Startups Stack Exchange Archive

I’m currently working on a mobile game as an independent freelancer and I recently got in touch with a talented designer for eventual partnership.

I’m willing to pay the designer for his collaboration (we’ll probably use oDesk for that), but I’m also offering him partnership (we’ll share any potential revenue the game might generate once released) for a couple reasons:

The problem is that the designer and I did not know each other before this arose, we live in different countries, and we obviously cannot trust each other on simple promise.

Is there any kind of contract or legal procedure that I can follow to prove to my eventual partner that I’m serious about the deal and that I’m willing to share revenue with him in the future?

I’m an independent iOS developer at the moment, and I intend to release an android version at a later stage.

Answer 3827

There is an app for that... :-) Seriously now, this is an interesting problem and there is a startup trying to address it: check out Assembly.com, they have a system of sharing ownership and revenue based in the bitcoin block chain:

Every month a product generates revenue, the bills associated with it (server costs, advertising, capital investment repayments, and so forth) are paid transparently by Assembly. The remaining proceeds are split and distributed as royalties to those who built the product. The ownership of a product is represented through App Coins.

...

App Coins are primarily earned through your contributions (e.g. code, design, copy, etc) to the software products being built on Assembly. A contribution made to a product can be awarded App Coins by the product's Core Team. Members may also choose to tip you for your contributions with their App Coins.

I'm not affiliated with them in any way.


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