
Ask HN: Can a startup be bootstrapped collaboratively by a group of people? - twilight
Can a start-up be founded not by 2-3 people who know each other in advance but by a group of random people as in case of community supported Open-Source projects?<p>The advantage of the latter I see is the fact you don&#x27;t have to care about other people&#x27;s background, experience, whatever as long as they bring enough value in a form of contribution. No need for vesting and cliffs. You contribute something, you get X shares.<p>A Github like platform for collaborative bootstrapping of start-ups could be created. Unlike the founderdating services that marry off multiple founders into each other so they can create something together, in this model founders are married into ideas&#x2F;projects directly.<p>In your opinion how viable is this model?
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jeffmould
IANAL and this based completely on my own opinion, but no.

While in theory it sounds good. It has huge holes that would need to be
covered, and by the time you start covering those holes you have gone back to
the reason you need things like vesting and cliffs in the first place.

How do you determine what the contribution itself is worth in terms of shares?
How do you handle dilution? How do you handle co-founder disagreements? What
happens if an early contributor leaves after a month? What happens to their
shares? What happens if the company needs to take funding? How do you handle
stock grants? The list of questions goes on and on, and by the time you
account for all the questions, paid an attorney to address them all, you might
as well have just created a traditional company.

The different with open-source is there is no "expectation" of financial gain
from contributing. Once you start mixing a financial aspect you will have
individuals with different goals and intentions. That's a bad mix in my
opinion.

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galistoca
While I would say nothing is impossible, there are certain challenges that are
very hard to overcome.

You probably need to look into history to learn what happens. You don't even
need to look that far back. There was a company called Assembly
[http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/21/7258667/assembly-
collabor...](http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/21/7258667/assembly-
collaborative-work-open-source) They shut down.

In my opinion creating these decentralized organizations is not that hard but
they will never be able to win against centralized competitors who have clear
incentive to win. Only time this approach can win is when there's no money
involved since the re is no personal "incentive" to motivate the centralized
organizations.

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twilight
>> In my opinion creating these decentralized organizations is not that hard
but they will never be able to win against centralized competitors who have
clear incentive to win.

Why not? Cannot decentralized organizations also have incentive to win?

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wayclever
When you ask 'how viable is this model?' There are muliple contexts...1.
product/market fit, 2. Technical 3. Financial, and others. Contact me and we
can discuss off line. Wayclever@gmail.com

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douglance
Leadership is important. There's a reason that all successful businesses
follow certain structures and processes.

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twilight
Have you participated in Open-Source projects? There is leadership: a few
(2-3) the most active contributors. The thing is it's easier to find them if
the project is Open-Source. And contributors can make sure in advance they
like the project. E.g. I started contributing to someone else's project with
lots of stars on GH. And after some period of time became its maintainer and
the second leader. If I had to go through interviews first and all that stuff
that hiring requires, I would never be there.

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wayclever
What problems does the idea solve?

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sharemywin
I think there are lot of people that can contribute part time to a venture but
don't want or can't contribute from a full time perspective.

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sharemywin
some questions I can think of in the space:

1\. How are decision made? Can you appeal?

2\. Is it a seniority based system or a lowest bid type system? or both?

3\. How are the day to day things taken care of? customer support, etc. paid
out?

4\. Legal framework? International laws?

5\. can shares be bought and sold?

6\. focus and long term goals?

btw, my contact info is in my profile if any one is interested in moving
forward.

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sharemywin
Also, I think assembly failed for a couple of reasons. 1. not enough respect
for the marketing side of things. 2. free labor only gets you so far need
actual cash to be contributed. 3. equity plan needs laid out early so people
don't feel like equity is going to be hoarded. 4. 3. needs to be more like a
holacracy and a benefits corporation.

~~~
twilight
Exactly my thoughts. BTW assembly was an intermediary that provided you a
platform and handled some stuff in exchange for 10% of projects' revenue. Do
you think this platform should have such a role? Can it be just an agent. So,
there are many intermediary companies that charge whatever % they want for the
benefits and services they find reasonable and many projects. Projects choose
their intermediaries and intermediaries choose projects. There is a
competition in these groups. The platform gets % of intermediary's %. What do
you think?

