

A look at Assembly, the community that founds companies - ryanb
http://cmxhub.com/a-look-behind-the-curtains-at-assembly-the-new-community-that-founds-companies/

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nedwin
The thing that I love about Assembly is that they're not afraid to take risks.
There is a lot of unknowns about how this style of company might work and
therefore a shitload of risk.

The potential upside is huge if this works but either way its interesting to
watch.

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toolslive
`Assembly` used to be the name of a famous demo party.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assembly_%28demo_party%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assembly_%28demo_party%29)

So I was a bit confused first.

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otoburb
How are maintenance and support revenue streams factored into this business
model? I understand that revenue generated by the project/product is split
among the partners, but I'm not sure how a (potentially) part-time core team
is capable of building out and sustaining a basic 9-5 support team on an on-
going basis.

Is this something that would require a potentially large amount of App Coins
to be set aside at the beginning of a project (similar to how employee equity
pools of 5-20% might be 'reserved' up front for retention)?

Perhaps for a wildly successful product full-time core team members would step
up to the plate, presumably to be compensated with more App Coins from what is
left of the dwindling 9.5M initial pool.

I read the FAQ and can't help but think I simply misread or didn't pick up on
this aspect of Assembly.

~~~
awwstn
Good questions.

Things like marketing, sales, maintenance, and support can be handled with the
Assembly bounties. Over time I imagine we'll make bounties more easily map to
these functions, but we've seen bounties work for each of them already. (For
example, a bounty might say "Handle support on Monday from 9-5", and it would
be rewarded with an appropriate amount of ownership in the product).

However, a team could also hire a contractor to handle support. When a product
is making significant revenue the team can spend that revenue as they please,
so if support is important to the business, hiring someone is a perfectly
acceptable use of their revenue.

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GregBuchholz
Is Assembly geared mostly toward software projects? Or stated another way, are
there any physical product projects on (in?, under?) Assembly? The very first
photo on the article shows an exploded view of hardware, but a quick perusal
of the site seems to indicate that all the projects are software projects. Or
maybe I'm missing something? Is there a separate category for hardware vs.
software? Has any Assembly project raised funds from a Kickstarter (or alike)
yet? Or is there a built in way to crowdfund in Assembly?

~~~
chrislloyd
Hey (co-founder of Assembly)! We're focusing on software projects at the
moment (there's a bunch of unique challenges in just software alone), but we
definitely think there's room to expand.

We're working on a clear way for products to get funds into their accounts
(like a Kickstarter).

~~~
davidspinks
Adding some sort of kickstarter functionality to this would be really
interesting. Or making it possible to earn ownership points by investing
money, though I imagine that might alter the purity of the community dynamic.
Excited to see how it all comes together either way.

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kamakazizuru
am I the only one who is confused by the way ownership works here? The article
itself is more of a dreamy PR piece. However, looking at the website and the
FAQ itself - I cannot really figure out how "app coins" work. Who creates
them? I understand that they are distributed by bounties, but how many app
coins exist? Who creates / mints them? How does the originator of the idea get
his share? Would be great to understand this!

~~~
awwstn
Hey, Austin from Assembly here.

Here's an example of what an ownership breakdown might look like:
[https://assembly.com/helpful/partners](https://assembly.com/helpful/partners)

When a new product is created, 10,000,000 App Coins are created, and 500,000
of them are allocated by the idea creator (often just to her or himself).
Going forward, each bit of work is put in a bounty. The community can offer
their opinions of how much a bounty should be worth – and the impact of those
opinions is weighted based on how much ownership a user has in the product.

Additionally, each product has a "tip contract" to reward idea creation and
product management. The default is that 5% of each bounty goes to the creator
of that bounty, and 5% of it is split amongst the Core Team (this could just
be the original idea creator, or could be several people).

Anytime the Core Team awards a bounty, the corresponding number of coins is
minted and distributed.

~~~
heroprotagonist
> 10,000,000 App Coins are created, and 500,000 of them are allocated by the
> idea creator

What happens to the other 9,500,000 app coins? Who 'owns' them for purposes of
profit distribution and opinion weight?

> Anytime the Core Team awards a bounty, the corresponding number of coins is
> minted and distributed.

I'm a little confused about the term 'minted' here. Are additional coins
created, increasing the total past 10,000,000 coins, or are they subtracted
from the 9,500,000 that were created but not allocated to/by the idea creator
at product creation? If they are taken out of the 9,500,000 coins, what
happens when there are no coins remaining?

~~~
chrislloyd
> What happens to the other 9,500,000 app coins? Who 'owns' them for purposes
> of profit distribution and opinion weight?

Effectively the product's wallet owns them, but opinion weight is based
entirely on your ownership of "vested" coins. If you may have 5% (to start) of
the total coins, but you have 100% of actively votable coins.

And yep, minting there was confusing. Minting happens only at explicit event
so everybody can control their dilution. When bounties are awarded their coins
come from the products "unvested" coin pool.

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Glyptodon
My question is how do hosting and credentials work for sites built through
Assembly? Who makes the $$$ outlay for a site? Does the project creator have
to front and control things personally to begin with? Or is there some sort of
arrangement where a particular company hosts in exchange an ownership stake
and special status project members have rights to push changes through to
'live'?

~~~
awwstn
In most cases, Assembly will help cover costs of things like domains and
hosting during development, and in cases where someone in the community spent
money on a product, that will be tracked and reimbursed when the product
starts to earn revenue.

Also to clarify something in the comment below this one, Assembly's fee is 10%
of the royalties paid back to contributors. (so, 10% of profit, not 10% of
revenue)

