While generating e-businesses I explored all of the sites that match Entrepreneurs (inventors, web business developers, small business owners) with Investors. There are many, and none of them was of any use for me. However, they have a place in the e-economy and some of them eventually produce transactions. There are a lot of unwanted consequences of entering a project in those sites, including registration fees, spam, fake offerings of capital with a small fee required in advance, fancy services for the entrepreneur like courses and business plan assistance, fake degrees and the like. Once the project gets funded, or when the entrepreneur gives up and stops paying a fee, the project disappears from the site. It would be nice to be able to track the projects for at least 2 years, let several small investors join forces to start a project, see it evolve and measure the success rate of those matching sites. The projects alive in the system could benefit from the distributed knowledge coming from the Problem Solver Marketplace and the Futurologist Arena, two proposals described elsewhere in this book.
Investing in a Net project seems to be a all/nothing operation. Of course, nobody expects that a real-life investor will fork 10,000 or more without a lot of expensive research, due diligence requirements, planning and contracts. However, 500 investors could be ready to contribute $20 to a promising project with decent guaranties, achieving the same result in a very short time.
This Virtual Shares business needs to be developed to help finance this site and its probable spin-offs. The first step in acquiring shares is to vote (for or against) the proposals in the News Aggregator system located at www.netocios.com. The votes will help other readers to estimate the value of the proposed business.
I am sure there will be many readers interested in betting a few dollars in some of these health proposals, but without the obligations arising from a formal partnership.
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In order to issue shares, most countries have detailed and cumbersome legislation and requirements. For that reason, we keep all the matter within virtual boundaries, meaning that the shares traded here are in no way real. Any transaction arising from investors willing to partner with the author in the development of e-businesses will have to be treated separately, with specific contracts and documents.
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Imagine a Reality Show where the participants are entrepreneurs carrying online projects.
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In the meantime, contributions are treated as donations, and create a moral compromise on our part of further retribution. Moral compromises, I hope, are not enforceable, taxable or likely to create legal trouble. Virtual or moral shares offered in this site are payable as donations to my Paypal address.
The Reality Show structure is also an appealing alternative. Imagine a Reality Show where the participants are entrepreneurs carrying online projects. Being public is the price to pay for contributions from viewers and sponsors. Online popularity, traffic and sales are measures of success, and increase chances of participants to climb to the next level. This proposal for a Reality Show is so neat that can be even ported to TV…
Some businesses have, or can easily have, an associated domain name. We can register those domains to the name of the best bidder in an eBay.com auction. That provides an initial association between parties with a solid guaranty. A written compromise of keeping the new business within that domain and providing consulting can be a second step.
An alternative way to offer virtual shares for Internet businesses is to create a special Domain Register that allows combined registrations, by more than one party. Since all the parties would be needed to transfer the domain, this creates a control mechanism for those domain-based businesses with 2 or more owners. It is the equivalent of business bank accounts that require two signatures on every check. This should be a separate business proposal, but I leave it here for now.
Most business can be divided in parts, based on geographic boundaries, on items or type of clients. A contract can grant the rights of exploitation of that part of the business to an early contributor.
Another way to implement the virtual shares system is to base the business and website in a permissive country, like the Cayman or Bahamas Islands.
If the model turns to be successful, it can be sold to other websites offering business to the public. If most people enjoy picking up winners for a football match or a horse race, why they would not enjoy picking up winners for a business project?
Personal View
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I like the Reality Show on Tv, why not? I sent the idea to a local producer but got no answer. Mr. Trump has the Apprentice show which is close but not exactly the idea. American Inventor is more like it, but they have no continuity and there is little chance for the audience to participate. I could focus on Entrepreneurs at large, or Netpreneurs alone.
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I will receive all kinds of objections to my shares project from corporate attorneys. However, there must be a loophole. Venture Capital is fully developed as science and business in the 1st World, but hardly existent in developing countries. So, Virtual Shares are a way for us South American entrepreneurs from to raise seed capital from the Web.
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