Hello Not really... Please name a few companies and I would be surprised. Most of these successful companies were started with the founders being “partners” from the start. I doubt there are any companies that gave ESOPs in exchange for work to employees and grew successful i.e. where the person was hired as an employee in exchange of equity. I know there are successful companies that are owned by completely by the employees thro equity but not any where employees worked for free under the founders in exchange for ESOPs. Even the most successful ones like Apple (Wozniak, Holt, Gary), Facebook (Dustin, Eduardo, Chris), Microsoft (Ballmer) clearly paid their early employees well in addition to ESOPs. Even if you wrote on Quora, you’d have gotten similar answers perhaps even one from me coz I happen to be one of those Quora writers (you can check me out and follow me if you like some of my answers. It would be much appreciated if you do).
And what Satyakam said has already been achieved and I know people who work in the barter method for kicks—I happen to be one of them. There are reasons I do this, one of which being that I make good bank from my clients already and wouldn’t mind giving back to the world some free code as long at it makes a difference—but working for a private company for free wouldn’t really achieve that, not really. The thing is that the barter system works where there needs to be an exchange of “some value” and equal value means it’s totally a WIN-WIN. But what you asked here is known as “volunteer” or “donation work” and that too not for the public or those who are in “need” but for those who “want”. Here one person is getting value and the other is getting nothing back. Even if you were to give 90% of a company that holds no value, it’s still 0 value. Worse case is giving out a percentage of an unsuccessful, bankrupt company (but lets not get there). X * 0 will always be 0. So then what do devs like me who do work for things other than money work for? Well most of us do open-source development (you can find such people on github). Although I haven’t done much of this for the past 1-2 years due to others more important engagements but before that my github activity was lit—you can check it out and see that I’ve contributed quite some code for free (it’s github.com/SaifurRahmanMohsin). At one point, more than 90% of my code was given away for free. Even if you ask such a person to work for ESOP they would do it only if it’s some public company like Google, Apple where their work would have some value and they’d get back in the form of ESOP atleast. Even open source work has a value associated with it—you are contributing to society as a whole and get off from the respect you earn for that work and the thought that you have put something meaningful out there that would help many by making their life better is enthralling. But these folks wouldn’t really work for ESOPs for a new startup esp. the ones who are really good at their work. You can find people who would be willing to work for free but they won’t provide great work, I can assure you. They’ll be learners willing to work for experience and I do have few contacts of such people because I know a few who buzzed me asking to add them as their assistant for free and have done so multiple times only for me to reply that I’d rather work alone. You could try a combo of ESOP and pay esp. since you are looking for good devs. Trust me you can keep searching but you won’t find any good devs who’d work for ESOPs for a new startup. Saifur Rahman Mohsin Technology Evangelist On 03-Aug-2018, at 6:23 AM, satyakam goswami <satyaa...@gmail.com> wrote: Whatever Techies/Hackers too have needs and need money as currency to give dedicated time and to satisfy there own needs , have not seen anyone just working full time for Equity only, i feel the flip side is those who have money will have there own thinking and stuff for kicks , also they are not hungry for sops so this best match talent pool is out of reach , then come the hackers who are bottom feeding in the ecosystem they i have seen only understand the language of money they don't understand the concept of sweat equity etc.. still we as humans have not reached the barter system or a game in which people help/hack just for kicks for educational purposes to all the entrepreneurs out there also don't understand no business can be started without any Capital by Capital i mean many things Human As Capital,Time as Capital,Social Capital, Money etc... Having said that i think i do know someone who does hitch hiking may be interested in something like this :-) , but at the moment he too is busy with something meaningful which gets him paid in the form of money! _______________________________________________ BangPypers mailing list BangPypers@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/bangpypers
