Ownership is equity and decision-making power together. Kiyvia is where founders finally see both.
Do you know how much of the company you built you'll still own after your first round?
Founders give up more than equity when they raise money. They give up decision-making power — often without realizing it, buried across documents they signed but didn't fully understand.
Kiyvia gives founders a clear view of their ownership at each stage — starting with the knowledge, building to the full playbook, and evolving into real-time visibility.
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The startup industry has long measured ownership by equity — the percentage on a cap table, the share count after dilution, the stake that gets tracked through every round. Those numbers matter. But they only capture half of what ownership actually is.
Ownership is equity and decision-making power together. The equity lives on a cap table. The terms that define decision-making power — board composition, protective provisions, liquidation preferences — live in legal agreements. Both exist. But there has never been a centralized place to see them together, interpret how they interact, and understand what a founder's ownership position actually means in full.
So founders move forward with clarity on their percentage and uncertainty about their power. Not because the information doesn't exist — it does. Because no single resource has been built to bring it together in one place.
The industry has built tools for equity — cap tables, share counts, 409A valuations. The terms that govern decision-making power live in the legal documents. But equity and those terms are rarely explained together — how a liquidation preference shapes a founder's outcome when a company sells, how a protective provision limits what can be decided without investor approval, how board composition shifts with each round. Founders end up with half the picture.
Kiyvia is built to change that — providing founders the knowledge to understand what the terms that govern decision-making power actually mean, and a centralized view of equity and decision-making power together, so founders can see exactly where they stand at every stage of building a company.
I'm a former Big Law attorney with 15+ years advising founders through formations, fundraising rounds, and exits — and also a founder who has navigated these decisions from the other side of the table. Kiyvia is the resource I wished existed.