βconfusionβ Dilution doesnβt necessarily mean that youβre losing anything as a shareholder. As a company issues stock and raises money, the smaller percentage of the company you do have could be worth more. The size of your slice gets relatively smaller, but, if the company is growing, the size of the cake gets bigger. For example, a typical startup might have three rounds of funding, with each round of funding issuing 20% more shares. At the end of the three rounds, there are more outstanding sharesβroughly 73% more in this case, since 120%Γ120%Γ120% is 173%βand each shareholder owns proportionally less of the company.