Helping Startups Grow with Programmable Equity

Quidli is Now Available for Delaware C-Corporations

We’ve gone through a few changes and shifts since starting our original work-for-equity initiative. But through each iteration, we found one point consistent in our users: Founders and CEOs want to share equity with their workers.

So we stripped down Quidli from dynamic ownership modeling and issuance to simply programmable distribution (give it a try now!) — Users determine the equity splits that fit their own unique business needs, and we provide the digital workflows to really give that equity in a matter of clicks.

Sharing equity is increasingly being thought of as a way to reshape companies to be more inclusive of their human capital. Our aim with this first open release is to make this inclusivity as easy as possible.

Today’s Process

Over 100 million Americans own stock today. This is partly due to technology, which continues to make trading in publicly listed companies more liquid and cheap. Yet for private companies, the process even for just giving equity to an employee remains inflexible, expensive, long, and complicated. So it’s no surprise equity is largely reserved for founders, investors, and executives.

Regardless, for startups and small companies, equity to employees and contributors is a key tool for recruitment and motivation. And so CEOs of growing companies must inevitably struggle to understand how to actually give equity when it comes time to make any promised splits “official”:

Establish a benefits plan to give equity approved by existing shareholders Draft an equity agreement that is compliant and comprehensive Turn to a lawyer/law firm to prepare the above items after realizing it’s much more complicated than previously thought Settle for “standard” agreements upon understanding lawyers/law firms don’t like creating custom documentation without adding significant fees Collect signatures from all involved parties to make agreements final Keep track of all shares being distributed

The above steps aren’t set in stone; and savvier CEOs can bypass certain points like hiring lawyers by finding documents off the Internet. But the amount of time, effort, and money for getting this entire process right can be substantial.

Introducing Programmability to the Process

In the face of such processes, CEOs can gain clear benefits from adding programmability to the employee equity distribution process:

Time — Arguably the most significant point, time is the most limited resource CEOs have. Time spent away from business impacts all else. So why should no-brainers like sharing equity with key stakeholders take so much time?

Money — External services like lawyers are great, but they don’t come cheap. And existing cap table apps can manage “standard” agreements, but any desire to introduce custom terms or conditions won’t be in scope.

Flexibility — Programmability makes distribution as easy as pie. Which means you can then slice your pie any way you want to. After all, what freelancer will accept a “standard” agreement of five years to fully vest?

Effort — Paperwork and all activities related to getting said paperwork signed, executed, and tracked are pains that impact all parties involved. Like time, effort spent on menial administrative tasks can and should be eliminated.

Trust — Startups and small businesses can afford to be agile and make quick decisions; but there’s often less structure in place, which means things tend to get lost, forgotten, and messy. Accurate management and tracking of equity distributions reduces the potential for misunderstandings for all stakeholders.

Quidli Now Available for Delaware C-Corps

We strongly believe the future of work will see more companies expanding ownership to include more employees. While defining why and how equity is shared are unique to a company’s culture and strategy, the processes behind the sharing are largely manual and operationally uniform. And this is where we can add value for founders and CEOs.

As of today, if you are a Delaware C-corporation, we’ve released a streamlined workflow for you to create benefits plans and to share equity via RSUs with workers based on terms you want in full compliance. Unlike existing cap table apps, our focus is 100% on the equity distribution process, keeping it easy, flexible, and cheap especially for startups.

Register your company on Quidli to get started sharing equity. And if your entity isn’t a Delaware C-corp, please drop us a line and let us know what geographies we should look into next. Let’s start reworking work together!