Pool your equity with a power network of founders and access the power tools every founder needs.
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A startup called FounderPool has created a unique 'insurance' to help founders get rich even if their startups,
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FounderPool matches you with founders from your industry or adjacent verticals and/or complementary backgrounds and skill sets.
You get to connect with and rate founders and their companies. Pools are constructed based on mutual ratings.
Once you’re invited to join, you contribute upto 5% of the equity you own (your vested common stock) to the pool and get a proportionate amount of pool ownership in return.
FounderPool tools help you with Investor introductions, growth tactics, customer relationships and whatever else you need. Your pool is your personal support group that helps, inspires, and grows with you through your founder journey. Think of it as your team of Avengers or your own Paypal mafia.
VC @ VillageGlobal
Big misalignment between founders & VCs:
VCs take dozens and dozens of shots on goal, founders only take one.
Founders should band together & share upside. VCs should facilitate this.
CEO @ Pipe & Angel Investor
If VCs can raise new funds off the back of paper markups and stack new mgmt fees, why is it taboo for founders and team to do similar via secondary if they’re all in & need to spend 10 yrs building one thing while potentially getting married, having kids etc. along the way.
ex-YC President
Everyone claims that they understand the power law in angel investing, but very few people practice it. I think this is because it’s hard to conceptualize the difference between a 3x and a 300x (or 3000x) return.
It’s common to make more money from your single best angel investment than all the rest put together. The consequence of this is that the real risk is missing out on that outstanding investment...
Instead of downside risk... think about upside risk—not getting to invest in the company that will provide the return everyone is looking for.
Founder’s field guide
...the best safety net is the wisdom of the community and the experience of fellow entrepreneurs.
Founder DFJ, Futures Ventures
Investors say 'Don't take the early M&A offer. Build the business'. But sometimes it's so tempting to take the security. .......partial founder liquidity can relieve that and get investors and founders on the same page to say Lets go for the dream. Lets go for the big opportuity and not worry that it'll be ruinous.
VC @ Social Capital
The average founder is finished. Only the most resourceful and resilient will survive. Using a “crazy” number like 36months should reset your timeframe. This isn’t a 3-6month thing. It may be measured in years...
Investor
The great majority of investments I made, I don't expect them to make it honestly through this trough. I just don't.
Pandemics. Market crashes.
Unexpected risks always threaten your years of work and sacrifice
Engineer your own luck
Your startup may become the next great company. It’ll take years and sacrifice and opportunity cost to find out.
Use equity as leverage
FounderPool allows you to unlock the value of your equity and diversify your risk before an exit.
Grow together
Advisors who rarely help you are dime a dozen. Founders who are in your shoes are the best resource. Share the best insights from the people in the trenches like you.
When you are part of a pool, every founder is incentivized to help you succeed. Your pool is your support network and your tribe. Share, educate and develop relationships.
Founders pledge a small portion of their vested equity to a pool consisting of equity contributed by other similarly situated, mutually selected founders. This group becomes jointly vested in each other’s success, and each member has a long-term hedge provided by the overall performance of the pool’s equity.
Your transfer of a portion of your personal equity stake in your own startup is governed by the transfer rules that your company has in place. In some cases, this could require approval by your board of directors. We can help explain to your board why participation in FounderPool is a win/win that helps ensure that you as a founder remains aligned with the interests of your company’s investors (by providing some measure of hedging against a loss that allows the founder (you) more flexibility in pursuing an ambitious, long-term, high-value exit for the company — while building a helpful network and focusing on your company instead of financial worries).
You are welcome to apply and explore the opportunity, with no obligation to join a pool. We will help you meet like-minded entrepreneurs, and explain the details of our program. Should you and others you meet through FounderPool (or know already) mutually agree to form a pool, we’ll be there to help.
The equity you transfer to a pool will appear on your capitalization table as the pool being the owner of a small portion of your company’s common stock. This should not have any financial or legal ramifications that would be of significance to potential new preferred investors. And your participation in the program should be seen as a positive thing by VCs. You didn’t “cash out” (sell your shares and put money in your pocket), and yet you took a step to align yourself with a community of other founders and advisors who can be of future benefit for hiring, operations, customer introductions, strategic advice, and much more — all while increasing your risk tolerance in a way that lets you strive for a large long-term outcome for your own company.
by Paul Graham, Founder of YCombinator
If company management companies existed, there would be an additional service they could offer clients: they could let them insure their returns by pooling their risk. After all, even a perfect manager can't save a company when, as sometimes happens, its whole market dies... When you signed up, you'd trade your company's stock for shares of this pool, in proportion to an estimate of your company's value that you'd both agreed upon. Then you'd automatically get your share of the returns of the whole pool.
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by Chandra Duggirala, CEO of FounderPool
Startups require luck. All successful founders (those that have built “Unicorns”) had great skills and great luck. Skills need no definition, as they are widely understood and recognized. We know them when we see them, be it in engineering, product development, sales, marketing, or operations. But luck is hard to define, so I use Michael Mauboussin’s definition. According to him, luck has two key attributes:
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by Burak Yenigun, Founder at Stylus Capital
TL;DR: The world appears to be suffering from a shortage of entrepreneurs. The main reason is the very risky nature of entrepreneurship: Society pays average founder millions of dollars but pays nothing to the median founder. We could build a financial fix (a founders’ mutual) to ever so slightly reduce this risk. This would move hordes of talent from their safer BigCo jobs into entrepreneurship. It could also give society more innovation per venture dollar risked.
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