For a while now, I've been trying to think of possible arrangements where startup founders could achieve some diversification along the lines of VCs and angel investors. Two initial ideas:
1) A group of n founders give each other x% of their companies. I suspect n or x could not be that big for obvious reasons.
2) Individual founders swap y% of their companies with each other. Diversification emerges after multiple swaps.
As a startup founder, would you ever consider doing something like this?
I was imagining that the entrepreneurs who would be getting together would be in a similar place in their careers, i.e. just starting out, already had a one successful exit, or already had multiple successful exits. The idea would be that each founder roughly thinks the others have about the same chance of success as themselves.
The primary scenario I was thinking about was the first type where n is about x is about 10. For example, 10 founders can form an LLC, and each give 10% of their companies to it. The profits then flow back to them upon successful exits.
I just thought of another completely different way to do it that I haven't thought through as much. It would be to form one company of more closely knit founders and have them work on separate projects for some defined amount of time, with vesting. The idea here would be webapps can be made pretty well by one person. The company can make n of them, hoping that at least 1 is moderately successful. It would be at the discretion of the company founders whether to let someone give up on an idea and start another such that no one gives up too soon. And of course the other founders would spend some amount of time critiquing the others' projects. In this case, on exit, each founder would get a much higher %, from 1% in the first case to as much as 20% if there were 5 founders. Obviously it is a very different type of scenario financially.
I don't know if any of this has been done before. I suspect it has, but I haven't heard of it. From the lack of response so far to this thread, I imagine it doesn't grab the average Internet startup founder. I suppose one reason is that people always think their idea is better. By getting into an arrangement like this, you are by definition conceding that you might fail, and thus have to cede some of your ego.