I will build your product in exchange for equity | Hacker News Reader

I will build your product in exchange for equity

buildforequity.com

I would be curious to see how far you get with this approach.

It's very smart to ask to see some paying customers but that means they already have something developed and you won't be the first engineer joining. Hopefully they would be willing to give you enough equity to make your efforts worthwhile (assuming you're ok taking little to no salary)

Customers ready to pay is slightly more valuable than having done no customer development but of course a large portion of these maybe customers may never pay regardless which is still pretty high risk for you.

Good luck with it and please report back your results.

Thanks for the comment, Emrah!

I "slightly" disagree with requiring previous engineering work.

In my experience, from having paying customers or people willing to pay to keeping them is very different and requires an actually robust and stable technology (unlike the prototype, landing page, or MVP required for validation). I'm focusing on turning a valid idea into a profitable business, if that makes sense.

That being said, this is an experiment. I wrote a little bit more about what drove me to build it at https://news.onbrn.com/im-starting-build-for-equity if you're curious.

Thanks again, and I'll report back!

“If you're not a white male, I will reduce my equity stake considerably”

Racism, in whatever form, is distasteful.

Thanks for commenting, Tom. I can't tell if you're making an honest uninformed statement, or a troll and I'm feeding, but I choose the first.

If you're the race (or in this case a group) that's the oppressor (not the oppressed), you're not a victim of racism. Maybe this article will help clarify it: https://metro.co.uk/2020/03/09/can-white-people-experience-r...

Additionally, the reason why I say "white male" instead of just "white people" is because white women are also presented with less opportunities than white males. I'm trying to make this a better opportunity for minorities.

Thanks for the article. I simply disagree that racism is should be defined in terms of historical power structures as the article suggests. Racism - or discrimination on the basis of race - is repellent to me in any form.

Simply put, I don’t want to treat anyone differently on the basis of their skin colour.

Thanks for the explanative answer! I've felt similarly to you before, until I dug deeper into the subject and realized that for white privilege to "disappear", it requires the privileged to do more than just "stop seeing color".

I wish I didn't have to treat anyone differently, but I feel like I should give minorities some benefit, as they have less access to opportunities.

Do you have an idea of how I could convey that without using the "white male" term or language?

For example, you could remove that statement from your site and discuss that during the negotiation. At that time, you don't have to explicitly ask "are you white male?" either. You can do a video meeting and you'll know who they are. Then you can adjust your equity percentage accordingly without even mentioning you are giving them a discount because they are a minority, or you want more equity because they are oppressors. In my opinion, that would be the neutral way to handle this.

Otherwise, I agree with the other comments here that, whether you are favoring minorities or the oppressors, you are still categorizing people in your head and feeding the very concepts we need to pay no attention at all.

Thank you for the suggestion, Emrah! From what I've been exposed to from people in minorities who are actively working towards diversifying the tech space, "paying no attention" is part of the problem of systemic racism, thus requiring an active discrimination against the privileged, in order to try and balance things out.

It's not a comfortable thing to do, because it can feel wrong, indeed.

I would be happy to consider removing that sentence if someone with more experience in this subject explained me it was hurting rather than helping diversification.

Only white male?

What was it that made you come to that conclusion?

Thanks for commenting, Avtomatk. I can't tell if you're asking a honest question or a troll and I'm feeding, but I choose the first.

I'm trying to make it a better opportunity for people in minorities (i.e. not white males), since there are more opportunities for the rest.

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