Tell HN: I’d like to sponsor your passion project | Hacker News Reader

Tell HN: I’d like to sponsor your passion project

55 pointstrevyn44 comments

As part of a New Year’s resolution to provide more value to the universe, I’d like to sponsor you to work on your passion project full-time.

- $700 USD/week

- Expectation is to work on your project full-time, without any other employment or work-for-hire obligations

- Anywhere in the world is OK

- You retain all IP, ownership, etc.

- Can be open source or closed

Interested? Tell me a bit about yourself, your project, and your long-term goals. Email in profile, or post here.

View on HN

A few thoughts:

1. This sounds and smells like 'bait'. The reason it isn't being upvoted is because people question the motive of the OP who hasn't explained why he wants to toss out $2500/month to someone else who retains all IP. Thus, naturally, people think the OP is just trying to get ideas for his own project(s). Or that he's just insane.

2. There are marketplaces for this kind of stuff already. Kickstarter, IndieGogo, etc. Leave us alone, quit trying to get HN points (why anyone cares about these, I'll never know) and go spend your own time hunting in those marketplaces and throw your money there.

Lorenzo, thanks for bringing up these points. I'm not 100% sure what my motivations are either, but I want to do something. This amount of money is very little to me, so I'm not actually expecting anything in return.

In fact, I feel like this desire for tit-for-tat returns and legal frameworks for ownership and remuneration are some of the problem -- they destroy our innate generosity and humanity.

I'm fascinated by the gap between smart people who can execute and traditional systems of funding and employment. Some people get lost in that transition, and half the time it's because they have to tweak their project to meet these expectations of return. This makes the project "not theirs" in a way, and kills some intrinsic motivation.

And motivation is everything.

Can you imagine yourself ever wanting anything more?

While this is a generous offer, a $36k salary equivalent for full-time programming work, with no other job for external income, isn't feasible.

Not in the United States, and especially not in the SF Bay Area...

But it's more than acceptable in many parts of the world.

It's actually above US individual (not household) median income, so it's perfectly possible to live on this amount.

And yes, I wouldn't expect someone with a family in the Bay Area to be interested.

"And yes, I wouldn't expect someone with a family in the Bay Area to be interested."

At least, a family to support. A family supporting them, maybe...

Interesting how many people forget there are more parts of the world than just the US, or even the Bay Area...

I'm in California and $700 wk is a good income in some of the rural areas.

Not feasible for you, or not feasible for anyone?

There are levels of survival we are prepared to accept.

I AM NOT AN ACCOUNTANT

Since the OP doesn't want anything in return, it's possible that this could be considered a gift. If true, then the transfer would be tax (and social security) free in the US.

The OP is paying tax/SS on the money because the project is not a tax-exempt charitable org.

So, might be considered closer to 50k in equivalent salary.

I don't think that's how gifts work...

Even if it can be considered a gift, there's a $14k/yr cap on the gift exclusion.

(STILL NOT AN ACCOUNTANT). I believe the cap is not on the gift -- it's on the giver and what they have to file. There is no tax until gifts go over ~5 million.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_tax_in_the_United_States

There are two levels of exemption from the gift tax. First, gifts of up to the annual exclusion ($14,000 per recipient in 2015) incur no tax or filing requirement. By splitting their gifts, married couples can give up to twice this amount tax-free. Note that each giver and recipient pair has their own unique annual exclusion; a giver can give to any number of recipients and the exclusion is not affected by other gifts that recipient may have received from others.

Second, gifts in excess of the annual exclusion may still be tax-free up to the lifetime estate basic exclusion amount ($5,340,000 in 2014, $5,430,000 in 2015), although for estates over that amount such gifts might increase estate taxes. Taxpayers that expect to have a taxable estate may sometimes prefer to pay gift taxes as they occur, rather than saving them up as part of the estate.

For something to be a gift, the giver can have no consideration

https://www.irs.gov/Businesses/Small-Businesses-&-Self-Emplo...

What is considered a gift?

Any transfer to an individual, either directly or indirectly, where full consideration (measured in money or money's worth) is not received in return.

Ah, good catch!

The IRS says money I give for no consideration is a gift.

The OP wants you to work on your project -- it's not clear what happens if you don't do that. If the OP does not get the money back or any other consideration, I believe that an accountant and lawyer could structure this as a gift. The OP will have to file and it counts against their lifetime exemption, but there is no tax (I believe -- talk to an accountant)

There's that SV bubble again. Nobody could possibly want to be paid so little. How would they ever afford to live? It might be 10k lower than one average US wage stat I read but it is comparable to averages in Western Europe. I for one would love it. It would be 36400 more than I earn now.

This is more than feasible in many European countries (and not only).

What do you mean by this?

    - Expectation is to work on your project full-time, without any other employment
      or work-for-hire obligations

Anyway, I'd like to nominate https://twitter.com/joepie91 for this.

His previous attempt: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-year-long-open-source...

What it says -- you shouldn't be getting paid to work on other projects. This is mostly to keep your head clear and focused. I and a lot of my friends are so burnt out after a day at work that side projects basically never happen. I want to remove this burn-out for someone.

Okay, that makes sense :)

I stand by my recommendation. Few people do more for open source than Sven. (Bonus: I don't think he's usually employed.)

Hi trevyn, I'm a 37 year old sysadm/developer from Brazil and I have lived in the US before for a few years (when I was 12). Me and my wife we own a music school here in Sao Paulo (she manages it), and we have lots of students and teachers studying and working with us. We've a model that is working well and the teachers that works with us are very happy. I have an idea for a project that could also help other freelancer teachers here in Brazil, but also from other parts of the world too. Basically it's a website/app that teachers (mostly freelance teachers such as language teachers, yoga, dancing, voice, musical instruments, personal trainers, crafts, etc) can use to help them manage their classes and students' schedule, payments, etc and also to list all their classes available on a ebay-kinda site, plus a possibility to offer live or recorded video content, etc. Teachers usually have a hard time keeping track of all this info, and most of them don't like to charge their students personally, so I think they would like a tool such as this. Kind of a myspace for teachers + youtube + ebay + airbnb.. ;-) I have lots of other ideas and I'm in the process of building a tool to help me build all these ideas... Let me know if I qualify! :-) BTW, happy new year!!!! henpahn@henpa.com

This is a cool idea. You have my respect.

Are you offering any guarantees? Can anybody be worried about relying on this income only to be dropped like many NY resolutions in March?

Is your "value to the universe" linked to your own generosity, or the projects available?

Hello! I appreciate your desire to help people work on their projects! Well i'm a 20 year old freelance web developer. I have This idea i'm passionate about but can't afford to stop work for it. Its inspired from my desire to do good. I want to build first a work news aggregator website, then slowely add features to it like "resume builder", "Tax calculator" and all work relevant tools to help people build a career. Going to be free and open source. Anyways This Is me telling You about my passion more than a sales pitch. If You invest in me i'd be more than greatful. But even a feedback would be more than welcomed

It's really cool to get compensation for work on your own project. And $700/week is a lot in the country I'm living in, it's enough for hiring 2-4 good software developers (I know a few groups of people who do work for YC companies).

But I would feel very uncomfortable knowing that the person who pays me doesn't get something valuable back and doesn't really need what I'm working on (but rather "provides more value to the universe"). That is probably just me, though.

> - Expectation is to work on your project full-time, without any other employment or work-for-hire obligations

That's not for me, but I like the idea.

$700/week is a lot in some countries, so I wish you to make our universe a better place :)

It's an awesome idea, if only you'd let the person keep a part-time job and make this opportunity a part-time job as well, maybe that'd be more realistic?

This would be an awesome break for me, but I'm dealing with a bunch of health issues right now so I'll have to pass.

I'm wondering what would happen if this got posted to /r/technology though. My initial thought was the epic vote count for something like this, but then I realized it might be outright banned.

The reason I thought it would be interesting was the variety of responses it would attract.

IMO this isn't something someone should take any initiative with; if OP wants to do this, it would be for him to do himself. I was just wondering.

Thanks for this pointer -- I'm pretty sure I did get soft-banned on HN; this post doesn't appear on the front page even though it briefly did and is well under the points/time threshold for doing so. Since HN is a recruiting tool for YC, I can see how something even vaguely resembling a job post would be stepping on their toes.

Self-posts have an inherent penalty.

Huh, TIL.

The voting code in the copy of Arc HN runs is not public (the rest of it is - https://github.com/wting/hackernews/blob/master/news.arc) because apparently business decisions are made off of it and it would be trivial to game it.

That said, I'm fairly certain it involves some kind of "keep the ball afloat" algorithm, where more upvotes in a smaller time period gives it a higher internal score than a slower sequence of upvotes would. This post has been upvoted very slowly, and I theorise this is why it's on page >2.

If you are serious and not just fishing for leads can I suggest a lottery to allocate the money. Just put all the applicants into a pool and have someone else publically choose the winner.

hm, he could use the blockchain to add transparency ... and turn the whole damn thing into a kind of open-initiative for other financially stable (or millionaires) to do the same thing.

On the other hand at least some sort of technical screening must take place in order to make sure that a candidate is at least technically able to deliver a sort of MVP.

This is interesting. Anyone want to be sponsored to flesh this out and build it?

Good suggestion on the transparency.

In regards the technical screening this can occur post the lottery draw. If the winner is not technically capable of being able to deliver a product then just draw again. This will avoid a lot of work for the OP.

My only other suggestion here is that entrants have to answer some sort of technical quiz or some other human only hurdle so that you don't get a million entries from someone with a script.

How many applicants and for how long you are going to support?

This is a fantastic idea @trevyn, love it! Reminds me a bit of the Awesome Foundation [0], a community of independent chapters around the world that give $1k to interesting people and projects with absolutely no strings attached. No tax breaks, no catches, some people just want to sponsor cool stuff. Good on you!

[0] http://www.awesomefoundation.org/

I'll do it for 280 dollars a week but I'll only work weekends and 2 evenings a week. The reason is that I don't want to quit my job. If you're interested then I will send you my ideas.

I might be interested if I weren't already being paid quite a bit more to work on something I'm deeply interested in.

I've been spending a part of that "quite a bit more" paying people to work on Snowdrift.coop, if you'd like to join me in that.

Regardless, props on your decision! :)

Hi Trevyn, I sent you an e-mail under simon@mooffgames.com about what we do and our situation. I'm looking for support from someone who believes in what we do.

Hi trevyn, great initiative from you. I have email you about myself and my project. cheers

What an awesome gesture, thank you for your generosity and best of luck. Happy New Year!

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