money that's gone if the startup fails) gets 4× because it's the highest-risk contribution. Time gets 2× because while you can't get your time back, you still gained experience and skills. Recoverable cash (loans that get paid back first) gets 2× because the risk is lower. These multipliers reflect the relative risk each contributor is taking.

Freeze the pie when: (1) you raise a priced funding round (investors expect fixed cap tables), (2) the business becomes predictable with stable revenue, or (3) everyone's contributions have naturally stabilized. Most startups freeze within 1-2 years. The key is to freeze before investors need to see your ownership structure.

Most investors expect a traditional cap table at the time of investment. However, many understand and even appreciate that founders used Slicing Pie pre-investment. It shows thoughtful planning and fair dealing. Just be prepared to convert your dynamic equity to fixed percentages before closing a round.