I'm interested in hearing from any folks out there with experience around early stage funding (angel or venture). How much equity do companies need to give up in order to get various amounts of funding? I'm assuming there are models out there to help calculate this; does anyone know of any? How about any good books or articles that deal with the subject?

Thanks all.

From the courses I've taken at Stanford, I didn't get any hard and fast rules about equity splits, since there is such a variety of risk/reward with early ventures and many terms that can be discussed.

I can tell you a few things, that they will want as much management control as possible, which means plan on giving up 51% of equity (again, depends on your idea and team).

Also, thinking from a VC perspective, they have a 'home run' business model, which means for every 10 investments of $1M, they expect 3 to fail miserably (strikeouts), 6 to go nowhere (walks), and 1 to yield at 10x return (the home run). You gotta sell them on being that 'next big thing'

A great book is Crossing the Chasm.

Hope that helps!