All valid questions. We are adding more information about the company, the people and the business model of Founderpool.

Founderpool does take a share of the pool of equity as platform fee, it will be transparent and will be publicly available.

Thank you for the feedback.

Agreed, I'd also like to see more transparency - nevertheless, this is exciting. Good luck!

Exactly the response I wish every founder has ready, when they hear this line of objection from their VC.

Because of the condition for participation in the pool is that your stock should continue to vest, for the membership shares in the pool to continue to vest.

Wait so your startup has to continue to grow in order for you to be able to claim profits from the pool? Doesn't that defeat the purpose?

Exactly correct

Founderpool is based on peer selection. The belief is people are better able to pick companies in their vertical better.

But it is true that larger pool across sectors is more diversified

I LOVE hearing stories like yours, and they inspire us everytime.

You hit the nail on the head. The sad fact is that as an entrepreneur grows and matures, his risk tolerance goes down.

Founderpool's mission is to maintain the entrepreneurial risk tolerance as you grow and acquire skills and connections, by reducing the opportunity cost over time. We believe it can have a positive systemic impact on the startup ecosystem.

I believe founder institute does as well, but in their case they divide uo the pool into 4 parts, 3 of which go to FI, they local chapter, mentors and one back to founders if I remember right

Was about mentioning this as an FI alumni.. Awesome idea, kudos to the team.

Thank you.

Founderpool are not affiliated with YC in any way. I am not sure who suggested that. I am part of the founderpool team.

Thanks for noting your affiliation. The YC question came up because of the OP's comment "This is one of the most founder requested features in YC", which makes it sound like the company is well-connected to the accelerator.

How did you decide to do this as a regular post instead of a "Show HN"? Did you already do one, or make a strategic decision? Who else among the commenters is affiliated with the company?

We decided it is of interest to the founders in the audience and not necessarily as a show HN (which is in our mind a tool specific people like to play with)

Only three people are with Founderpool. me, manoj and geoburke

Priced round is for indexing the value of stock being assigned to the pool.

If the founder has liquidity, before joining the pool, he would be joining the pool right?

Or did I misunderstand?

My question was a little different. FounderPool provides a lot of diversification (relative to shares in 1 company) and potentially, earlier liquidity. But if I’m able to sell shares into a funding round, don’t I get that anyway?

I’d get cash rather than shares in a fund (and later, cash), but for someone interested in doing this, getting cash seems like the goal and is still investable elsewhere.

So, why not take the shares I’d contribute to FounderPool and sell them into my B round? If I want outsized exposure to a small set of equities other than my own, I could invest that cash in 10 smaller public equities and still get high-variance outcomes - maybe I pick a future Shopify, probably I don’t - but for someone after liquidity anyway, that part doesn’t seem like a feature.

If you can sell shares on the open market, that's certainly a win, but it's likely to occur until series C and many boards may block secondary market sales as it competes with the company's own ability to raise capital.

That is a great point. We spent a lot of time thinking about the adverse selection issue.We narrowed in on Peer selection with stable matching, which seems to mitigate this issue. We are learning..