Thanks for sharing your opinion. We made the video by creating a listing on our site, issuing alternative compensation, and working with someone to develop it. Our founders are all engineers and designers who work solely on the product, which we admit is not perfect (our product is less than 6 weeks old). We look forward to (hopefully) changing your mind about us in the future.
Why would you ever agree to work for a company that builds useless products, regardless of pay?
In our experience, founders have spent money on their ideas. However, many bootstrapped startups (particularly the hardware engineering companies we have helped) don't have enough for talent and prototyping. When equity is issued these companies are bringing on partners, not gullible engineers. Just my two cents, please let me know if you see it differently.
I'm curious about why you think that? Most of the startups that have used our service so far have been started by engineers (including myself) that need help building a product they actually believe in... not just idea people going after the first thing that comes to mind.
Also, when equity has been issued it was typically in the 10-30% range. Essentially, businesses are using this as a way to find partners - not to dupe engineers.
Would anything change your mind about that? If you wanted to test a hypothesis for a risky business idea and didn't want to sink cash into it, would it be worth it?
Would you prefer a method to pay cash for labor instead?
So would you prefer a combination of equity and cash? We are always open to ideas and would consider including that functionality. Lots of people seem to be mentioning that concern.
We agree with you, however, this is a way to turn an idea into a minimum viable product without spending money. This may not be the best way to build a full product, but our philosophy is the more hypotheses you can test without spending cash the better off you are. Thoughts?
What did you have in mind? We hear from the community that some combination of equity and cash would be helpful, but I'm curious what other ideas you had?