What if I want to take the class with my own incorporated business but don’t anticipate wanting to move forward with my whole class team?

Anything developed during the class is owned by each of the teammates. After the class, you can run the business on your own, without them; and they can run the business without you. If needed, come to office hours and we can figure out how best to help your position. In short, we want you to treat your teammates as equals.

We recommend you work together during the class with the goal of learning; after the class, if you continue and they join you, you can negotiate a fair compensation arrangement.  If you continue and they don’t, you can give them equity based on your view of how much they contributed.

In general, part time work for 3 months isn’t worth very much. The full time work you put in over the next five years will be worth a lot.

Another way of thinking about it is if you hired them and paid them their value in cash, would it be $10k?  $20k?  some other number?  Then, if your company is worth $3 million pre-money (a ballpark value for a pure startup), $10k in value would be equivalent to 0.33% of equity.

What if I don’t have an idea or a team but want to take the class?

You can work on your own idea, or if you like one of these ideas, you can work with the sponsor on one of these ideas. Finding a team you can work effectively with  is far more important. An A-team with a B idea always trumps a B-team with an A idea. We run team formation mixers before the application deadline to help you find a team. Please go to www.launchmesh.com to get more information on team formation.