Great discussion, guys. It's something that I wondered about when I was watching the live streams from the camp at the weekend. I missed the first night, so I wasn't sure how the groups had been created, and I missed the project 'whittling' phase.
For StartupCamp to be viable, I think it's necessary to remove the question of equity share from the start. Make it clear that one person owns the IP for each project; contributors may be entitled to a share of revenue, but not the equity or IP. As a suggestion, what about if anyone could submit a project proposal for development? As that one person will retain the IP and equity rights, they would need to have the project well defined before the development began, which might help accelerate development and produce greater results in the short amount of time available. There could then be a project selection process (panel/random/ whatever). Contributors with relevant skills put their hands up, perhaps without even knowing what the projects are, but clear in the knowledge that they will not own IP or equity in the resultant business, but might benefit from generated revenue and will get to enjoy the "journey". I think that the buzz of being involved in such an event will still provide plenty of candidates willing to donate their time on that basis. There is a question as to whether anyone with a decent idea would use StartupCamp or develop the idea themselves. But it seems that uT.ag was pre-conceived, and I'd be happy to submit ideas for development in this way, so I can only presume that at least some other people would submit ideas, too. As a complete alternative, Bart/StartupCamp could pose a problem at the start of the weekend and the teams would then compete against each other to find the best solution. With no pre-conceptions, IP rights could equitably be shared between all members in the team, provided they pulled their weight during the development. Does anyone know if Bart had any ideas on how this would work? I remember him being asked this late on Saturday and he seemed to have been more interested in just getting the camp going than in the detail, which I think is testament to his good intentions. I think it's only fair that he (or a central StartupCamp entity) benefits from the additional exposure that projects will inevitably get from being involved in StartupCamp. It has certainly given the 3 projects from the weekend a boost, and you'd expect that to continue so long as the projects remain of such high quality. There seems to be so much good stuff happening at the moment. The last thing anyone would want to happen is to create bad feeling within the community by a successful idea creating more litigation than inspiration. I think the only way to be sure of that is to make the rules, whatever they may be, clear from the start. -- Paul Middleton http://webequity.org/ --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Silicon Beach Australia" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/silicon-beach-australia?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
