Trade and exchange your unpaid work
This concept was originally drafted in 2014
Engineers, designers and other skilled professionals get recruited by startups then get paid nothing in USD if they agree to work for sweat equity. Examples of compensation agreements are ‘pay you later after we get funding’ or ‘issue you stock when it’s issued’. Instead of these loose agreements skilled professionals can be issued virtual currency that’s worth more than their hourly rate for their skill set. Example is ‘paying' an app designer 150 virtual coins/hour [if their market rate is $100/hour]. The virtual currency is deposited into the designer's digital wallet.
The value of the virtual currency holding is determined by the startup in agreement with the designer; where it can be converted into equity in the startup; i.e. stock. Skilled professionals can build a portfolio of virtual currency holdings which represent equity holding in several startups and the industries they operate in. Skilled professionals can sell or exchange their holdings with investors looking to acquire equity in startups.
Platform requirements:
Account system, sign in with popular networks authentication.
Wallet to hold virtual currency accounts.
Transaction service to accept submitted timecards; track processing.
Mining service to generate virtual currency [coin or token] for accepted timecards.
Transaction service to deposit virtual currency or equity into wallets.
Widget for web sites, apps, and hardware to add transaction services.
Distribution service to release, disperse, redeem virtual currency.
Exchange service to buy and sell virtual currency between account holders.
Reporting
Analytics
Update 2024:
The Farcast protocol - and the Warpcast application specifically - has successfully tested tipping as another form of compensation. It works best for [what I refer to as] micro-tasks which are different than tasks a startup needs completed to go to market and get to product market fit. But tips might be sufficient for very early stage startup tasks to get a product ready for release.
Also, artificial intelligence introduces a twist to compensation; where startups need to consider [for example] if go to market tasks can be performed by AI agents. In this model the AI agents are ‘hired’ by startups. Thus who holds the virtual currency wallet for the agents. And, do startups ‘pay’ for time on task or capacity development of the LLMs the agents derive from. Look for a future publication on agent economics; including collective bargaining agreements
.