Bachelor Thesis, Master Thesis or Project Study
📌 Key facts
Contents
- 💡 Background
- 🦾Who We Are
- 🎯 Goals
- 🧠 Topics of Interest
- 🎓 Profile
- 📚 Further Reading
- 📄 Requirements to any Work
- 📬 How to Apply
💡 Background
You are enthusiastic about entrepreneurship, and would you like to become active in this area? Great, there exist numerous ways to get involved in startups! But how much startup equity / stock options do you gain in which roles? This interesting question and many more should be dealt with by comparing the different models and best practices in the US and Germany. In detail you should determine how much equity compensation founders, board-advisors, consultants or early employees receive in both countries.
A brief overview of the questions the thesis is intended to answer:
- What is an appropriate equity amount for a consultant?
- What is typical CEO equity in a startup?
- What is typical founder equity split in a startup?
- What is an appropriate equity amount for a researcher that aligns his/her won research with that of the startup?
- What is an appropriate equity amount for the first few employees?
- What is an appropriate equity amount for “new”/late cofounders?
- What is an appropriate equity amount for a startup advisor? What does it depend on?
- What is an appropriate equity amount for someone who contributes to the company via investor intros/pitches or by providing a network?
- What is an appropriate equity amount for researchers working with a startup (professors, doctoral students)?
- For which services are startups willing to pay in stock (options) and equity?
- What innovative and promising forms of participation in startups are there?
- What proportion of equity is appropriate in different phases of the startup?
🦾Who We Are
The Chair for Strategy and Organization is focused on research with impact. This means we do not want to repeat old ideas and base our research solely on the research people did 10 years ago. Instead, we currently research topics that will shape the future. Topics such as Agile Organizations and Digital Disruption, Blockchain Technology, Creativity and Innovation, Digital Transformation and Business Model Innovation, Diversity, Education: Education Technology and Performance Management, HRTech, Leadership, and Teams. We are always early in noticing trends, technologies, strategies, and organizations that shape the future, which has its ups and downs.
🎯 Goals
- Research best practices for distributing equity compensation for startups
- Collect data from the US and Germany
- Determine the most promising compensation models
- Determine the most lucrative contributions of labor and expertise
- Identify inventive services and new innovations for distributing equity
- Get in touch with entrepreneurs to evaluate their compensation decisions
- Visualize your results
🧠 Topics of Interest
- Entrepreneurship in general
- Getting engaged in startups
- Equity structures and incentives
- Venture Capital
🎓 Profile
- Reliable and self-driven
- Enthusiasm for entrepreneurship / venture capital / innovations / equity structures
- Ability to do sophisticated internet, desk research, and connect with practitioners
- Passion to learn more about the future and do research with impact
📚 Further Reading
Further Links:
https://fi.co/insight/a-guide-to-startup-employee-equity
https://www.ycombinator.com/library/5x-how-to-split-equity-among-co-founders
https://meldvaluation.com/blog/start-ups/complete-guide-to-startup-equity-compensation/
https://review.firstround.com/A-Counterintuitive-System-for-Startup-Compensation
https://generalassemb.ly/blog/a-guide-to-startup-compensation/
https://fundingsage.com/giving-away-startup-ownership-much-much/
https://www.cleverism.com/how-much-equity-give-new-co-founders-employees/
https://humaninterest.com/blog/startup-equity-basics-ask-stock-accept/
https://triplebyte.com/startup-equity-value-calculator
https://www.ilab.ceu.edu/articles/equity-in-a-startup-all-you-need-to-know
https://angel.co/blog/9-terms-youll-see-in-your-equity-offer-and-what-they-actually-mean
https://www.holloway.com/g/equity-compensation/sections/typical-employee-equity-levels
https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/comments/2ydkbw/stock_options_at_late_stage_startup/
https://blog.hubspot.com/sales/startup-equity
https://www.ilab.ceu.edu/articles/equity-in-a-startup-all-you-need-to-know
https://seedlegals.com/resources/how-much-equity-should-uk-startups-give-employees/
https://fundersclub.com/learn/guides/understanding-startup-investments/startup-equity-investments/
📄 Requirements to any Work
We do not want your research to gather dust in some corner of bookshelf but make it accessible to the world. Thus, we warmly encourage you to create some or all of the following:
- Infograph - visually represent some of your work (find examples here)
- Slide Deck - summarize your research and possibly present it
- Extract most important sequences from podcasts, videos, and other media
- 3-4 Tweets about the most important findings and summarizing the topic
- optional: Medium Article - let people outside the university know about your research and start your personal brand
📬 How to Apply
If you are interested, please contact Prof. Dr. Isabell Welpe and Marius Wiggert (e-mail below) by submitting your CV and grade report. Please also briefly outline your tentative research idea (research question, data and methods, possible outcomes with a tentative outline all in word as *.docx)
We're greatly looking forward to hearing more about you!