Help to build products and get paid in equity
One of the best investments ever is done by E. Saverin. He gave a $15k investment in exchange for 30% of stake in Facebook (now Meta). You may not have such an amount of money to invest, but you can still own equity in the next unicorns. How? If you are a talented SE, growth hacker, a true professional, you can join https://withpublic.com and help the promising startup build their product. In exchange, you paid in equity. The startup grows, so is your equity. After the startup raises money or goes to IPO you can cash out, with XXX return. Don't invest your money, invest your time!
Trending on Indie Hackers
Your landing page doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence, but I do think this is an incredible idea.
Software engineers are repeatedly told again and again to never work for equity. And for good reason.
1: Usually they are approached by some loud mouth in their network. They have the next billion dollar “idea”, all they need you to do is build it and they’ll graciously give you 5%. But usually the idea is terrible. (It’s like Tinder but for Lawn Mowers)
2: They actually do join a successful startup. But they get screwed, because the proper agreement was never put in place.
I do think a market place like this is an incredible idea! If you can solve those two problems, I think it’d be a huge win.
First problem you could solve by thoroughly vetting the startups that join your platform. Do they have traction? How strong is their team? What’s the market opportunity? You’d basically vet them just like an Angel investment group would .
Second problem would be a bit more tricky. But if you had solid templates and lawyers on staff, I think you could find a solution.
Good luck! I think this is a really solid idea.
Im a SE and I dont mind working for equity. Equity can be worth far more than cash if the business is successful.
Its just a lot of business people dont want to give it. Ive been offered 0.1% to be the CTO of a startup. It was laughable.
Thanks for your awesome feedback! Let me share my thoughts. I did not think about vetting startups, the idea was not to become a wall between SEs and founders and our preconceived notions should not affect the decision made by two parties. Let's make it free to choose. But the SEs are free to ask questions and do background checks. The information is flown freely, if someone finds misconduct they can share and we shall take appropriate actions.
On having templates, I do agree with this point and I shall try to add some ready templates, e.g. NDA, non-compete, and others. Maybe we should run as DAOs with smart contracts?
I had the same idea on my list but I had a different approach.
Marketplace would have the following:
You would need to vet both the founders listings and freelancers to create a quality market place. Feel free to use my ideas 😊 I’m also down to colab and improve your landing page
Hi! Let's talk, I setup a Discord server https://discord.gg/TgnGQnMU, please join and let's brainstorm
I joined 👋