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It's Nathan.
I'm looking at the new 2026 Founder Ownership Report from Carta.
Carta tracks equity and cap tables for 50,000+ startups.
Here's a stat I can't stop thinking about:
At Series C, the median founding team owns 16.1% of their company.
The employee equity pool is 16.8%.
Founders own less of their company than the equity pool set aside for their employees.
Carta
Here's how the dilution stacks up round by round:
Seed: founders keep 56%
Series A: down to 36%
Series C: down to 16.1% (employee pool passes them at 16.8%)
Series D: down to 10.4%
By Series C, the company breaks down into three slices: founders, employees, and investors.
Except the investor slice is 4x bigger than the founder slice.
Here's why:
Every VC round does two things at once:
VCs take a chunk (usually 15-25% per round)
The employee pool gets refreshed (5-10% per round to attract new hires)
Both come out of the founders' pockets.
Four rounds in, you don't own your company anymore. Your investors do.
There's another way: non-dilutive capital.
Non-dilutive capital is any funding that doesn't take equity from your business.
You keep 100% ownership
No warrants in some options
No board seats or dilution at exit
For SaaS founders with predictable revenue, it's a smarter choice than VC.
A sneak peek of the options every SaaS founder should consider before raising:
(See full breakdown of non-dilutive funding here)
Screenshot 2026-04-28 at 4.28.38 PM
One example of how this plays out in real life:
Badger Maps, a SaaS company at $8m revenue, used non-dilutive capital twice:
First, revenue financing to fund growth
Then, a $4.2m term loan to scale
Details of the deal:
Revenue: $8m
Size: $4.2m ($2.8m at start)
Interest rate: 17%
Interest only period: 2 years
Warrants: None
Fees: No exit fees
Time to close: 20 days
Would you consider a deal like this?
If you're at $1m+ in revenue, you can do the same.
Get life-changing capital without selling your equity
It takes 2 minutes to get a term sheet.
Or just hit reply - I'm answering questions in the next hour.
Nathan Latka
CEO, Founderpath
PS: Details of other deals we've closed can be found here: https://founderpath.com/blog/category/case-study. We've wired $220m to over 550 SaaS companies.
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Founderpath, 815A Brazos Street, , Austin,TX,78701,USA,(210) 718-8920
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