It also depends a lot of the kind of company it is. I had a few profit sharing offers from a social media company. Mostly it was to get their e-commerce component off the ground.

It seemed like a poor deal to sign so early, as opposed to a company that is already making profits. If something like a CRM or other B2B company offered profit sharing it would be a much better deal.

An ESOP deal for things that monetize poorly is better, a profit sharing deal with something rolling in cash flow is better.

Often employees are not risk takers. If they wanted risk, many would be founders. Just paint it really clearly how much they would get out of it and in some cases expect them to be skeptical, not of your word, but of your optimism.

Look into Joseph Stiglitz and the Roosevelt Institute. Stiglitz has heavily influenced, no joke, Steve Bannon, Bernie Sanders, and I believe was chief economic advisor for Hillary Clinton in 2008 campaign.

His “rewriting the rules” book calls for profit sharing as one of its main tenets. It’s now a strong core of modern liberal economic theory (along with employee representation on the board).

Wish you the best of luck and sorry if you are already aware.

I wasn't already aware - ill check it out - Thank you!

The problem with profit sharing is most employees heavily discount it to the point of it not being an effective motivation tool. Personally I would spend the money ensuring everyone is paid well and tightening up the unity of the team.

On thing I have wanted to try is to give the employees a certain amount of “free” money tied to profits and let them spend it as a team on anything that will make the team better/happier.