Aside from these complications I also don’t see much if any benefit to regular founders of this “give away equity early” arrangement outside the scope of support from an AIM or a similar social enterprise organization that actually aims to help their business.
Founder’s Pledge pitch to founders (and other HNW individuals) is straightforward: pledge to give away part of your wealth when you think it’s optimal from the perspective of value maximization, donation opportunities, exit strategy, tax efficiency and they’ll present donation opportunities which align with your priorities and approach to evidence.
Whereas this proposal seems to be “give us some of your equity and we’ll decide if, when and what we donate it to”. If founders want a fund to do the allocations for them they’ll find funds that will accept their equity as soon as it becomes liquid anyway, and those funds will be able to make decisions on cashing out and disbursal without the admin costs of being small shareholders in many pre-profit or never to be profitable startups so they’ll probably be more efficient at doing so.
I think there’s probably room for more variations on the Founder’s Pledge model, but I don’t see this proposal being it in its current form.
Aside from these complications I also don’t see much if any benefit to regular founders of this “give away equity early” arrangement outside the scope of support from an AIM or a similar social enterprise organization that actually aims to help their business.
Founder’s Pledge pitch to founders (and other HNW individuals) is straightforward: pledge to give away part of your wealth when you think it’s optimal from the perspective of value maximization, donation opportunities, exit strategy, tax efficiency and they’ll present donation opportunities which align with your priorities and approach to evidence.
Whereas this proposal seems to be “give us some of your equity and we’ll decide if, when and what we donate it to”. If founders want a fund to do the allocations for them they’ll find funds that will accept their equity as soon as it becomes liquid anyway, and those funds will be able to make decisions on cashing out and disbursal without the admin costs of being small shareholders in many pre-profit or never to be profitable startups so they’ll probably be more efficient at doing so.
I think there’s probably room for more variations on the Founder’s Pledge model, but I don’t see this proposal being it in its current form.