FounderPool

De-Risking startup founders by pooling equity

18 followers

De-Risking startup founders by pooling equity

18 followers

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Pool your startup equity with inspiring, VC-backed founders vested in your success. Diversify your financial risk and increase your odds of an exit. FounderPool is your go-to resource for Investor Intros, Hiring Referrals, Growth Advice, Partnerships & more.

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Very cool! This seems pretty useful! I have some questions: 1. Do you plan to have a demo day and help connect startups in pools to investors? 2. What is the minimum amount a company needs to raise to be considered? 3. How many companies per pool? 4. How much equity do companies typically give into a pool?

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6yr ago

FounderPool

Maker

@brandon_goldman 1. Great question. We are not an incubator or a fund and we don't do demo days. We will help all founders with connections and investor intros as much as we can, if needed. But the bigger network is the investors in other founders in the pool. We make it easy to share investor pipelines. 2. There is no minimum, but so far, companies have at least raised a seed round from notable investors 3. Depends on the pool composition. Early stage pools will have more, we are targeting ~30-40/peool. Later stage ones have less per pool. There is a crossover as well. 4. We target 5% of Founders' vested equity, so that it provides a meaningful diversification and moves the needle for them when an exit happens in their pool

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6yr ago

@brandon_goldman @chandraduggirala regarding 2., what if the startup is self-funded? Perhaps traction can justify a plunge in the pool?

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6yr ago

FounderPool

Maker

@brandon_goldman @hurty_ That is a great question. We are working on pooling equity for self funded startups based on metrics other than funding rounds. More to come soon...

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6yr ago

Interesting idea. Reminds me of: https://twitter.com/BurakYngn/st... Similar to what I said there..it's not unlike how the insurance industry was born, where the risks of few who went to sea (literally) were shared with the many who didn't. I have a (printed) copy of the Titanic's underwriting 1-pager somewhere :L Venture capital isn't unlike the insurance, except VCs love outliers, while insurance underwriters and actuaries don't. FounderPool is a fascinating concept; in of itself I think it's predicated more on VC portfolio theory rather than insurance. How do the pools get matched? Edit: just watched your video. You've pretty much answered that—awesome approach to start with.

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6yr ago

FounderPool

Maker

@lynnastyie Yup. Early insurance were mutually self-forming pools against catastrophe. But unlike the insurance space, the math here works under the Power Law, where most will fail and only a few will be breakout winners, supporting the rest. It's not downside insurance but more like upside insurance.

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6yr ago

FounderPool

Maker

@lynnastyie And regarding Burak Yenigun... https://twitter.com/geoburke/sta...

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6yr ago

@george_burke I only know this stuff as have a degree in risk and insurance from way back but these days more interested in product, startups and venture. Still a lot of shared concepts between them. Re power law, shows up everywhere doesn't it! I was a bit sloppy above, meant power law and portfolio theory. On ya, I did see Burak Yenigun mentioned you guys in his post when I went looking back on it! Hope the rest of the day on PH goes well.

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6yr ago

FounderPool

Maker

@lynnastyie Love the conversation.

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6yr ago

So the lessons learned from the pandemic, market crashes, and political upheavals is to repackage the same casino capital scheme that causes market crashes and political upheavals via the concentration of wealth and toxic assets (startup equity)? Let's take 2008 for example: A privileged cohort: Startup Founders // Wall Street Pooling private equity: Startup Equity // Mortgage Backed Security Derivatives Targeted predatory behavior towards: New Founders with Profitable Ideas // Low-Income Homeowners Anticipating turnover with Insider Knowledge of Portfolio: FounderPool-backed metrics // Housing/Construction Inventory Exploitation of Non-Privileged Cohort via Pump and Dump: Non-Founder (non-equity workers) layoffs via low profitability // Millions of (preventable) foreclosures, evictions, homeless "Wash the Hands" Exit Plan: Utilize Private Network to concentrate new market entries otherwise not afforded to non-Founders // Utilize Public Infrastructure to concentrate new market entries otherwise not afforded to non-bailout recipients Society's progress depends on you ... to organize labor against venture capital.

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6yr ago

FounderPool

Maker

@ravi_bajnath FounderPool is organizing founders to reduce their career risk and not be dependent on venture capital. You must have missed that part. Insurance pools risky assets to derisk individual actors. Is that toxic too?

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6yr ago

@chandraduggirala I didn't miss anything, your rhetoric and product is really easy to analyze and compare to contemporary examples. Let's take the economic innovations derived from the Atlantic Slave Trade: massive underwriting schemas for casualty insurance to recuperate from the deaths of Africans in the Middle Passage (a capital asset). Was it moral for Lloyds of London, Barclays, Chase, and all of the private investors to pool together assets to enable the Plantation Economy? No, but it was massively beneficial to private interests because we're still reinvesting their slavery-derived wealth. Reducing someone's career risk by joining an exploitative enterprise is no different than joining the mafia. Society's progress depends on you!

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6yr ago

FounderPool

Maker

@ravi_bajnath You seem to have a lot of issues with a lot of things. Sorry we can't fix all of society's issues with FounderPool. But we wish you all the success in fixing them.

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6yr ago

@chandraduggirala Of course, I'm from Florida, so that statement will always be true lol. Calling out exploitation in society is part of fixing society, FounderPool continues that mode of exploitation in many dimensions. Popular Education for a Sustainable Future

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6yr ago

FounderPool

Maker

Hi PH! Hats off to you tech startup founders willing to sacrifice an insane amount of time, money, and social & family life. You dare to defy extreme uncertainty to pursue startup success. Society's progress depends on you! De-risking Founders My co-founders and I have been through the startup grind many times. We’ve experienced the journey filled with extreme uncertainty. We know that there are black swans always stalking you, waiting to destroy years of sacrifice and effort. Pandemics, market crashes, political upheavals, you name it. Unfortunately, when startups fail, most founders can’t just start over. Responsibilities grow, opportunity costs mount, and your risk tolerance goes down fast. Many founders are forced to give up their dream and get back to a 9-5 job. There should be a better way. We believe there is. @george_burke, @manoj_duggirala, and I built FounderPool to minimize the opportunity cost of being a founder. More importantly, it is a community built on incentive alignment, which supports founders and increases the odds of success. FounderPool is a community of founders invested in each other, using an equity swap. You put a percentage of your equity into a pool alongside other founders you respect. All founders in a pool are invested in each other and are incentivized to help each other succeed. The most interesting thing about this is that you get exposure to a bunch of startups not by forking over cold, post-tax cash, but your common stock. Being part of the pool not only diversifies your financial risk, but also instantly upgrades your network. Imagine an army of friends who inspire you, teach you best practices, ready to fight for you, and are strongly incentivized to see you succeed. This is your go-to for investor intros, growth tactics, hiring help, partnerships, advice, psychotherapy :) and more! Since June, we went from concept to 100 companies that have collectively raised ~$1 BILLION, from Pre-Seed to Series D, with many backed by YC, Sequoia, a16z, Founders Fund, Khosla, First Round, etc. The interest we have received humbled us. In July we were on the front page of HackerNews for the entire day with over 200 comments. https://go.founderpool.co/hacker... Our mission is to help entrepreneurs grow together. We’d love PH feedback. If any of you are going through the founder journey, check out https://founderpool.co

Thanks a Billion.

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6yr ago

@george_burke @manoj_duggirala @chandraduggirala Guys, How about a launched, but PRE VC category???

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6yr ago

Was fun talking with George and Chandra today about a real deal project

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6yr ago

FounderPool

Maker

@keydinnerclub Thanks for the compliment and thanks for having us on your show. (BTW interviewing people on or before PH launch day and then commenting with the video = great idea for distribution and viewership)

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6yr ago

Amazing product concept, who's your largest established competitor? What separates your product from theirs?

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6yr ago

FounderPool

Maker

@amit_tyagi6 Thank you. PandoPooling is the one we noticed but they are focused on atheletes and MBAs

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6yr ago

FounderPool

Maker

@amit_tyagi6 Great question. Although plenty of groups have casually pooled equity, and while a few VCs allow their founders to share as LPs in the portfolio, no one has productized this specifically for founders.

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6yr ago

Product Hunt

Many people have talked about exploring this but it hasn't taken off (yet!). I'm curious if something's changed that makes this more likely to succeed now, @george_burke, @chandraduggirala, @manoj_duggirala?

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6yr ago

FounderPool

Maker

@george_burke @manoj_duggirala @rrhoover Great question. 1. The density of the network. More startups now than 10 years ago, but also much more deeply connected. 2. Startups have become more luck dependent (wrote about it here: https://medium.com/@csentropy/2-...) 3. The perception of luck and uncertainty as factors in startup success is increasing amongst founders from our own surveys. We think together they suggest a tipping point. More impoirtantly, these informal networks like the paypal mafia have existed before. Our goal is to build the infrastructure for that strong network formally and for everyone.

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6yr ago

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Thanks a Billion.