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Option pool / ESOP planner.

Size your option pool against your hiring plan, compare pre-money vs post-money top-up cost, and see exactly how much founder ownership a 15% post-money pool actually costs.

  • Pool capacity tracker (granted vs available)
  • Pre-money vs post-money top-up dilution, side by side
  • Common grant-size reference (CEO, VP, IC, advisor)
  • Optional emailed PDF report with the full breakdown
Inputs & results

Enter your current cap structure, the pool top-up target, and the round terms. The planner shows pool capacity, founder dilution, and the pre-money vs post-money comparison.

Today’s cap structure
Founders, employees with exercised options, prior investors. Pool is separate.
Grants outstanding, vested or unvested. Excludes exercised options.
Pool target & round
%
Common range: 10–20%. Most investors push for 15% at Series A.
$
$
Pre-money: founders absorb the pool. Post-money: everyone shares the dilution, including the new investors.
Pool capacity today
Granted / reserved
Remaining grant capacity
Pool status
Top-up math
Pool expansion needed (shares)
Final post-round pool %
Round price per share
New investor shares
Cost of the pool, pre vs post comparison
MethodPool sharesFounder %Founder Δ
Pre-money top-up
Post-money top-up
Reference: common grant sizes
RoleTypical %Shares from pool
VP / Senior hire1.00%
Early engineer0.50%
Mid-level IC0.10%
Advisor0.25%
Email me the pool planning report as a PDF.

We’ll send a clean report with your cap structure, the top-up math, and the pre vs post-money comparison, ready to share with your board or the investors negotiating your pool size.

We’ll send the PDF. Check the box above for occasional corporate-records tips by email. We don’t share your email.

Pool sizing, in four steps.

The hard part isn’t the arithmetic. It’s seeing what a pool target actually costs in founder ownership, and which expansion timing produces the smallest number.

1
Anchor the share count

Start with existing shares outstanding (everything except the pool) plus the current pool reserve. That’s today’s fully-diluted base.

2
Solve for the expansion

For a target post-round pool %, compute the pool shares such that pool / total post = target. Pre-money: total post excludes new investor shares from the denominator; post-money: includes them.

3
Compute the round price

For pre-money: pre-money valuation divided by pre-round shares including the full pool. For post-money: pre-money valuation divided by pre-round shares excluding the new pool top-up.

4
Compare the two methods

Same pool target, two different founder dilution numbers. New investors almost always require pre-money. Pre-money is meaningfully more dilutive to founders, this is what the comparison table makes obvious.

The glossary behind the pool.

Definitions of the equity instruments and dilution mechanics this tool models, plus the sibling calculators for SAFEs and full priced rounds.

Option pool Pre-money top-up and dilution mechanics Stock options What the pool actually issues Vesting cliff The standard 1-year cliff, 4-year schedule Cap table Where pool shares sit fully diluted Anti-dilution How investors protect against pool expansion Issued vs. authorized shares The corporate-records side of pool expansion Cap Table Dilution Calculator Model the full priced round across all holders Multi-SAFE Batch Simulator Convert stacked SAFEs at the same round SAFE Conversion Simulator Single-SAFE conversion math, step by step

A cap table built from the share register.

Octelligence generates the cap table from the share register and records SAFEs, options and warrants alongside the shares, so ownership traces back to the issuances behind it.

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