Equity Incentive Plan Designer

What Problem It Solves

Equity incentive design often gets stuck on concrete numbers: how much each person receives, when it vests, what it costs to exercise, what happens on exit, and how much the grant is worth after future upside. Relying on intuition creates disputes among founders, executives, and key employees; outsourcing everything may be slow and expensive. equity-incentive-plan-designer targets this middle layer: it takes company stage, valuation, total shares, ESOP pool size, recipient list, and policy preferences as inputs, then generates a reviewable equity incentive draft.

How It Works

The skill produces six sections:

• Option pool overview: pool size, allocated/unallocated share, and dilution forecast based on valuation, share capital, and ESOP ratio.
• Individual grants: calculates each recipient's grant using a role coefficient × contribution coefficient × scarcity coefficient model, with rationale.
• Vesting schedule: defaults to a standard 4-year schedule with a 1-year cliff and 36 months linear vesting; can be adjusted for double-trigger acceleration or an un-discounted FMV exercise price.
• Exercise and tax: estimates exercise cost and differentiates NSO vs ISO, including China and US employee scenarios.
• Exit handling: covers no-fault departure, for-cause departure, death/disability, and M&A, defaulting to a 90-day exercise window for vested options after no-fault exit.
• Valuation simulation: models returns at 5x, 10x, and 20x valuation growth.

Users provide required fields such as stage, valuation, total shares, ESOP pool ratio, recipient list, and strategy preference. The skill adjusts weights for strategies like early-employee priority, key-role tilt, broad coverage, or conservative allocation, producing a draft suitable for discussion rather than a textbook clause dump.

Boundaries

It is useful for startups, A/B/C rounds, or Pre-IPO teams to draft option plans, prepare incentive communication, and align internally. It does not replace legal opinions, formal 409A valuation, VIE tax compliance, or final grant agreements. Cross-border listings, foreign exchange filings, cross-border tax, and exact exercise prices still require legal, tax, and third-party valuation confirmation.