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The general advice I've heard is you don't ever want 50/50 splits because if there are important decisions to be made, you can often end up in deadlock, and no one is truly in charge of making a final call or being responsible. Since I don't have enough karma on onstartups to ask Joel this, I'm curious what his response would be.

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I use to think this way, but I'm agreeing with Joel.

If the 2 founders can't make a contentious decision as a team, they're not much of a team.

One way I've heard of to solve that problem is 45/45 and 10% to a mutually agreed upon third party (a mentor, say) who can (and has what it takes to) break those ties. I'm sure there's a bit more contractual magic to make sure the third party doesn't just sell off their part, and some people may balk at just giving away one tenth of their company. I would argue that if you're worried about 50/50 splits pulling your company apart, it's worth that small number of shares to keep your company going.

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