Would it be possible for workers to create a diversified pool of startup equity grants? You'd pay in in-kind, and receive a portion of all cash flows from group holdings proportional to what you put in.
There's obvious problems with how to fairly value the in-kind options, and how to avoid making it a market for lemons.
The overall goal is something like if there's 11 co-founders and one makes it big, you wind up with one person with $900M and ten worth $10M, rather than one worth $1B. It's a small enough portion of equity that you're still incentivized to make it big, and a big enough portion of enough equity slices to cut out a lot of the variance.
There's obvious problems with how to fairly value the in-kind options, and how to avoid making it a market for lemons.
The overall goal is something like if there's 11 co-founders and one makes it big, you wind up with one person with $900M and ten worth $10M, rather than one worth $1B. It's a small enough portion of equity that you're still incentivized to make it big, and a big enough portion of enough equity slices to cut out a lot of the variance.