The Sweet Spot for Employee Owned Source Code

Employee owned source code is a new approach to creating software and a new software licensing model that few people know about yet.  Outside of my day job, I spend a fair amount of time either working on a project that I've licensed in just this way, and a smaller amount of time writing and promoting the idea of employee owned source code and the company sponsoring it.

With this background, I was reading one of the many articles on LinkedIn about startups today, and I was struck once again by two things. First, people on LinkedIn sure like writing and reading about startups. And secondly, what people on LinkedIn and elsewhere think a startup is is a lot different than what my idea of my employee owned source code startup is. So fair warning: If you stay with this article, you're going to read about the kind of startup that people on LinkedIn aren't talking about. 

Well, people who aren't me, anyway.

One of the articles I read recently talked about how startups represent a choice between living in San Francisco with your wife on $2,000 per month and raising capital from venture capitalists.  

Well, I agree completely with one half of that premise, raising money from vulture capitalists is a dumb idea.  Oh, sorry, did I say vulture?  Being an employee owner seems to have given me a weird form of Tourette Syndrome, where I say "vulture capitalist" whenever I mean "venture capitalist".  

In my worse moments the condition deteriorates, and I say:  "I got your pitch right here."

The whole point of an employee owned source code model is to take the same spirit of co-operation that the open source community uses, but then not apply a price tag of zero to the result.  

OK, let's assume we're not going to raise capital.  The whole point of an employee owned source code model is to take the same spirit of co-operation -- and even the same tools for collaboration like Github -- that the open source community uses, but then not apply a price tag of zero to the result.  

But the thing that struck me as funny about that post was that the alternative the author could come up with to raising venture capital was to live in San Francisco on $2,000 per month.  Huh?   I don't get it.  First of all, why did you quit your day job?  And secondly, if you did quit your day job, what the hell are you doing in San Francisco?

Oh, I get it, you're trying to go faster than any other company, to be disruptive.  So you can do what?  Let me guess:  after a short period of self-abnegation, you can do what your greedy little heart was begging you do do all along, to the people you're living in San Francisco to try to impress.  You're going to pitch your idea to a vulture capitalist. There, now you've done it.  I'm having another one of my spells, and it's a bad one.  It's likely to break out in block quotes.

I got your pitch right here.

OK, I Feel Better Now

I've gotten that out of my system.  I still haven't told you about the sweet spot of employee owned source code, but I've softened the ground somewhat.

I recently got invited to work with some friends who are also working on "personal projects", because they mistook CodeSolid for a personal project.  It isn't, but the confusion is understandable -- I'm working on it in my off hours, I still have my day job, I don't live in San Francisco, and I insult capitalists whenever my condition worsens.

I for one believe that we few employee owned source code practitioners live in the sweet spot.  

We don't need to be disruptive, because we're not trying to get sucker a vulture into placing a bet on us.  We just need to pick a software product that fills a need and iterate on that.  

We don't need to quit our day jobs, because we're not in a rush to cash out and make a killing.  We're in it for the long haul, one commit at a time.  We've no one to impress with our seriousness, and disruptors are for Klingons.  Once the software starts to shape up and turn a profit, we can quit our day jobs then.

We're free to work wherever we want to work, because customers, unlike investors, judge the quality of the software and we've got no one to impress but them.

We're not communists, because unlike the open source community, we don't put a price tag of zero on Das Intellectual Kapital.  But like the open source community, we do know that the means of production lives squarely between our ears.