Hah! 50/50 of a new company is ZERO. If you are negotiating your "future value" (aggressively) with the person you are partnering with (and betting that they will pour their blood into to build the initial value), you probably have the wrong priorities to begin with.
Just taking the risk, starting at zero and pushing through the early phases is HUGELY valuable. That's why VCs don't start companies
(This advice changes a bit for well known, serial founders)
That is looking at it from a valuation standpoint, from my perspective 51/49 is much better than 50/50. When push comes to shove, and you are 50/50, you are at a stalemate.
I agree and would add that even in a 20 person company it is better (much better) to get agreement rather than trying to make a decision stick because you have 51% ownership. I have done that in the past, and it is amazing how long people can hold onto their dislike of your decision and try to 'get back' at you later. Forcing your will because you have majority is not good for anything. Companies need to have a clear leader, and leadership does not come from a 2% difference. This is from my previous company of 20 people where I had majority interest.
Listening to Suster, I'd evaluate a bigger differential so that control can better survive dilution. For example, at 65/35 a single person could maintain control through 20% dilution. For YC a split of 57/43 would guarantee control through their investment.
The problem is that while 50/50 can work, it rarely does, and it's nearly impossible to tell at the beginning whether it will, unless you have already had such an arrangement with someone and it worked well with them.
Sometimes it works well for a number of years, and then, at some later point, priorities change or differences emerge, or a culture clash happens, and the partners can have their own 'camps' of people, who sometimes don't get along.
In most cases it is better to have one person set the culture and long-term objectives of the company. However, they can and should start with other partners, who can have significant influence on both of those aims; with a good CEO it can even at times appear undifferentiable from equality, but at the end of the day one person should have the ability to call the decision to eliminate stalemates.
This is really similar to the argument that it is foolish to bicker over seed valuation. It is difficult to compare skill set value during the first week of a product launch and when the company has critical mass or momentum. There are a ton of mitigating factors that push a company out of founding stage that arent product, code, marketing, relationship or related to traditional skill.
Its an imperfect science and an abstract distraction at a time when it is not a top priority.
