[zachalexander]

>Seems like there's an adverse selection problem here.

Agreed. I just wrote an essay about this underlying issue of founder risk management [1], in response to PG's recent essay, and along the way I had this exact idea (swapping equity with other startups), and abandoned it because it seemed too complicated, as well as the adverse selection problem.

If it were to work, a major key would be the OP's first bullet point (in the "Gotchas" section of the original proposal) -- implementing a voting system, to ensure the startups in the pool are high quality.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4577525