Align early,
go further,
and enjoy the ride.
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
“Begin on the same page, and stay there. A live founder agreement, built together in plain language before incorporation, that grows with you.”
Goodvernance
Live founder agreement platform
Who Benefits
Why sign a live founder agreement
The strongest way to start is together, on the same page. A live founder agreement sets your equity, roles, IP and decisions in plain language before incorporation, so your future company clearly owns what you build. Put it in place early and it grows with you, keeping everyone aligned as the company takes shape.
Read real founder stories, and what getting the agreement right changesStart on solid ground
Put clear, deliberate terms in place from day one: equity, roles, IP and decisions, all in plain language. Without a signed agreement you fall back on a general partnership by default, where IP can legally belong to whoever wrote the code rather than the company. A live founder agreement replaces that guesswork with clarity everyone signed up to, before it ever matters.
Be investor-ready
Investors check vesting schedules, IP assignment and clean equity ownership before they fund you. The earlier your live 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).
Stay aligned as the stakes rise
Founders who agree the essentials early, while nothing is yet at stake, keep that alignment as the company grows and real money comes in. Research from Harvard Business School found that most high-potential startups that stall do so over the founding relationship, not the product or the market. A live founder agreement is how you keep that conversation easy, and settled, from day zero.
Why accelerators and incubators should mandate Goodvernance
Founders who start aligned build faster. Mandating a live founder agreement at intake sets every company in your batch on the same page from day one, and protects your brand as they grow.
Secure your portfolio
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 makes sure the terms agreed at signing are actually executed as the company grows, which a static contract never guarantees. Teams that start aligned are far more likely to stay the course.
See whySave your batch real legal money
A lawyer-drafted live founder agreement can run to $5,000 or more for complex cases. Building and signing on Goodvernance are free: 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 a founding team handles this first conversation is often the clearest early signal of how they'll handle the ones that come later: a funding term, a pivot, a cofounder moving on. Goodvernance makes that first one easy to get right, together.
Enjoy your founder journey with Goodvernance.
Seal it with your co-founder today, a live founder agreement before incorporation, free to start and for good.
Get started, it’s free