[vjeux]

All the founding rounds are discrete events. I wonder if there's an opportunity to have a way to do funding in a more continuous way. You can get more people chipping in funding at random points in the life of the company that unlocks over time.

[amasad]

That happens in angel/pre-seed/seed rounds. They're usually much smaller contributions and are much easier to do because you're not giving out equity, you're technically taking debt which will convert to equity on the next equity financing round (usually series A).

Also after an equity round, investors typically have pro-rata rights so you can't take any money without getting their permission and ask them if they'd like to contribute more to maintain their share.

[lacker]

You can do that, it's just stressful. Big company analogy: it's like what if instead of getting headcount allocated just once a year, you had to re-argue about how much headcount your team deserved constantly. ;-)

[madeofpalk]

Regular person analogy: what if you had to negotiate your salary for the week every Monday.

[spiznnx]

What if you were notified what your salary would be every month through an app (uber)?

[tmatthewj]

The closest is convertible equity, adopted by a good number of startups during their seed stage. You can read about SAFE by YC and KISS by 500 Startups, 2 informal instruments / agreements used to do convertible equity.