IDEA: App Ideation Group

• Insight: We're all craving working on something we really believe in
• Insight: We're all craving working on something we have more control over
  • We all believe in self-organized teams
• Meet one night a week?
• Each person presents 1 idea for an app
  • Or maybe we only have time for 1 idea per week
• Group tries to assess feasibility of profitability
  • Estimated cost of MVP
    • Assume $200/hr for our labor
    • Assume things will take twice as long as expected
  • Estimated monthly costs
    • Infrastructure
    • Support
    • Marketing
  • Estimated pricing
  • Estimated customer base
  • Estimated revenue
  • Difficulty marketing and selling
  • Likely competition
  • Likely road blocks
  • Any legal concerns?
• We'd need to come up with a way to split equity for any projects we implement
  • Hourly rate for labor (sweat equity)
    • Design, coding, infrastructure work, additional ideation, meetings, coordinating outsourced work
    • I think $200/hr seems fair for our group
      • Especially when none of us have to pay that
        • It would all come out of future revenues
  • Shares for coming up with the original idea
    • This one is hardest to determine
    • A standard percentage?
      • But all our other shared valuations are expressed in hours/$
    • Voting by the membership?
      • I like this idea
        • It also helps determine which ideas are worth pursuing
        • It provides some gamification
      • Vote how many hours/$ the idea is worth
      • Vote how many hours/$ you'd be willing to contribute to see an MVP built
        • Is really hard to take these commitments as very stable though
  • Shares for being part of ideation meetings
    • Should that include previous ideation meetings?
  • Shares for actual money spent on infrastructure, outsourcing, etc.
    • Probably at a multiple of money spent
      • Because this is money put at risk of loss
        • Opportunity cost of time spent is also high, but we're compensating a lot for that, and that's opportunity cost, not necessarily actual cost
• Membership requirements
  • Invitation only
    • Supermajority approval (75%?)
  • Proven (to other members) record of intelligence, good ideas, and ability to execute building applications
• Governance
  • Group would need a way to vote people in
    • Keeping the group small (4-10) would probably be best
    • Supermajority (75%?)
  • Group would need a way to vote people out
    • Supermajority (75%?)
  • Individual projects would be governed based on voting by the shares in the project
    • Would probably need a way for people to get out
      • Asked by the team to no longer contribute
        • Some supermajority (60%?) of shares would probably be fair for this
      • Bought out from future profits
        • This is hard to figure out an answer to
        • Depends a lot on whether all sweat equity has been paid off or not
        • Depends a lot on expected future profits, time value of money, etc.
        • Depends a lot on how much the project itself has in assets
        • Depends on whether they're being pushed out or wanting to get out
        • Majority rule (by shares) could cut someone out of too much money that they're owed
          • So it's important that we figure this out ahead of time
          • Requiring a supermajority might prevent someone from getting out when they need/want to