Our thought with this was "come work with us for the summer, let's build cool stuff and make some money, and we'll pay you a piece of what you earn for 12 months rather than 3. We get help when that we can't pay for off the bat, and they get (1) cool work experience and (2) paid for a year.
We thought then and continue to feel that this is a fun, unorthodox, kinda risky and potentially very lucrative way for some college kids to spend the summer. There's nothing malign about our intentions, but we're resource-constrained enough that we have to be creative in our approach.
Just because it's a rev share rather than a flat fee, though, doesn't mean it's like the staffing industry. The staffing industry pays people below-market wages in return for letting them be entirely reactive about finding work. Our approach is to have interns share some risk in return for an upside that isn't capped.