As part of a series I intend to give away a business idea once a week for the next month. The pre-post to this is here, essentially the ideas I will provide are ones which I have not personally managed to use yet, and don’t think them personally viable in the short to to long term future - hence I am giving them away to you, for free! ( a link in return wouldn’t hurt :D)
This weeks one I call “Skill Investment” or “SkillVest”
The idea in brief was that there are a huge amount of job sites, places to get jobs doing almost anything. One thing there isn’t is a way people can online easily find start ups in which they can provide their work as an investment in the equity of the startup/fledgling company. The Job sites that are out there do their job well, but allow no room for equity propositions as a pose to wages.This came about because I had a spare day in the week at one point and I considered that if I could provide, say PHP or web development services to a start up company, in return for perhaps 5%, then was I able to do that for 20 start ups, the equivalent in return would potentially be a better gamble than simply filling the time with paid web work.This idea would work - I am significantly sure there are many people willing to work in return for equity in startup co’s. I am also very sure that start up’s need a good way to easily find people to fulfil jobs on the cheap that are willing to give up equity.
It is a lot more complicated than your standard site, with the equity part being a lot more legally confusing, especially across international borders. An Escrow like service would be needed to be established in order to enforce the payment of users. Or perhaps not?
If you think this is a good idea then please feel free to act on it, if you would like to chat about the idea or maybe include me please feel free to email me at woody *at* critix.co.uk.In the mean time if you want to read up some of my other ideas about business please do: