(disclosure: I work for Assembly) I think startups in general are a good analogy for this. Sure, it's more fruitful in terms of percentage of equity to start y

(disclosure: I work for Assembly) I think startups in general are a good analogy for this. Sure, it's more fruitful in terms of percentage of equity to start your own startup than to join one, but it's immensely difficult to get that company you own 100% of to become something valuable. For a product to succeed on Assembly, it's often really important for a strong visionary to play an active day-to-day role. That initial ownership makes the whole thing more fruitful for them, but only in the cases where they do lots of heavy lifting to make something succeed. If you throw a random idea up on Assembly and someone else in the community shows up and ships that idea and makes it into a successful business, then you'd have a fortunate outcome without much work, but that's not an expected outcome. edit: as eric_bullington pointed out (and I should have), it's important to note that the ownership you have over a product you start is only ownership of that product. If that product never ships, the ownership doesn't translate to the success of other products on Assembly. So, you can get 100% ownership of a thing that is just an idea with a few clicks, or you can jump in on a product like Coderwall that makes $20,000/month, and any work you do will earn you a portion of that revenue for as long as Coderwall is around. Both of these avenues are fun. :)