Fair Launch Capital
Description
Sam Hart, Laura Lotti, Toby Shorin:
"Fair Launch Capital is a small group of facilitators who fund promising projects. The founders of these projects must be willing to forgo a founder's token allocation, instead distributing their token "fairly" in exchange for a startup grant. If founders net some upside over the course of deploying this protocol, they are expected to "pay it forward," subsidizing a subsequent team to launch their protocol and distribute tokens in the same fashion.
The Fair Launch model is interesting for a few reasons. First, the facilitating group does not capture financial value directly; it exists to perpetuate the organization. Second, Fair Launch Capital is not hard infrastructure but a social protocol, an institution whose maintenance relies on dedication and value alignment. And thirdly, the people who benefit are distinct from those performing the service. This leads us to a surprising feature of this new form of public goods: one way to manifest positive externalities is to consider the success of others as your own."