I think a way to do this fairly is to maintain a spreadsheet where each week everyone marks off how much effort they've put in and effectivley gets newly issued

I think a way to do this fairly is to maintain a spreadsheet where each week everyone marks off how much effort they've put in and effectivley gets newly issued shares for this effort (diluting all existing shares in the process). Probably the best measure of effort is time spent, though that is not perfect. Maybe you can have bonuses for great work, or agreeing someone's time is more valuable and issuing shares at a higher rate. You adjust the [effort]:[shares issued] ratio from time to time based valuation (which to start with doesn't need to be explicitly known, it's all relative). I never see this method discussed. Am I missing some major downside to this approach? Of course you wouldn't issue real shares that frequently - it's just done on aspreadsheet. Good for early idea stage where you probably don't even have a company set up yet. edit: minor edit for correctness.