Do I have a normal theory for assessing the contribution of participants to a startup?

Question

Project management

Good afternoon,
I looked at a lot of topics about startups, and such questions often flash that people don’t understand how to evaluate the contribution of a particular person, or how to promise some investor 10% of the profit for a fixed amount now, because always the founder suffocating toad. I sketched out a quick accounting scheme for some startup in a vacuum. Of course, I understand that we need legal agreements and so on, but many people have problems with the very mechanics of settlements. That is, either everything is built on trust, conditionally, three programmers got together and decided to file the site, while they trust each other, how can you calculate the contribution of each and withdraw a percentage of future profits? And if one person leaves after a year of work and two new ones come, how to recalculate?

How do you like this scheme:
1. You must always keep a record of all expenses so that at any time you can get a report of who contributed how much money to the boiler and the percentage of the personal contribution of any participant to the total expenses.

2. Translate the labor costs of programmers into financial indicators. Agree in advance that the person receives N money per month. From this, you consider the cost of a working day or even the cost of an hour, depending on how work will be recorded.

3. For flexibility, you can transfer rubles to any virtual currency, for example, tokens, crystals or drawn shares. For example, 1000 rubles is equal to 1 token.
Accordingly, an employee with an agreed salary of 100k rubles works for a month, the money is not paid to him, but 100 tokens are added to the account.
The unfortunate investor invested 1 million rubles in the project, you draw him 1000 tokens in your accounting system.
That is, the costs of the project can be financial - they are converted into tokens. And expenses can be temporary, when a person spends his time - we also consider how much his time costs and translate everything into one common currency.

4. There is a circle of people working for tokens, there is a circle of people receiving money. When you pay a freelancer, you pay them real money. The costs are converted into tokens, whoever pays, these tokens are added to that account.

5. The formula is simple, calculations can be done in Excel, or you can sketch out a web interface with a couple of forms in a couple of evenings.
The downside is that starting to keep all expenses from the very beginning, but this is not even a minus, this is the right attitude.

6. All rules must be discussed before work begins. For example, that future profits are divided by the percentage of tokens. Determining the growth of tokens, for example, in the first year, 1 token is equal to 1000 rubles, and in the second year (or upon the occurrence of some event, the release of MVP to the market, for example, or the transition of the product to the next "stage"), the token will already cost 1200 rubles, etc. Accordingly, who came earlier, his contribution is estimated higher.

7. Consider exit conditions. Or a person needs to pay money, according to his contribution. Accordingly, someone simply needs to buy his tokens at the market price, adding them to their account. Either a person stops working, but his tokens continue to be taken into account in the division of profits. Here you need to understand that the total amount of expenses will continue to grow, respectively, the percentage of expenses of a person who has left the case will gradually decrease

8. It is necessary to fix or at least designate an event when tokens stop being issued. Let's just say that the project has passed the break-even point. When everyone in the team can receive a real salary, so that it doesn’t happen that someone says “I don’t need money, I work for a percentage” and will fill up their percentage of the profit

This is all purely hypothetical, as for me, the mechanics are quite simple. She converges. The rules are set in advance and they are also fixed and understandable. Do you think there are flaws in this theory?

Answer 1

The flaws are that at a certain point in time, some "participants" will stop generating tokens for themselves,
for example
, you develop an application, spend a lot of time and money on it - developers receive a bunch of tokens
, then release it, and advertisers, salespeople, managers begin to receive tokens ...
the developers seem to want to develop something further, but “we don’t need it yet” (c) ... and your mechanism will start squeezing out their business as unnecessary ... although it’s like they
literally made it possible for them to exist a certain point in time may become a more important member of the company than its founders ..
ps I remembered scruffy from futurama

Answer 2

Oh, this naive romance.
Yes, all this will work in a fair, honest world.
BUT, there is no justice in the world in the form in which it is expected.
A loophole will be found and everyone will be thrown, or someone will fake something, etc.
the world is like that, was also a romantic)

Answer 3

The more COMPLICATED the reasoning, the stronger the feeling that I'm being DECEIVED.
Startup!!!!
Several people.
Accounting for cash costs (light equipment rental ....) is SCRIPTLY.
Everyone invests money and their working time. Working time is calculated according to the standard method. We assume that we "Hired a person for this job" So we think EVERYONE (not to be offended). From here we can easily calculate the share of everyone in the project as an investor. You discuss the section of profit (THIS IS IMPORTANT) BEFORE it appears. The options are either the same or different. (For example, I generally refused the profit, you will pay me according to the tariff, and then all the profit will be yours).
For some time the project is unprofitable. Everything is clear here in case of exit from the project, everyone LOSE their share in the project - Is that clear?
The project began to make a profit !!!!!
First, we close direct expenses (Rent, electricity, equipment, well, for what we paid with money), we give the money to THOSE who paid this money PROPORTIONALLY.
Then we divide the money which, as it were, wages (based on previous calculations) Also PROPORTIONATELY.
If something remains - Congratulations, it's PROFIT.
We share the profit on the terms that were agreed in advance.
This is the most dangerous moment.
If at this moment someone wants to "slam" everyone - EVERYTHING .... a guaranteed fiasco. (checked many times)
PS Extensive discussions about "Tokens" strongly give away "Hacking." Which in general guarantees a fiasco to your project. Consider it.