LARP – Revenue infrastructure for serious founders

- https://www.gofundme.com/ (personal / charitable)

- https://www.patreon.com/ (ongoing creator subscriptions)

- https://www.indiegogo.com/ (creative / tech / flexible rewards)

- https://www.kickstarter.com/ (creative / rewards)

- https://experiment.com/ (scientific research)

- https://gamefound.com/ (tabletop games)

- https://www.crowdsupply.com/ (hardware / tech)

- https://www.kiva.org/ (micro-loans / social impact)

- https://wefunder.com/ (startup equity)

- https://www.startengine.com/ (startup equity)

- https://republic.com/ (startup equity)

- https://www.prosper.com/ (loan consolidation)

Note how some like kickstarter.com and prosper.com should have been at the top, but sold out or lost their way to cater more to funders than entrepreneurs.

The same problem happened with freelancing, where developers are force to apply to low-paying gigs so many times that it's perhaps no longer lucrative:

- https://gun.io/ (premium developer-first matchmaking)

- https://www.codeable.io/ (niche / premium wordpress development)

- https://lemon.io/ (vetted startup matching)

- https://www.toptal.com/ (premium / 3% elite tech network)

- https://arc.dev/ (remote technical role matchmaking)

- https://weworkremotely.com/ (high-quality remote tech job board)

- https://www.turing.com/ (ai-driven technical matchmaking)

- https://contra.com/ (commission-free portfolio network)

- https://www.upwork.com/ (open marketplace formed from elance & odesk)

- https://www.fiverr.com/ (productized gigs / digital storefront model)

- https://www.freelancer.com/ (open bidding marketplace)

- https://www.guru.com/ (legacy bidding marketplace )

I feel that both of these trends have combined to create the k-shaped economy of haves and have-nots that we have today.

Imagine if a team of internet lottery winners formed an investment alliance (perhaps using AI) to compete directly with venture capital firms like Y Combinator, outside of the schmoozing and board micromanagement that come with having to network.

I know I'm not supposed to say that, but that's why the startup ecosystem is so uninspired today vs its peak from 1995-1999, before the 2000 Dot Bomb which returned us to gatekeeping by the wealthy and powerful.

In the early years, the academic/conceptually-correct solution tended to be the right one. Whereas today, winner-take-all effects and survivorship bias dominate, so that capital (unearned income) grows exponentially while wages (earned income) flatline or regress.

Which results in high underemployment rates when workers tread water having to choose between saving 10% of their income to start a business or make rent. I'm having trouble finding statistics for it, but it tends to be about double the unemployment rate, hovering around 10-20%:

https://www.newgeography.com/content/004016-underemployment-...

Some demographics (like recent college graduates) are approaching 50% underemployment:

https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/college-labor-market#--:...

In other words, as many as half of the best and brightest minds in the US are trapped in dead-end or (multiple) part-time jobs, if they're lucky enough to have a job.

Which seems odd at a time when there are so many trillions of dollars of investment capital with nowhere to go that they pump up the stock market's biggest companies instead of investing in the millions of people struggling to afford the endlessly increasing cost of living.

How big of a chance do you think those books will be about a gentle and kind but supremely powerful entity guiding the world? Of course it would be best if the book only appears to be based on that premise, and while the entity is quite powerful, it is being supported by a cabal of individuals who claim they are merely its caretakers but actually derive extraordinary social power by controlling it, and it is revealed that in other lands there are other such entities, and what appeared to be an general peace is actually an illusion created by this powerful group of people using their entity, that they are engaged in near constant warfare, directly or indirectly, with other entities; but, even they believe so deeply that what they are doing is right that they think they are only the entity's caretakers, and that there are only wars because other people want to use their entity for personal gain!

Who knows, your friend might be very clever.

When you're paying an average of, say £50k GBP/yr, for some engineers but a lot of other disciplines, and have a 30% margin it's a very different thing, especially when it's hard to justify the actual time savings.

I did some basic reading but don't really see anything particularly wrong with them.

AFAICT, the argument being advanced against Corgi is that insured customers might be doing risky things assuming their insurance will bail them out. This just doesn't ring true to me because I think most startup founders are just willing to accept more risk and accept that sometimes that includes legal risk.

When you look at Corgi's marketing, e.g. https://www.corgi.insure/ai what you'll see in the common risk triggers is basically compliance: AI Safety Audits, VC due diligence, EU Regulation. It's basically all about showing other people that you're "doing something", not because you think you need or want insurance.

I think the comparison to Delve is actually quite apt: startups generally do not care about SOC 2, they just need the checkbox that their customers are asking for. And startup's customers often themselves don't really care, they are just doing it to satisfy their own SOC 2 requirements, ad infinitum.

I think the main people that are being potentially deceived here are not Corgi's customers, those customers' customers, but I don't think they truly care either and are also checking a box.