I’m fed up with working for people that don’t value me, and expect me to give everything to make the founders and investors rich.
So here I am looking to make my own software development company.
I’m still trying to refine and tune this idea into something that would actually work and solve the problems many of us face in this community.
Here’s my idea.
Equally split profit sharing among all employees (including me) no matter if you’re fresh out of college or working for 25 years.
My theory here is that when everyone is paid equally there is equally shared responsibilities over everyone’s success.
There is no difference in my opinion from someone being a senior dev designing systems and being a junior dev handling grunt tasks. All work is equally valuable to the success of a product. The work is just different.
This would promote a loosely flat ranking structure where each person is encouraged to do the work they enjoy doing and either excel at or want to be better at.
There would be no promotion or raise to chase. The entire focus is entirely on you doing what you want with little to no barriers.
So you’re probably thinking why profit sharing instead of equity. I can’t wrap my head around how equity would work if someone quits early on taking a large stake with them leaving everyone in the future essentially working to make a large stakeholder rich. Do I dangle a stake in front of them for several years? I would never take a job like that. I have absolutely no plans to get funding, get acquired or go public as I don’t want to be held at gunpoint to investors and only want to do what’s best for the company (employees, products and clients). So the equity would essentially be useless anyway right?
So what happens to the equity/ownership of the entity? Frankly I have no idea how to make this part work. I don’t think anyone is going to trust someone to have 100% equity and not sell out. Does a company wide contract solve this? In my view the company would self destruct anyway if there was a hint of bad intent here.
With profit sharing you reap the benefits as soon as there is money without a dangling carrot or golden exit. Profit sharing just seems simpler to manage and less of a hassle to try to negotiate. With profit sharing every person is equally responsible for the success of the company and each other.
I have a concern this might lead to finger pointing and ousting low performance members but I want to build a culture that fosters growth and psychological safety. I want every person to be respected and given the opportunity to learn instead of scolded and not be punished for it.
What about base salary? Absolutely would include a base salary of at minimum $80k ideally $100k (again equal for everyone) to give every person a comfortable living salary once the company makes enough money. Fully remote work so live wherever you want. Ideally the best benefits I can get for the value so nobody has to worry about unexpected expenses.
How do I plan to balance how much to spend on growth and keep for profit sharing? I’m frugal by nature so I think this is my strong suit, but ultimately my decision making will come down to how much risk can we take on to invest in something, what the reward is and how does it impact the team. I want to be able to say one day everyone is making 200K+ a year.
How do I plan to make money? Early on probably a mix of consulting, and contract work if needed. Ideally though early members have their main job to rely on income (I do too), and we can focus on building smaller products part time that can make some money. This is probably the biggest hurdle I would face and I think the easiest solution would be for me would be to build a product on my own that can sustain at least 1 developer, and use that as my snowball.
How about the time invested early on when there is no profit? This is a tricky problem to solve and outside of a “banked time” (DKP?) system I can’t think of other solutions that are fair.
Once there is some revenue coming in the plan would be to take on larger initiatives and incubate ideas. I have several product and game ideas I think would be potentially profitable, but every person is encouraged to contribute their ideas as well. Since again we’re all equally invested. I imagine I would possibly have all types of people interested, so it’s possible there would be different verticals/divisions all supporting the core principles of the company. E.g. consulting division, core platforms/products, game dev, etc.
One thing I struggle with as a developer is I don’t want to bring new ideas to the table that will only profit the company, with profit sharing you own the products just as much as anyone else and we all reap the benefits. I’m an inventor at heart and I just want to build cool shit and not be held to a company policy preventing me from doing it.
Outside of this, I want to encourage a healthy work life balance of either 5-6 hour days or 4 days a week, and you have the autonomy and freedom to choose if you want to work more as someone who benefits from profit sharing. There is no point in forcing people to work 40 hours when half the time you know you’re on Reddit. Unlimited PTO (no but really, not a scam I swear)
Ultimately my goal is to build a company that’s put employees first and make it the best place anyone has ever worked. I think that with this mindset we will grow organically very quickly.
Is there anyone here that thinks this would not be sustainable, too ambitious?
Is this something you would consider? What would you change? Would you feel you would be treated fairly?
Sorry if some of this looks like rambling, I’m writing this from my phone and didn’t really plan it out.