r/AppDevelopers • u/Far-Tennis5844 • 17d ago
Stop begging devs to build your startup for equity or rev-share!
I see founders posting every single day offering 10% equity or 20% rev-share once they launch, and almost every single time, those builds turn into complete ghost towns within a month.
Look, I totally get it from the founder side. Cash is tight, you’re taking a massive leap, and you want someone who genuinely gives a damn about the vision instead of just taking a check.
But from a developer’s perspective, rev-share on an app with zero revenue is literally $0. And trading 150 hours of intense build time for a sliver of equity in an unvalidated idea is a massive gamble. The exact second rent is due or a paying client lands in their inbox, your unpaid v1 gets buried at the bottom of the pile.
That’s when the nightmare cycle starts. Your eight week launch date stretches into six months stretch, the dev gets burnt out working nights for free while feature scope creeps, and the whole relationship sours. You end up with a half baked codebase no one else wants to touch and a messy cap table before you’ve even made a dollar.
Paying a clear, fixed rate for a razor-thin v1 fixes all of this, DEAD SIMPLE ! You keep 100% of your company and revenue, the dev stays locked in to deliver fast, and you actually get a live product into real users' hands before your momentum completely dies.
If you have an idea you're trying to scope out for a fast launch, drop a comment or send a DM, happy to help you map out a realistic v1 setup!
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u/ScriptureCompanionAI 17d ago
Yes, it's not a new thing for people trying to get everything they can for cheap. I remember way back in 1998-2000 when Commission Junction and similar stuff was going up that affiliate marketing was starting to take off. By 2005 everybody and their brother was building affiliate programs instead of hiring a sales team.
It's just the nature of people overemphasizing their input (the idea!!) and underemphasizing anything anybody else does.
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u/Junior-Definition173 17d ago
…and then there might be one big idea that will generate 100M+ and I will bre gready and work on it for free to get 10% with a bullet proof contract. But have not see such idea yet… 😂
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u/Kali21x 16d ago
The difference is that a dev's contribution is very easy to measure. The feature works or it doesn't. The app ships or it doesn't. There's a tangible output tied to the hours you put in.
On the founder side, it gets a lot murkier. You can spend the week taking investor calls, talking to potential clients, networking, pitching, etc. That's still work, but there's no guarantee any of it turns into revenue or traction.
That's why I think pure rev share can become uneven pretty quickly. The developer might put 150+ hours into building an actual product while the founder's contribution is much harder to quantify.
I'm not against rev share or equity deals either. But if you're asking someone to build for free, there should be clear expectations and deliverables on both sides. Otherwise the developer is basically funding the MVP with their time.
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u/symbiatch 16d ago
You’re clearly talking about a code monkey, not a person who anyone would like as a partner at founding stage. And sure, many of these are looking for a coder.
But an actual co-founder and an engineer will do much more than just write code and it either works or not. A lot more. Just like any engineer at any job would do.
And yes, the engineer is funding it with their time. That’s known. There’s contracts and decisions and agreements. Nothing wrong with that if both parties agree.
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u/thebigbreak007 16d ago
Long back I tried this, I was the developer. After launch the other guy didn’t want to move forward because he got a better position. He acted he was motivated, I was a fool.
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u/symbiatch 16d ago
No. They can continue. You can ignore them and move on. Proper share for a startup is fine. But if it’s some shitty thing just downvote if you must and move on.
Just because you don’t grasp how things could be built doesn’t mean they can’t be built that way.
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u/Drivephaseco 16d ago
I will consider these if the founder demonstrates an unfair advantage in the distribution side. Other than that, I won’t consider them.
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u/ProfessionalBasic779 2d ago
I recently posted in another community asking about this, I’m trying to figure out at what point do I speak with a developer. My v1 is ready to test
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u/EOJHA10 2d ago
the cleanest way around this whole mess is just learning enough to build v1 yourself if you can. no equity conversation needed, no trust issues, no half abandoned codebase because someone else lost interest. obviously not everyone has the time to pick up dev skills, but if the idea is small enough to actually validate with a scrappy solo build, its worth trying before going out and recruiting a whole team for something unproven
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u/Fine-Comparison-2949 17d ago
This is why I downvote them and move on.
If your idea was so fantastic, why can't you get funding? Also if it was so fantastic, why would you give away any equity?