
Ask HN: Feedback on this nonprofit idea for YC? - Sebrith
The 50 character description is &quot;A user-automatable crowdfunder for cooperatives.&quot;<p>In case it needs explaining, cooperatives are democratically owned&#x2F;controlled businesses. The Cooperative Market would make it easy to collectively start, fund and direct cooperatives, securely, over the internet.<p>* For the nonprofit qualifying usage, it could route charity&#x2F;aid&#x2F;loans to users in developing nations who could then directly fund their own infrastructure, utility or consumer cooperatives. To make such things easier it could be usable through smartphones and reduce losses to corruption by virtue of its transparency. Donors could also potentially customize their development-aid or tax-deductible donations so they would proportionally reward recipients for doing things like learning, producing more media&#x2F;technology or improving within development, education or literacy indexes; thus incentivizing competition among recipients or even nations.<p>* For non-nonprofit usage, users could fund regular cooperative businesses or otherwise impossibly expensive things they could be proud of; like R&amp;D, scientific research, brain-computer interfaces, aerospace technology, etc.<p>* It could also offer a method of dealing with profits that could create systemic benefits for members and incentivize becoming more involved. The case is made for redistributing profits from individual cooperatives, to all members of the cooperative market, in proportion to their joining, working for and spending&#x2F;banking within the cooperative market. The continuous reward for having joined could be especially useful for attracting new members and ensuring that even those who have nothing could benefit from and spend money in the cooperative market. Work-based rewards could potentially be adjusted proportionally to job performance and potentially give an innate edge against the competition when it comes to pay.<p>Is it understandable? Appealing? Does it seem too long?
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brudgers
How big is the cooperatives funding market?

Who currently funds cooperatives?

Why would cooperative funders use your platform rather than existing methods?

Would the market take responsibility for vetting cooperatives?

What sort of entity could become a market maker for a cooperative funding
market?

Good luck.

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Sebrith
I meant feedback for the "what will it do" section of the YC application.
Sorry for the confusion.

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brudgers
What you're selling in a YC applicationo is not so much an idea but the
ability to execute.

I would suggest that 'the what' should address those questions. Without doing
so, 'the what' is probably less convincing.

In terms of language, I would remove all the "could" and be more concrete
about plans.

In terms of structure, I would simplify the causal chains down to a few
concrete steps.

