How We're Building Mino: The Slicing Pie Model
Two founders meet, split the company 50/50, and call it “fair.” Six months later, one of them is carrying the product while the other dips in on alternate Fridays. Same cap table, completely different reality. Resentment—not revenue—compounds.
Traditional equity asks you to predict the future on day one. You can’t. We couldn’t. So we chose a structure that keeps up with the work instead of the promises.
Why Slicing Pie Works
Slicing Pie is a dynamic equity model. Instead of freezing percentages upfront, you track contributions as they happen. Everyone earns “slices” for what they actually bring—time, cash, IP, even tooling.
Principle: the split mirrors reality. No hero stories. No guesswork. Just inputs and outputs.
Multipliers we use
| Contribution | Multiplier | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Cash | ×2.0 | Post-tax money at risk deserves a premium. |
| Time | ×1.5 | Accounts for opportunity cost versus market rate. |
| Expenses | ×1.0 | Necessary fuel, lower risk. |
| Discounted salary | ×1.0 on the delta | Working below your rate? The difference is logged as slices. |
Each entry goes into what Mike Moyer calls “the well.” Your ownership at any moment is simply your slices ÷ total slices. As new people add value, everyone’s percentage updates in real time. No negotiations, just math.
The Bake Moment
Slices stay fluid until a “bake moment”—the first external valuation, acquisition, or similar trigger. That’s when the running tally hardens into a formal cap table.
Example: after a year we might see 2,000 slices in total—Maurits 1,000, Sjors 800, a contract developer 200. An investor prices Mino at €1M. Percentages lock at 50/40/10, then convert to shares or options. If we’re not ready to bake, we simply keep logging contributions until we are.
Why This Matters At Mino
We already operate like a distributed studio:
- Founders with different availability (one still litigating, one consulting with firms)
- Developers pushing our internal agents (Thea, Theo, and what comes next)
- Legal experts contributing playbooks, client introductions, or testing time
Guessing an equity split for that mix would be fiction. Slicing Pie lets every contributor build ownership at the same pace as their impact.
- Developers: Ship a feature between client gigs? Those hours count at your real rate.
- Legal experts: Bring a whale client or rewrite a workflow? It’s logged as expertise or BD value.
- Capital partners: Wire €50k? You instantly see how that compares to everyone else’s slices.
Trust, Documented
Dynamic equity demands transparency. We track everything in a shared ledger:
- Hours and tasks completed (timesheets + short context)
- Cash invested and by whom
- Opportunity cost (when someone chooses equity over cash comp)
- Out-of-pocket expenses like tooling, hosting, research platforms
One person maintains the sheet; everyone can audit it. The conversation stays about facts, not feelings.
If You Want In
Design partners, developers, legal operators—anyone helping build Mino—join under this model. Your ownership grows with your contribution, not your opening negotiation.
Want to dive deeper into the mechanics? Read Mike Moyer’s book or experiment with the official calculator.
Want to contribute? Email us. We’ll walk you through the ledger before you write a single line of code or memo.