Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input.

When a company liquidates, are earlier investors paid back first?
Assuming no debt, as you've specified in the comments to your question, the assets should generally be distributed proportional to ownership share.  BUT, without any sort of agreement, there might be contention on what each investor's share is and that might get fought out in court.  With a corporation issuing shares, the corporate charter probably defines the relationship between different classes of shares (or specifies only one class).  For a partnership though, you could conceivable have people making claims of ownership stake based on labor in addition to any cash that they put up.  Messy if there's no up-front agreement.