Founding Team and Fundraising Tools
These four tools cover the conversations founders tend to put off: what each person wants, how ownership is divided, which idea the team commits to, and how the story is told to investors. Co-founding teams use them before incorporating and again before a first raise.
4 free tools · no sign-up · no ads
All Team & Funding (4)
Founding Team Alignment
Assess founding team vision and goal alignmentPitch Deck Builder
Build a pitch deck outline from proven investor slide templatesIdea Prioritizer
Evaluate and rank startup ideas with decision matrixCo-founder Equity Allocation
Calculate fair equity splits for co-founders using proven frameworks
Which tool do I need?
Find out where co-founders disagree before it becomes a problem
Have each founder answer separately, then compare visions, values, goals, time commitment and expected equity side by side.
Model a fair equity split with vesting
Run contribution-based, role-based and hybrid splits, see what vests at the cliff, and read the warnings about concentration and short cliffs.
Pick one idea out of several
Score each idea on five weighted criteria, with effort inverted, and treat differences under about half a point as ties.
Outline an investor pitch
Start from ten standard slides with prompts and speaker notes, replace the prompts with your claims, and download the deck as Markdown.
About Team & Funding
Founding Team Alignment collects each founder's vision, values, goals, concerns, time commitment and expected equity separately, then puts the answers side by side. It flags when expected equity does not total 100%, often the first sign that a split was never agreed. The Co-founder Equity Split Calculator then models a split with a contribution-based, role-based or hybrid method and shows how much of each grant vests at the cliff. If the team is still choosing between ideas, the Idea Prioritizer ranks them on impact, effort, confidence, market size and founder-market fit with weights you set. Once the story is settled, the Pitch Deck Builder outlines a ten-slide investor deck with speaker notes.
Know the limits. The equity calculator is a basis for discussion, not legal or tax advice: the agreed split and vesting belong in a founders' agreement drafted by a lawyer. The alignment tool compares words, not personalities, and counts shared values only on exact matches. The pitch deck builder writes the words, not the visuals, and exports Markdown rather than PowerPoint. The market size and unit economics your deck needs come from the Validation & Research tools.
Guides
- How to Split Co-founder Equity (and Agree Before You Argue)Equal splits, contribution scoring and role weights compared, how 4-year vesting with a 1-year cliff actually works, and the alignment questions to settle first.
- Build Professional Pitch Decks Online: Complete Guide to Our Pitch Deck BuilderMaster the art of pitch deck creation with our comprehensive guide. Learn how to build investor-ready presentations using RedBison's professional pitch deck builder tool.
- Choosing a Startup Idea: The Idea Maze, Scoring Matrices and PivotsMap the idea maze before you build, score competing ideas with a weighted matrix (and know how RICE and ICE differ), and plan a pivot when the data says so.
Frequently asked questions
When should co-founders sign a founders' agreement?
Before meaningful work, money or intellectual property goes into the company, and in any case before outside investment. The longer it waits, the harder it becomes to set vesting and roles fairly, because everyone has already formed expectations about their share.
What should a founding team settle before its first fundraise?
Roles and decision rights, the equity split with vesting, time commitment, and a clear story backed by numbers. Investors will ask who does what, what happens if a founder leaves, how big the market is and what the unit economics look like, so have those answers written down.
Should co-founders talk about alignment before discussing equity?
Yes. Equity is easier to agree once everyone has compared goals, time commitment and risk. Use the alignment answers as inputs to the split, since time, cash invested and role all change the result in the equity calculator.
Do investors expect founders to have vesting?
Usually, yes. Four-year vesting with a one-year cliff is the common default for founders and employees in venture-backed startups. It protects the remaining founders if someone leaves early, and investors often ask for it as a condition of funding if it is not already in place.
Can a remote founding team use these tools?
Yes, by exchanging exports. There is no shared login, so each founder can fill in their alignment answers on one device, or the team can work on a shared screen during a call. Download the analysis, equity report or deck and keep it in a shared folder.