RocketClub - Get startup shares in the products you use & love

@gerrithall Great question! We structure RocketClub as platform providing marketing services to early-stage startups through its part-time workers or consultants on our site. Our members are compensated via stock appreciation rights by RocketClub based on the payment we receive and hold in escrow from the companies listing on the platform. Essentially the members get the financial benefits of stock ownership without the tax obligations, which is a win-win for everyone :)

@rocketclubco Signed up and it looks like a great product. I have 4 questions: 1. Are the members (like me) considered as part-time workers/cosultants? 2. How is the payment amount that you receive from companies determined? 3. Have you considered using Blockchain (Bitcoin) based Escrows? 4. What is the business model to make money? Thanks!

@babu_ck @gerrithall great questions! #1: yes members, such as yourself, are considered consultants for RocketClub, #2: the total 'cash' out is based on the # of shares you own, which is stated for each campaign, times the value of each share at the exit event. #3: no not yet, we don't want to complicate things just yet, but have gotten that feedback. #4: we take a cut of the payout based on the amount of time we hold the shares under management.

Man, thanks for that @benstern0! We're doing everything we can to get some interesting companies up on there. We started off with food and travel companies, and moving to social networking / entertainment next.

@ed_roman Wow, thanks Ed! Coming from you that just did it for me.

@ed_roman thanks mate! appreciate the support :)

@brybell No point reinventing the wheel? Or better yet, why offer a half-baked wheel when the person next door has a shiny one :)

@brybell thanks, yea it's a great forum tool.. very full featured and well maintained.

@lombardinelson Thanks Mark! I'm super excited to hear that there is interest here. We might seem a little techie focused right now, but the vision is that this can be for anybody. Early-adopters come in all shapes and sizes! At some point, every consumer encounters a product/service that is new to them from their perspective.

@tyrale Yes, your math is correct. But generally startups are valued at much more than $500k. Very early stage companies are usually valued between $500k-$1.5M (early like RocketClub where we are a team of two) Check this out page to find out how much different startups are valued at: https://angel.co/valuations

@rocketclubco Even at a generous 5m evaluation that only pays out $25 to each person. Sounds like really cheap crowd sourced testing and sharing for the hope of a very small payout.

@tyrale A $5M valuation is a company that has not raised a Series A round of funding yet and not really considered a win at all. Spottly is probably in the range of being worth $5M today and were seeking 1000 members for 1%. http://www.rocketclub.co/spottly... The goal is to become 100-500x more valuable..

@tyrale Came across a much better link here. The average tech exit is $242.9M. For more data see here: http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/14...

@biankayam Awesome, feel free to ping me erik@rocketclub.co if nothing but to exchange pleasantries. Thanks for the support

@petkoan Each startup lists a few tasks on their campaign to ensure a minimum amount of support is provided by each member. Our platform helps track this to make sure they are completed before any member earns their share.

@iamwormify Yup. We're hoping to pave the path for future companies, and give companies more channels to get traction. Of course, early adopters should also have a stake in the upside of the product they helped produce.

@iamwormify totally agree! that's the main reason we started RocketClub. getting traction is an extremely tough problem that almost all startups face. hopefully we can play our part in getting cool products in the hands of early users and get them to product-market fit. thanks for the support!