| I think you've got a great idea here. Why? To explain why, let's have a look at another recent post to HN: "First 100 Days Of Dio" (Programming Language): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22828111 What's the deal with that post? Well, as is all too common these days(!), someone wrote another programming language and posted a link to their site on HN... But but! Hear me out... You see, YC (or any other large, or even small investor) won't touch such a new language inventor with a 10-foot pole. But that doesn't mean that I (and other) HN users might not be interested in contributing a small amount of money to them, maybe $5-$100. Now, what would sweeten that deal on the other side -- would be to get stock, even if the shares are unofficial or even virtual, even if the company hasn't been formed yet. If you can't call that "stock" for legal reasons, then call it "an agreement which will result in the actual awarding of actual shares when/if a company is formed in the future". Now you've got a platform for microtransactions. Oh sure, perhaps nothing ever happens with the language, perhaps the guy quits or goes under, but you are completely up-front and transparent with your users, informing them that precisely that sort of thing could happen... Even better would be to take 100 such fledgling companies that only need $5-$100 from a small amount of investors, and put them into a "bucket". That way, if 98 of them fail, 1 of them stalls, but 1 of them goes on to form a sucessful company, then everybody wins. That's the way large institutionalized VC's invest. They're always making 12 bets, knowing that 11 will fail, 1 will break even, and 1 will succeed and make them their money back... Why not bring those same ideas to a smaller market of "untouchables"? ? |