21 ms·

YC and Founders Pledge

149 points by dwaxe 10y ago

brhsiao 10y ago
I wish Founders Pledge wouldn't break scrolling or include gratuitous, contentless animations. I also learned far more about what they do from Sam's blog post than from their website.
- web007 10y ago
  I can't view any of the individual donors on Chrome. I scroll to the section, see the top of a couple heads, and as I keep going down the page it reverse-scrolls a white bar and it's all gone. What is this style of page? I see it everywhere, most egregiously Medium, where the title and some enormous graphic take up the first full screen and I have to scroll just to get to the content. I can't imagine it converts well, but I also can't imagine so many people using it if it doesn't.
trevyn 10y ago
Are we to take away from this that founder charitable giving is more important than employee equity compensation in YC's eyes? Wouldn't make me want to work at a YC company.
- mkagenius 10y ago
  > charitable giving is more important than employee equity compensation You are probably assuming that employees are definitely under compensated.. what about the case when founder owns only 5% and still wants to donate a part..
  - BinaryIdiot 10y ago
    > You are probably assuming that employees are definitely under compensated.. Seems like that would be pretty typical. Start-up companies, especially YC start-ups, pay under the average for engineers. At least that's been my experience shopping around for a job. So I would expect them to all be under compensated.
  - etjossem 10y ago
    > what about the case when founder owns only 5% and still wants to donate a part.. Seems pretty atypical.
  - loeg 10y ago
    > You are probably assuming that employees are definitely under compensated This is a reasonable assumption about startups.
SandersAK 10y ago
I think this is a neat idea but I wish they would explain this in a simple sentence on their site instead of all the mumbojumbo. Something like This is a Donor-Advised Fund that is completely free to participate in. Donor-Advised Funds are the best way to give when you have a major liquidity event because: Reason 1 Reason 2 Reason 3 Join a community of people who want to do the same. This is useful for you because: Reason 1 Reason 2 Reason 3
- mkagenius 10y ago
  > Donor-Advised Fund This sounds more like mumbojumbo to me
  - nxzero 10y ago
    It's a common term in this context, but would agree it's not completely Plain English either: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donor-advised_fund https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donor-advised_fund
  - loeg 10y ago
    It's a common way to claim tax benefit now, but control (to some extent) giving in the future. E.g., * https://www.vanguardcharitable.org/ https://www.vanguardcharitable.org/ * https://www.fidelitycharitable.org/ https://www.fidelitycharitable.org/
    - ernestipark 10y ago
      These are great avenues for any employee that receives equity to 1. maximize their tax savings, 2. give to charities they care about (in the US). Any stock that's held for over a year that qualifies for long term capital gains can be transferred to a DAF like with Vanguard or Fidelity and you won't be taxed on it at all. Especially if you have a set budget for giving to charities this is a great way to maximize your dollar and extend your budget.
- bradleyjg 10y ago
  Yeah it wasn't clear from reading this article whether or not doing this up front has tax or other benefits that allow the ultimate donated amount to be larger, or it is just a precommitment device.
morgante 10y ago
I really commend YC for supporting this. If my startup ever succeeds, I definitely have a duty to give back to the world which has given me incredibly luck (and benefits). I just took the pledge and realized it would be nice to have a sliding scale based on exit size. If I have a relatively small exit (<$10M), I would prefer to donate substantially less (maybe 10%) but for a larger exit I would scale up closer to 50%. Obviously I can still donate more if I want to, but it would be nice to pre-commit. Also, it would be nice to include an option for employees.
BinaryIdiot 10y ago
I understand giving to charity is great and all but what about employees 10, 35, 97? So someone works hard at a start-up but they weren't among the first dozen or so to join then they likely get next to nothing from an exit. So how about, instead of a pledge to give to charity, founders pledge to give more equity to later employees so only a small handful are not the only ones to profit. Everyone takes a risk joining a start-up. Many times employees use the equity as part of their compensation (right or wrong many do this). If you're joining a start-up that has taken this pledge then you know going in you're likely not going to get as much as another start-up. I don't know this just feels like a way to neuter the company making it less attractive to future employees. How about, instead of counting our chickens before they hatch, we get founders who had a big exit to donate money to charity?
- serg_chernata 10y ago
  Came here to say the same thing. Donating to charities is great but why not donate and invest into your employees who may also happen to be your neighbors.
- tlb 10y ago
  YC also encourages companies to spread more equity among the employees, and eliminate restrictions on exercising options when employees leave. http://blog.samaltman.com/employee-equity http://blog.samaltman.com/employee-equity
- nostrademons 10y ago
  Andrew Mason/Detour proposed something along those lines, but I haven't heard anything more about it since: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9336392 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9336392
- imbenclifford 10y ago
  Ben from FP here. To be clear, founders aren't giving away equity - they are pledging a percentage of what they personally receive on exit. This doesn't reduce the equity that is available for other shareholders.
33a 10y ago
Why not donate it to your employees?
- pjscott 10y ago
  If I had to make a list of people whose lives would be most improved by some extra money, engineers in Silicon Valley would probably not be at the very top of the page.
avivo 10y ago
This is amazing. However, what we need even more is a pledge for e.g. responsible disruption. So companies could devote say 1% of their resources to modeling their effect on the world and compensating for (or designing away) the negative externalities they unintentionally impose. I know that is a much harder problem though, and I hope lessons from Founders Pledge can be applied toward it. Kudos to the team for putting this together though — it's a great initiative.
- tlb 10y ago
  This is an interesting idea. Are there good examples you could point to of analyses of externalities of a company? Other than an oil, or chemical company. For a pure software company, is the answer ever much different than the amount of electricity they use?
  - avivo 10y ago
    Definitely. Here's a small sample. Craigslist unintentionally decimated newspaper revenue from classifieds. http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2013/08/14/sorry-craig-study-finds-craigslist-cost-newspapers-5-billion http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2013/08/14/sorry-c... Twitter unintentionally created opportunities for crazy levels of harassment that bleeds dangerously into the offline world. https://www.buzzfeed.com/charliewarzel/a-honeypot-for-assholes-inside-twitters-10-year-failure-to-s https://www.buzzfeed.com/charliewarzel/a-honeypot-for-asshol... Facebook unintentionally created an industry of hyperpartisan factless discourse that may be fueling demagoguery worldwide. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/28/magazine/inside-facebooks-totally-insane-unintentionally-gigantic-hyperpartisan-political-media-machine.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/28/magazine/inside-facebooks-... That's just off the top of my head, without getting into companies like Uber & AirBnB, or ad targeters, etc. All of these companies provide incredible value, and I mostly prefer to live in a world with them than without them. But it would be great to see more effort put toward mitigation of their unintentional excesses (and to their credit, all three are trying at least a little in various ways).
hamhamed 10y ago
This is a good initiative. Muslims like me have to already give out a fifth (%20) of their earnings every year called Khums https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khums https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khums We also believe from numerous Hadith's that the money comes back in double for those that give. As they say, you can't take with your palms closed.
- MicroBerto 10y ago
  > "have to" What happens if you don't or can't?
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- burkaman 10y ago
  Do you consider earnings to be "spoils of war"? Or has the tradition just evolved to include all income.
  - hamhamed 10y ago
    That depends, for my sect, Shia, it's solely business profit. If no profit, then no Khums.
- loeg 10y ago
  Islam has lots of very different (from a Western perspective) personal finance rules. Just two examples: * Lending with interest is forbidden (which also rules out investment in traditional bonds) * Zakat is a mandatory annual 2.5% wealth tax As you might imagine, the latter makes it very difficult to retire without some sort of pension system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_banking_and_finance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_banking_and_finance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zakat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zakat
  - icebraining 10y ago
    Planet Money did a story on a small US bank whose owner was convinced to start offering Islamic-compatible financial products: http://www.npr.org/2016/05/12/477758545/michigan-bank-discovers-the-need-for-islamic-finance-products http://www.npr.org/2016/05/12/477758545/michigan-bank-discov...
losteverything 10y ago
Charity is for networking when significant $ is donated. Another great way to create access.
avivo 10y ago
I haven't figured out a way to find the actual text of the agreement(s). Does anyone have it? When I explored doing something like this in the past (a binding pledge via 3rd party under US law), one issue brought up by lawyers was that there needs to be some "consideration" http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/consideration-every-contract-needs-33361.html http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/consideration-every-c... ; I'm curious how they worked around that.
- imbenclifford 10y ago
  Once you click "I'm ready to make this official" in the signing flow, you'll see the full legal document pre-filled with your information before you sign anything. The consideration is access to our post-deployment resources, recognition on our website and invitations to our events.
  - avivo 10y ago
    Hmmm. Well, I just got to that point in the flow. It first required giving all your personal information (I put in fake stuff; also FYI the email went to my spam folder on gmail). There was no obvious way I could see to save the actual contract and show it to a lawyer before submission. I could only copy the image files of the text! I understand that you are working across multiple jurisdictions (so different templates), and using a 3rd party signing service, but I'm curious if there are plans to improve this. Let me know if you want UX etc. support for that; am happy to help! Thanks for clarification re. consideration. (similar to what I considered for my binding pledge project, though yours is better!)
    - imbenclifford 10y ago
      Thanks for the feedback - noted. In the meantime, can you send me an email (ben@founderspledge.com) and I'll email you the document as a pdf?
cperciva 10y ago
I'd like to encourage founders who are participating in this to consider directing at least some of their pledges to support open source software. I don't think there are any YC companies which would have existed if it hadn't been for a large amount of open source software; if you want to maximize the impact of your donations, helping the projects which build tools the next generation of startups will rely on is a pretty good way to go. (At Tarsnap, I mostly fund the FreeBSD Foundation and other BSD-related organizations, but that's primarily because those are the groups whose work I am most familiar with and can judge most effectively. There are plenty of other organizations doing great work with open source software which can benefit from funding; but of course I'd love to see everybody here supporting the FreeBSD Foundation too.)
- lifeisstillgood 10y ago
  I would similarly like to encourage founders to build a ethos of "giving back to the community" in their day to day companies. Even if the start up does not set the world (and stock market) on fire, the accumulated talent and energy would be of immense use in hack-a-days, in food shelters and of course in open source projects and conferences We want your money tomorrow, of course, but just in case you don't make any, we will take your time and energy today :-)
  - cperciva 10y ago
    Right. And at Tarsnap I do exactly that -- but Tarsnap is designed to be profitable. For startups which lose money hand over fist, it may be hard to justify making such contributions until after they're acquired.
    - BostonEnginerd 10y ago
      And thank you for both of those things -- making a small profitable business and giving back to the community!
    - lifeisstillgood 10y ago
      I am going to backtrack wildly here - I did not mean to imply your (very large) OSS contributions had not happened. I think your track record speaks for itself. On reflection I was speaking from a worry that the majority of companies I have worked for did not / refused to allow OSS contributions, and that a lot of engineering talent was squandered on proprietary work of dubious value. Fixing that seems like it would unleash enormous value across the economy / society. As such startups are perhaps less relevant to the solution, but startups can be the sexy blueprints of the future, copied by others, so it might help.
callmeed 10y ago
I think Hampton Creek has had enough scandals that I'd avoid mentioning them for testimonial/social proof reasons.
mathattack 10y ago
My (limited) understanding is it can be tax-advantageous for founders to give equity rather than cash. They can avoid capital gains taxes. So if a founder will give, best to do it this way. One can say they should be generous to their employees, but at some point they will still have wealth to spread around. And if you're giving it to charity, you might as well do it this way. Similarly, when Warren Buffett and Bill Gates give their fortunes away, they do it via stock.
foobarqux 10y ago
Are the donors creating a legally binding obligation when they sign up?
- imbenclifford 10y ago
  That's right - every founder involved has signed a legally binding contract. Ben, FP.
  - codingdave 10y ago
    What is the consideration? EDIT: Actually, I just saw the "English" version of the contract. The fact that you can give the contribution to charities other than what were selected would be a deal-killer in my mind, even through that scenario is unlikely to actually occur. I did not see consideration laid out clearly. It seems to say that your providing the service IS the consideration, but that feels weak to me. It feels to me like you are saying "If you give us X% of your assets, we provide the resources to let you, and use your name on our site to market it!" Obviously, you have plenty of people who did not agree with me. And I applaud the spirit of it all. It just seems like the details need work.
gfosco 10y ago
There wasn't anything stopping founders from donating to charity before, or from claiming they will in the future, so what does this accomplish other than putting a procedure in place for shameless virtue signaling? Giving to charity is powerful. Talking about giving to charity or telling people you will conditionally give to charity in the future, is transparently self-serving.
- nhaliday 10y ago
  Public pre-commitment is a basic building block of human coordination. Criticizing it as "virtue-signaling" is facile.
- loeg 10y ago
  Reducing the friction in donating a complicated asset is useful.
perfmode 10y ago
"The best way to do good in the world is not to be a philanthropist. It’s to be a good capitalist. The need to 'give back' is generally chiefly a sign that people took too much to begin with." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTAE5m3ZO2E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTAE5m3ZO2E
- icebraining 10y ago
  On the other hand: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_altruism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_altruism If you can convince your well-off customers to give you an extra $10, which you will then give to the poor(er), why not do so? The video implies the $10 are necessarily earned by harmful behavior, but that's just demagogy.
protomyth 10y ago
Out of curiosity why are religious charities banned? https://founderspledge.com/faq https://founderspledge.com/faq
- dennisgorelik 10y ago
  "The only restrictions are that the charity can’t be political or religious." That adds quite a bias to the whole "YC and Founders Pledge" idea.
- drpancake 10y ago
  It would be quite amusing if a founder pledged to the Church of Scientology. I still sometimes forget that they actually do have tax-exempt status. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_Scientology#Classification_as_church_or_business https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_Scientology#Classifi...
joneil 10y ago
Really similar to http://pledge1percent.org/ http://pledge1percent.org/ (with Marc Benioff of Salesforce and Scott Farquhar of Atlassian backing it). As well as pledging a percentage of your equity, they're also pushing making room to donate 1% of your product and free up 1% of your employee's time to put towards good causes, so that it's part of the culture not just a happy side-effect of a possible exit.
colinsidoti 10y ago
I really like the idea of a pledge for founders but worry about the particular features available here. The biggest red flag for me is that Founder's Pledge is touted as "completely free," but makes no mention of investment options being available for your assets. So, while it may not be deducting an administrative fee, keeping your charitable assets with them is akin to leaving your 401(k) assets in cash, which will normally result in you having less funds to donate than if you had used a traditional Donor Advised Fund. Unless a founder plans on distributing all of their charitable assets immediately (which I believe is atypical), I hope Founder's Pledge discloses that it may be in their best interest to transfer their funds to a Fidelity Charitable or Schwab Charitable DAF where assets can grow.

149 points by dwaxe 10y ago

I wish Founders Pledge wouldn't break scrolling or include gratuitous, contentless animations. I also learned far more about what they do from Sam's blog post than from their website.

web007 10y ago
I can't view any of the individual donors on Chrome. I scroll to the section, see the top of a couple heads, and as I keep going down the page it reverse-scrolls a white bar and it's all gone. What is this style of page? I see it everywhere, most egregiously Medium, where the title and some enormous graphic take up the first full screen and I have to scroll just to get to the content. I can't imagine it converts well, but I also can't imagine so many people using it if it doesn't.

trevyn 10y ago

Are we to take away from this that founder charitable giving is more important than employee equity compensation in YC's eyes? Wouldn't make me want to work at a YC company.

mkagenius 10y ago
> charitable giving is more important than employee equity compensation You are probably assuming that employees are definitely under compensated.. what about the case when founder owns only 5% and still wants to donate a part..
- BinaryIdiot 10y ago
  > You are probably assuming that employees are definitely under compensated.. Seems like that would be pretty typical. Start-up companies, especially YC start-ups, pay under the average for engineers. At least that's been my experience shopping around for a job. So I would expect them to all be under compensated.
- etjossem 10y ago
  > what about the case when founder owns only 5% and still wants to donate a part.. Seems pretty atypical.
- loeg 10y ago
  > You are probably assuming that employees are definitely under compensated This is a reasonable assumption about startups.

SandersAK 10y ago

I think this is a neat idea but I wish they would explain this in a simple sentence on their site instead of all the mumbojumbo. Something like This is a Donor-Advised Fund that is completely free to participate in. Donor-Advised Funds are the best way to give when you have a major liquidity event because: Reason 1 Reason 2 Reason 3 Join a community of people who want to do the same. This is useful for you because: Reason 1 Reason 2 Reason 3

mkagenius 10y ago
> Donor-Advised Fund This sounds more like mumbojumbo to me
- nxzero 10y ago
  It's a common term in this context, but would agree it's not completely Plain English either: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donor-advised_fund https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donor-advised_fund
- loeg 10y ago
  It's a common way to claim tax benefit now, but control (to some extent) giving in the future. E.g., * https://www.vanguardcharitable.org/ https://www.vanguardcharitable.org/ * https://www.fidelitycharitable.org/ https://www.fidelitycharitable.org/
  - ernestipark 10y ago
    These are great avenues for any employee that receives equity to 1. maximize their tax savings, 2. give to charities they care about (in the US). Any stock that's held for over a year that qualifies for long term capital gains can be transferred to a DAF like with Vanguard or Fidelity and you won't be taxed on it at all. Especially if you have a set budget for giving to charities this is a great way to maximize your dollar and extend your budget.
bradleyjg 10y ago
Yeah it wasn't clear from reading this article whether or not doing this up front has tax or other benefits that allow the ultimate donated amount to be larger, or it is just a precommitment device.

morgante 10y ago

I really commend YC for supporting this. If my startup ever succeeds, I definitely have a duty to give back to the world which has given me incredibly luck (and benefits). I just took the pledge and realized it would be nice to have a sliding scale based on exit size. If I have a relatively small exit (<$10M), I would prefer to donate substantially less (maybe 10%) but for a larger exit I would scale up closer to 50%. Obviously I can still donate more if I want to, but it would be nice to pre-commit. Also, it would be nice to include an option for employees.

BinaryIdiot 10y ago

I understand giving to charity is great and all but what about employees 10, 35, 97? So someone works hard at a start-up but they weren't among the first dozen or so to join then they likely get next to nothing from an exit. So how about, instead of a pledge to give to charity, founders pledge to give more equity to later employees so only a small handful are not the only ones to profit. Everyone takes a risk joining a start-up. Many times employees use the equity as part of their compensation (right or wrong many do this). If you're joining a start-up that has taken this pledge then you know going in you're likely not going to get as much as another start-up. I don't know this just feels like a way to neuter the company making it less attractive to future employees. How about, instead of counting our chickens before they hatch, we get founders who had a big exit to donate money to charity?

serg_chernata 10y ago
Came here to say the same thing. Donating to charities is great but why not donate and invest into your employees who may also happen to be your neighbors.
tlb 10y ago
YC also encourages companies to spread more equity among the employees, and eliminate restrictions on exercising options when employees leave. http://blog.samaltman.com/employee-equity http://blog.samaltman.com/employee-equity
nostrademons 10y ago
Andrew Mason/Detour proposed something along those lines, but I haven't heard anything more about it since: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9336392 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9336392
imbenclifford 10y ago
Ben from FP here. To be clear, founders aren't giving away equity - they are pledging a percentage of what they personally receive on exit. This doesn't reduce the equity that is available for other shareholders.

33a 10y ago

Why not donate it to your employees?

pjscott 10y ago
If I had to make a list of people whose lives would be most improved by some extra money, engineers in Silicon Valley would probably not be at the very top of the page.

avivo 10y ago

This is amazing. However, what we need even more is a pledge for e.g. responsible disruption. So companies could devote say 1% of their resources to modeling their effect on the world and compensating for (or designing away) the negative externalities they unintentionally impose. I know that is a much harder problem though, and I hope lessons from Founders Pledge can be applied toward it. Kudos to the team for putting this together though — it's a great initiative.

tlb 10y ago
This is an interesting idea. Are there good examples you could point to of analyses of externalities of a company? Other than an oil, or chemical company. For a pure software company, is the answer ever much different than the amount of electricity they use?
- avivo 10y ago
  Definitely. Here's a small sample. Craigslist unintentionally decimated newspaper revenue from classifieds. http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2013/08/14/sorry-craig-study-finds-craigslist-cost-newspapers-5-billion http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2013/08/14/sorry-c... Twitter unintentionally created opportunities for crazy levels of harassment that bleeds dangerously into the offline world. https://www.buzzfeed.com/charliewarzel/a-honeypot-for-assholes-inside-twitters-10-year-failure-to-s https://www.buzzfeed.com/charliewarzel/a-honeypot-for-asshol... Facebook unintentionally created an industry of hyperpartisan factless discourse that may be fueling demagoguery worldwide. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/28/magazine/inside-facebooks-totally-insane-unintentionally-gigantic-hyperpartisan-political-media-machine.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/28/magazine/inside-facebooks-... That's just off the top of my head, without getting into companies like Uber & AirBnB, or ad targeters, etc. All of these companies provide incredible value, and I mostly prefer to live in a world with them than without them. But it would be great to see more effort put toward mitigation of their unintentional excesses (and to their credit, all three are trying at least a little in various ways).

hamhamed 10y ago

This is a good initiative. Muslims like me have to already give out a fifth (%20) of their earnings every year called Khums https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khums https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khums We also believe from numerous Hadith's that the money comes back in double for those that give. As they say, you can't take with your palms closed.

MicroBerto 10y ago
> "have to" What happens if you don't or can't?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
burkaman 10y ago
Do you consider earnings to be "spoils of war"? Or has the tradition just evolved to include all income.
- hamhamed 10y ago
  That depends, for my sect, Shia, it's solely business profit. If no profit, then no Khums.
loeg 10y ago
Islam has lots of very different (from a Western perspective) personal finance rules. Just two examples: * Lending with interest is forbidden (which also rules out investment in traditional bonds) * Zakat is a mandatory annual 2.5% wealth tax As you might imagine, the latter makes it very difficult to retire without some sort of pension system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_banking_and_finance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_banking_and_finance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zakat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zakat
- icebraining 10y ago
  Planet Money did a story on a small US bank whose owner was convinced to start offering Islamic-compatible financial products: http://www.npr.org/2016/05/12/477758545/michigan-bank-discovers-the-need-for-islamic-finance-products http://www.npr.org/2016/05/12/477758545/michigan-bank-discov...

losteverything 10y ago

Charity is for networking when significant $ is donated. Another great way to create access.

avivo 10y ago

I haven't figured out a way to find the actual text of the agreement(s). Does anyone have it? When I explored doing something like this in the past (a binding pledge via 3rd party under US law), one issue brought up by lawyers was that there needs to be some "consideration" http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/consideration-every-contract-needs-33361.html http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/consideration-every-c... ; I'm curious how they worked around that.

imbenclifford 10y ago
Once you click "I'm ready to make this official" in the signing flow, you'll see the full legal document pre-filled with your information before you sign anything. The consideration is access to our post-deployment resources, recognition on our website and invitations to our events.
- avivo 10y ago
  Hmmm. Well, I just got to that point in the flow. It first required giving all your personal information (I put in fake stuff; also FYI the email went to my spam folder on gmail). There was no obvious way I could see to save the actual contract and show it to a lawyer before submission. I could only copy the image files of the text! I understand that you are working across multiple jurisdictions (so different templates), and using a 3rd party signing service, but I'm curious if there are plans to improve this. Let me know if you want UX etc. support for that; am happy to help! Thanks for clarification re. consideration. (similar to what I considered for my binding pledge project, though yours is better!)
  - imbenclifford 10y ago
    Thanks for the feedback - noted. In the meantime, can you send me an email (ben@founderspledge.com) and I'll email you the document as a pdf?

cperciva 10y ago

I'd like to encourage founders who are participating in this to consider directing at least some of their pledges to support open source software. I don't think there are any YC companies which would have existed if it hadn't been for a large amount of open source software; if you want to maximize the impact of your donations, helping the projects which build tools the next generation of startups will rely on is a pretty good way to go. (At Tarsnap, I mostly fund the FreeBSD Foundation and other BSD-related organizations, but that's primarily because those are the groups whose work I am most familiar with and can judge most effectively. There are plenty of other organizations doing great work with open source software which can benefit from funding; but of course I'd love to see everybody here supporting the FreeBSD Foundation too.)

lifeisstillgood 10y ago
I would similarly like to encourage founders to build a ethos of "giving back to the community" in their day to day companies. Even if the start up does not set the world (and stock market) on fire, the accumulated talent and energy would be of immense use in hack-a-days, in food shelters and of course in open source projects and conferences We want your money tomorrow, of course, but just in case you don't make any, we will take your time and energy today :-)
- cperciva 10y ago
  Right. And at Tarsnap I do exactly that -- but Tarsnap is designed to be profitable. For startups which lose money hand over fist, it may be hard to justify making such contributions until after they're acquired.
  - BostonEnginerd 10y ago
    And thank you for both of those things -- making a small profitable business and giving back to the community!
  - lifeisstillgood 10y ago
    I am going to backtrack wildly here - I did not mean to imply your (very large) OSS contributions had not happened. I think your track record speaks for itself. On reflection I was speaking from a worry that the majority of companies I have worked for did not / refused to allow OSS contributions, and that a lot of engineering talent was squandered on proprietary work of dubious value. Fixing that seems like it would unleash enormous value across the economy / society. As such startups are perhaps less relevant to the solution, but startups can be the sexy blueprints of the future, copied by others, so it might help.

callmeed 10y ago

I think Hampton Creek has had enough scandals that I'd avoid mentioning them for testimonial/social proof reasons.

mathattack 10y ago

My (limited) understanding is it can be tax-advantageous for founders to give equity rather than cash. They can avoid capital gains taxes. So if a founder will give, best to do it this way. One can say they should be generous to their employees, but at some point they will still have wealth to spread around. And if you're giving it to charity, you might as well do it this way. Similarly, when Warren Buffett and Bill Gates give their fortunes away, they do it via stock.

foobarqux 10y ago

Are the donors creating a legally binding obligation when they sign up?

imbenclifford 10y ago
That's right - every founder involved has signed a legally binding contract. Ben, FP.
- codingdave 10y ago
  What is the consideration? EDIT: Actually, I just saw the "English" version of the contract. The fact that you can give the contribution to charities other than what were selected would be a deal-killer in my mind, even through that scenario is unlikely to actually occur. I did not see consideration laid out clearly. It seems to say that your providing the service IS the consideration, but that feels weak to me. It feels to me like you are saying "If you give us X% of your assets, we provide the resources to let you, and use your name on our site to market it!" Obviously, you have plenty of people who did not agree with me. And I applaud the spirit of it all. It just seems like the details need work.

gfosco 10y ago

There wasn't anything stopping founders from donating to charity before, or from claiming they will in the future, so what does this accomplish other than putting a procedure in place for shameless virtue signaling? Giving to charity is powerful. Talking about giving to charity or telling people you will conditionally give to charity in the future, is transparently self-serving.

nhaliday 10y ago
Public pre-commitment is a basic building block of human coordination. Criticizing it as "virtue-signaling" is facile.
loeg 10y ago
Reducing the friction in donating a complicated asset is useful.

perfmode 10y ago

"The best way to do good in the world is not to be a philanthropist. It’s to be a good capitalist. The need to 'give back' is generally chiefly a sign that people took too much to begin with." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTAE5m3ZO2E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTAE5m3ZO2E

icebraining 10y ago
On the other hand: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_altruism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_altruism If you can convince your well-off customers to give you an extra $10, which you will then give to the poor(er), why not do so? The video implies the $10 are necessarily earned by harmful behavior, but that's just demagogy.

protomyth 10y ago

Out of curiosity why are religious charities banned? https://founderspledge.com/faq https://founderspledge.com/faq

dennisgorelik 10y ago
"The only restrictions are that the charity can’t be political or religious." That adds quite a bias to the whole "YC and Founders Pledge" idea.
drpancake 10y ago
It would be quite amusing if a founder pledged to the Church of Scientology. I still sometimes forget that they actually do have tax-exempt status. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_Scientology#Classification_as_church_or_business https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_Scientology#Classifi...

joneil 10y ago

Really similar to http://pledge1percent.org/ http://pledge1percent.org/ (with Marc Benioff of Salesforce and Scott Farquhar of Atlassian backing it). As well as pledging a percentage of your equity, they're also pushing making room to donate 1% of your product and free up 1% of your employee's time to put towards good causes, so that it's part of the culture not just a happy side-effect of a possible exit.

colinsidoti 10y ago

I really like the idea of a pledge for founders but worry about the particular features available here. The biggest red flag for me is that Founder's Pledge is touted as "completely free," but makes no mention of investment options being available for your assets. So, while it may not be deducting an administrative fee, keeping your charitable assets with them is akin to leaving your 401(k) assets in cash, which will normally result in you having less funds to donate than if you had used a traditional Donor Advised Fund. Unless a founder plans on distributing all of their charitable assets immediately (which I believe is atypical), I hope Founder's Pledge discloses that it may be in their best interest to transfer their funds to a Fidelity Charitable or Schwab Charitable DAF where assets can grow.