[27fingies]

> IMO one of the challenges I've never personally seen solved well is how to truly share the fruits of success with all the people who were necessary for it to happen.

I always thought a co-op would be an interesting model but I don’t really know how to synthesize that with raising venture capital

[jll29]

There's "VC as gambling" and "VC as a science".

Most VCs are herd animals that gamble: they follow others and are afraid to lose out. But they never have the guts to bite first.

Conducting VC investment as a scientific/engineering discipline means thinking about systematically constructing 10x, 100x, 1000x wealth from the capital given, in a systematic way, and while minimizing risk. So your thoughts about rewarding everyone that is included in making a startup a success is a very good idea.

Co-cops sound leftist, but actually mean sharing risk and reward, so economically that makes sense. I had a related idea: imagine 10 entrepreneurs that trust each other, all involved in independent startups that do not compete with each other. They take a 5% stake in each other's business. Suddenly your assets as a founder include 10 stakes in 10 companies, which means you have an interest in the fact that not just you, but also your 9 trusted friends make it, and you will happily make your network available to them accordingly. Given that 9/10 startups fail (a cruel but true descriptive statistic), you will not even necessarily lose if your own startup does not make it. If most would not give 5% of their own startup for another particular startup's 5% stake, this may also be a pretty good litmus test that the idea may be flawed.

Pooling risk is what insurances do as their business model. Startup entrepreneurs have not yet embraced this idea to self-organize in this way.

[whiplash451]

It’s a very tempting idea, but in your model, each founder now has 95% vested in other companies than their own, meaning that they will start spending much more time on other businesses than their own (the brain follows the incentive) which means that they basically give up on their startup. I think this model is flawed (but again, very tempting).

[KiranRao0]

I don't see that as explicitly a bad thing.

If a rational founder thinks they can gain more by working on their friends startup, it might be better for the collective to have more people working on the more promising project.

[AQuantized]

I don't think giving away 45% of your business for a 'network' is going to make sense in most cases, especially given the networking opportunities already available for e.g. YC companies, and it's going to be hard to explain to investors.

[HWR_14]

The idea would not be for a network. It would be to increase the odds of being part of a runaway success.

[HWR_14]

I have been interested in this idea for a while, but it seems that no one else is.