[ideaphore]

That's very interesting. I think this assumes that companies will be asking their crowd to do for them what they do for a living. But we are focusing on customer development (e.g. surveys, interview), and business development (introductions, and social media shares). These are useful, simple things that startups need and are fairly fungible in terms of time-value. For less fungible work, like what you do for a living, those will likely be limited to instances when the company is hiring. In this way, they can distribute one project to all the people who pledge time to that tier and interview the best result(s). Everyone else gets a reward. Also, the site will be gamified in that for every hour you pledge, you'll be given an hour. In other words, if you pledge 100 hours to take surveys and do social media shares, you'll be able to run your own campaign and raise 100 hours for your project for free.

[brudgers]

100 hours of someone else's work means lots of my time coordinating and supervising it...and a non-trivial probability that I will not like what I get. I mean, my first thought regarding social media shares is that someone will just write a bot or outsource it to someone with a bot.

But again to the economics. There is an implication that the companies using the platform are doing so as an alternative (and perhaps not by choice) to capitalization. Betting (time or money) on an under-capitalized company is not the same as betting on a long shot (VC's bet on adequately capitalized long-shots).

Anyway, the proof will always be whether or not people adopt the platform.