A strong foundation to grow on.
Build and sign your Founder Agreement in minutes, before incorporation, so you start with the clarity investors expect from day one.
No account needed to start · No legal advice
Grow on strong foundations with
Goodvernance
On the importance of signing a founder agreement early. From investors and builders.
“65% of high-potential startups fail because of conflict between the founders, not the product or the market.”
Noam Wasserman
Harvard Business School · The Founder's Dilemmas
“We pretty much won't fund a company now where the founders don't have vested equity.”
Sam Altman
CEO, OpenAI · former President, Y Combinator
“Founders who handshake an equal split quickly, without a deliberate agreement, are up to 22% less likely to raise venture capital.”
Thomas Hellmann & Noam Wasserman
Harvard Business School
“Giving away founder equity is not something that you should be innovating on.”
Michael Seibel
Group Partner, Y Combinator · co-founder, Twitch
“43% of entrepreneurs said they had been forced to buy out a co-founder due to rifts and power struggles.”
Fuel Ventures
Survey of 3,000+ UK founders
“Don't wait to build your product before signing an agreement. You might jeopardize your future.”
Goodvernance
Founder Agreement platform
Who Benefits
Why sign a Founder Agreement
If you don't sign anything, you default to a bad situation: no agreement usually means a general partnership by default, where intellectual property can legally stay with whoever built it, not the company. The longer that goes on, the worse the risk, because you keep building a product your future company doesn't actually own.
Read what happened to high-profile companies that didn't have the right agreementAvoid a dangerous default partnership
Without a signed agreement, you default to a general partnership: ambiguous equity, no vesting, and IP that can legally belong to whoever wrote the code, not the company. Signing early replaces that bad default with clear, deliberate terms for equity, roles, IP and decisions, before it becomes a problem.
Be investor-ready
Investors check vesting schedules, IP assignment and clean equity ownership before they fund you. The earlier your Founder Agreement is signed, the better: due diligence favors agreements signed early, since they protect against potential future claims.
Founders who split equity equally in a fast handshake, without a deliberate, early agreement, are up to 22% less likely to raise venture capital (Harvard Business School research).
Prevent future conflict
65% of high-potential startups fail because of conflict between cofounders, not the product or the market, and it happens more often than founders think. If a team can't agree on a simple agreement on day zero, when nothing is at stake yet, that conversation will only get harder once things get serious and real money is involved.
Why accelerators and incubators should mandate Goodvernance
Cofounder conflict is the single largest cause of early failure in any portfolio. Mandating a founder agreement at intake protects your batch and your brand.
Secure your portfolio
65% of high-potential startups fail from cofounder conflict, not the market. Every company in your batch starts with clean, signed equity, vesting and IP terms instead of a handshake. Goodvernance is more than signing a PDF template: it ensures the clauses agreed upon at signing are actually executed, which a standard contract never guarantees.
See whySave your batch real legal money
A lawyer-drafted founders' agreement may go up to $5,000 or above for complex cases. Building is free and signing is $99: budget your founders can put toward the product instead.
Teach good governance early
Founders don't have to reinvent equity, vesting and IP norms from scratch, and your team doesn't have to answer the same questions every batch. Free educational content does the teaching for you. How your founding team handles this conversation is often the clearest signal you'll get, this early, about how you'll handle the harder ones later: a funding term, a pivot, a cofounder leaving. If you can't agree on the easy version now, the hard version will be worse.
Why Goodvernance
More than a simple contract.
Self-executing clauses that track what you agreed to, and trigger it automatically when the moment comes.
A standard contract doesn't force any action to be taken; it only serves as support in a court of law.
$91K
average cost of a contract dispute
Potential scenarios, in case of conflict:
- A cofounder ghosts, or refuses to sign.
- Whoever is uncooperative holds the leverage.
- Litigation runs months to years, long enough to kill the startup first.
The burden tends to fall on whoever wants to execute the pre-agreed clauses, not on the one who refuses to act or blocks them.
Read real case studiesGoodvernance shifts the burden.
Goodvernance self-executes agreed clauses on predefined events, so what you signed on day one happens exactly when it's supposed to.
$0
to build your Founder Agreement
- Vesting accrues automatically, on the schedule you signed.
- Unearned equity is forfeited on departure, no renegotiation needed.
- Simulates what-if scenarios for founder awareness, enabling smoother conflict management.
The burden is on the party who refuses to execute what was agreed initially.
The 12 protections that matter before incorporation
The Goodvernance Founder Agreement helps early cofounders agree on founder roles, the intended equity split, vesting and cliff, founder departure, IP and assets, decision-making, deadlock, amendments and platform records.
Pre-Incorporation Status
Make it clear no company exists yet, and what this agreement is for.
Founder Roles and Commitments
Who's a founder, their role, and how much time they're really putting in.
Intended Founder Equity Split
Agree on the equity split now, in writing, before it gets awkward.
Vesting and Cliff
Earn equity over time, so nobody walks away with a free chunk.
Founder Departure Before Incorporation
Decide what happens if a cofounder leaves early, before it happens.
Forfeiture of Unearned Founder Equity
No dead equity: unearned intended equity is not kept by a founder who leaves early.
Know this before you incorporate
Plain-language notes on the founder decisions that matter most, written by a startup lawyer. Start with these three.
Built by someone who watched it go wrong
I built Goodvernance because I was tired of watching the same story repeat. As a startup disputes lawyer, I spent years litigating cofounder conflicts. The pattern was always the same: promising teams that broke apart, not over the product or the market, but over promises that were never put in writing.
And when an agreement did exist, it was rarely much more useful. An agreement drafted at great expense, signed on a Tuesday, buried in a drive by Wednesday. No one rereads it. No one knows what it says on the day everything is at stake. We took governance, the most valuable asset a young company has, and compressed it into a static document that its own signatories do not even know.
Goodvernance was born from that double realization. A founder agreement should be built from day one, in plain language, without burning your first months' budget on it. And it should live: track vesting, simulate departures, amend itself when the team changes, and stay in front of everyone instead of sleeping in a folder.
This is what we believe: trust needs structure, and structure only matters if it lives. We are building the founder agreement that grows with your startup instead of taking a single snapshot of it. One day, it will run itself. Already today, it no longer sleeps.
Ilyès Dogheche, Founder & startup disputes lawyer
Frequently asked questions
Does this incorporate my company?
No. Goodvernance creates a pre-incorporation founder agreement. It does not form a company or file anything with a state.
Does this issue shares?
No. The equity split is an intended allocation between founders, not an issuance of shares. Shares are issued later, when you incorporate.
Is this legal advice?
No. Goodvernance is not a law firm and does not provide legal advice. For complex situations, consult a lawyer.
We trust each other. Do we really need this?
Trust is exactly why now is the time. Almost no cofounder dispute involves a villain: circumstances change, and honest people remember the same handshake differently years later. An agreement signed while you trust each other records what fair looks like to both of you today. Read why trust is the window, not the reason to skip it.
What happens after incorporation?
Goodvernance starts with the pre-incorporation Founder Agreement. After incorporation, founders should use the agreement with counsel or an incorporation provider to implement the intended terms in proper corporate documents. Goodvernance does not incorporate companies or issue shares.
What does “live agreement” mean?
Once signed, your agreement becomes a living dashboard: vesting earned over time, a founder departure simulator, IP and asset visibility, an Amendment Center and full version history, all kept current with Goodvernance Live.
Is this generated by AI?
No. Every clause is written and validated by a lawyer. AI never drafts your agreement.
Who is behind Goodvernance?
A startup disputes lawyer who litigated cofounder conflicts for years, and a repeat technical founder. We run Goodvernance on our own founder agreement.