You’re Not Building A Business, You’re Building A Pie

21 May 2026 · 1 min

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1:19

In this monologue, the speaker challenges the common advice that founders should retain 100% ownership of their company. He argues that the most successful entrepreneurs—such as Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos—own only a small fraction of their firms, and that this diluted ownership enables the creation of valuable partnerships. By sharing equity with co‑founders, brokers, investment banks, and investors, founders can increase enterprise value, build a larger “pie,” and ultimately maximize their net worth at exit (sale, IPO, or investment). The speaker outlines typical equity splits (25‑50% to a co‑founder, 5‑15% to a broker or bank) and frames ownership dilution as a strategic tool rather than a loss, positioning it as essential advice for most entrepreneurs.

Chapters

Most people think you should own 100% of your business. And I'm here to tell you that I think that holds a lot of entrepreneurs back. If you look at the most successful entrepreneurs in the world, even the Elons and the Bezos of the world, they don't own 100% of their business. They own a small fraction of their business. And this is why they're multibillionaires. It's not how much money they have in the bank. It's how much enterprise value they've built up by creating partnerships. Those partnerships don't happen if they're not willing to give up a small amount of the business to a variety of different people. So this idea that you should own 100% of your business is not the best advice for most people. In fact, if you start a business with a partner, you're already giving up 25 to 50% of the business for your co-founder. When you go to sell a business, you're going to give 5 to 15% of the business to the broker or investment bank at the time when your business is worth the maximum amount of money. You realize that the point of business is to build as big a pie as possible, and it will ultimately maximize the amount of net worth that you have when you sell the business, go public, bring on an investor, or whenever you end up getting your payday. The advice that you should own 100% of your business, I think, is incomplete advice for most entrepreneurs.