Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

YC and Founders Pledge

blog.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 99 posts

Re: YC and Founders Pledge

#21

Post by loeg »

hamhamed wrote: post #14

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 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.

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/Zakat

Re: YC and Founders Pledge

#22

Post by bradleyjg »

loeg wrote: post #19
bradleyjg wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It allows you to significantly mitigate tax in high-income years (e.g., an exit) while providing a steady flow of money to charity even in lower income years.

Does the timing of the pledge have benefits or only the ultimate donation?

Re: YC and Founders Pledge

#24

Post by ivanca »

hamhamed wrote: post #14

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 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.

Look at that, a religion that commands how to spend your money. The west has televangelists but at least they're not so readily accepted and many Christians consider them a scam.

Re: YC and Founders Pledge

#25

Post by loeg »

bradleyjg wrote: post #22
loeg wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It allows you to significantly mitigate tax in high-income years (e.g., an exit) while providing a steady flow of money to charity even in lower income years.

Does the timing of the pledge have benefits or only the ultimate donation?

The tax deduction happens when the money (or stock/equity) leaves your (direct) control and is deposited in the DAF. Later suggested donations from the DAF to charities are not tax-deductible.

Re: YC and Founders Pledge

#26

Post by tlb »

avivo wrote: post #12

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 putti…

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?

Re: YC and Founders Pledge

#27

Post by tlb »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #8

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…

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

Re: YC and Founders Pledge

#28

Post by avivo »

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-c... ; I'm curious how they worked around that.

Re: YC and Founders Pledge

#29

Post by MicroBerto »

hamhamed wrote: post #14

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 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.

> "have to"

What happens if you don't or can't?

Post reply on HN