So I’ve written up a letter to advisers / basic business plan for the foundation … and will start sending out to people tomorrow.
If anyone would like to read it and test my link out … I will take suggestions over the next 16 hours or so before broadcasting it out.
Hi @TylerAbeoJordan I can’t help as advisor, because my advice is usually bad, but would love to help financially in the future.
This might also help you along the way
I would even advice that you/the foundation contact Juan Pablo Buritica and people like him (We really need people like this who already got a good community, but devs ignorant about the benefits of the SAFE Network).
Experimentation with hardware would also help incredibly.
Today I messaged 20 active top members of the forum and reached a ‘topic limit’ … which is fine and expected … will send out to another 20 messages tomorrow, unless of course I get a huge wave of ‘yes’ answers to my request for advisers!
Not all, I liked the idea. Still do. Also this one. Needs to be fleshed out. I can only support though, so I’m not jumping the gun here. Also I think when handling that much money there has to be a (semi)-professional team with enough time on their hands to work on it without having to compromise all the time. You shouldnt have to do this in your spare time, IMO.
Please read my letter/plan for advisors … it’s fleshed out a fair bit in there:
Hey everyone ^ this is amazing!!! I was involved with ether dao was extremely dis-heartened at the seemingly wasted potential - but it has now pathed a perfect road for maid to fly on 
Could the ico potentially endow upon maid holders a bonus WIN WIN
It’s my hope that this SafeApp ICO will help build and promote SafeNet and hence, yes it should help to push MAID token (and the future Safecoin) higher in value.
In fact, that is my personal reward for donating my time to this foundation as I am a hodling all my MAID tokens! 
This is an interesting idea, I think it could really be effective in jumpstarting more development if done right (your proposal looks awesome).
Privacy, security, freedom is a worthy goal in itself, but getting financial support to commit more time and effort… that’s a dream come true!
That’s the idea … the trade-off for any developer would be that they’d lose a small percent of the revenue to the ICO investors and the foundation.
Nice job Tyler. It is to the point. Be aware though, you’ll need to have the Foundation’s bylaws written up and if it is truly going to be an organization must abide with tax laws and organizational rules. If you need help with this let me know. I can use my Estonia e-residency or familiarity with US regulations if necessary. You will also need, of course, the approval of the developers to sign off on the proposal as well and have at least one member of the board be appointed to represent the interests of the developers.
I’ve been thinking of a constitution and bylaws… I’m not sure which country we might organize in … there are a few possibilities, some of which are less strict about things. A Panama Foundation is good as far as regulations go - they are kind of a black box, even to the Panamanian government. Also New Zealand has flexible rules for foundations. I’m open to ideas. Ultimately though this will be one of the first decisions of the board of directors IMO.
Hey @TylerAbeoJordan I just caught up with the thread and read the proposal you wrote. I feel your initial post should have gotten some more feedback from the community. I want to commend you for not waiting around and for trying to push this forward by writing the proposal. Without this kind of initiative we wouldn’t get anywhere! 
That said my feelings about a SafeApp foundation are mixed. On the one hand I think it can be really good for SAFE, but on the other hand I think it can also do a lot of damage. My biggest concern right now is that most of the funds for the foundation will be raised through an ICO. People that invest in an ICO generally want to see a nice return on their investment. As @danski already mentioned it’s not clear how this will happen.
Now everyone can dream up how a positive scenario would unfold:
Now here’s a scenario that’s not as positive:
I could write quite a few of these, some good, some neutral, some bad and some very bad. Now as with any venture there’s no guarantee for success, but I think if “we” do this then we have to be confident that this can be good for both the project and the people investing their money.
So I think right now the most important question that needs to be answered is how investors will get a return on their investment. The most obvious way is to “flip the coin” at a higher price. This will happen, and some will get their return that way. This is fine and this is the way it works for most of the ICO’s. Then there are the long term holders, people that think they will make more by holding or people that believe in the cause / idea behind the ICO. So how will we “guarantee” a ROI for them?
The only suggestion I’ve seen so far is:
This one makes sense in a way, but I’m not sure if PtD is a certain thing. From what I recall it was something being discussed and something that people disagree about heavily. Maybe I’m wrong about this?
Assuming there’s no PtD apps will need to make money some other way. Some ways I can think about are:
)Now these are not too creative I admit, so hopefully there are more and better ideas out there.
If we agree that investments in apps will need to make a return it also means that the Foundation would only fund ideas that have a good commercial business plan. This also means that even though some apps may be really valuable to the network as a whole they may not get funded because there’s not a good business plan. It also means that funded apps would have to sign some form of contract with the foundation through which the foundation owns a percentage of the app or perhaps gets the rights to the app / source code if the developers choose to abandon the project.
So I’m going to leave it at this for now, but I am happy to actively discuss this further. I think there’s a lot more to be said, but I think this post is already about the maximum that anyone wants to read in one go 
I think this is being confused with Pay the Producer (PtP). My understanding is that developer rewards are going to be impingement.
I don’t think this should be assumed, but clarified. I don’t think the main aim of the ICO is necessarily to provide a return on investment. It has, to my mind, been proposed as a way to help SAFEnetwork as a whole, by supporting developers, so I think rewards to investors can be secondary - a bonus, rather than the primary consideration. Perhaps we should avoid the term ICO if this is the case because I think that may suggest that the priority is commercial whereas in this case I don’t think that is decided?
What do potential ‘investors’ think - will you contribute in the basis of supporting developers, or should a return in your investment be the priority?
Perhaps SAFE incubator? SAFE community Incubator, SAFEapp Foundation Incubator crowdfunding round. Something that is accurate and has a ring to it
Yeah I think I may have confused the one for the other. I guess if PtD is going to be included it will be easier for projects/apps to earn some money.
I think for the foundation proposition to work it would have to be something in the form of an ICO or at least rewards should not be secondary or some sort of bonus. Looking at my own situation it would make sense to contribute a little since I own MAID and also because I want the project to succeed. It would make a lot more sense to contribute a lot when there’s at least some chance to get a return on investment.
If you look at the efforts that have been made with the Community Engagement Program and the amounts that were raised for those projects it wouldn’t make sense to go through the process of starting a foundation. The whole legal aspect and time that people put in there seems a bit much for let’s say a maximum of $100K.
An ICO however could possibly raise millions, especially with the whole hype around them right now. If this road is taken though I do think that there should be a good chance to actually make a profit to prevent a situation where a lot of money would be raised with only losses for investors.
I’m fine with either, but if the latter is chosen we have to make sure it’s done right since failure will reflect badly on the project and the community, especially if Advisors and Board members are respected community members.
I’m not clear myself which is the best direction. I think you’ve highlighted the question here, what are the goals, and their relative priorities. I’d just say I don’t think we need millions here. That would be a while different ‘ball game’ but isn’t essential to drive awareness and help accelerate development. Anyway, you are right to be concerned that without rewards, it may not raise enough to be worthwhile.
I think there are various avenues for revenue generation for the foundation, plus the big incentive of boosting MAID price due to the interest in the apps generated.
Terms of funding from the foundation could include;
All revenues the foundation receives get distributed proportionately to token holders, except for some witheld to cover costs.
The foundation board members can focus on selecting apps that are likely to generate some kind of return to investors, as well as generally providing useful apps for the Safe network.
Those are some thoughts anyway. I think it’s a great concept, but agree that revenue models are important if an ICO is going to be used to fund the foundation.
I think the foundation should concentrate on making sure there is a working app, code, and demo for a project before or even if that project is to hold an ICO. An ICO should not be a requirement but being funded by the foundation, working demos should be BEFORE an ICO. This would ensure fruitful ICO’s, no scamming, good reputation of the Foundation. There is a lot to be discussed here for sure
There would need to be hurdles to avoid scamming the foundation itself as well. Having to present a business plan on fund allocation, perhaps access to jira tasks? Deliver funds in milestones and not in one lump sum. It would be useful to have a coder or two on the board. Just some quick thoughts for now.
A lot of really good points raised here. The mini-plan I put forward is obviously just a beginning and we have much to hammer out over the next few months. Assuming we get enough people interested to be advisors and we can subsequently elect a board - looking good at the moment IMO. Then I am happy to put up a private website for advisers and create a riot chat room for discussion and we will work on the details.
Obviously there is no perfectly sound plan though that will guarantee an investor ROI - but as @happybeing points out, there are many reasons why someone might invest - e.g. they believe that it will assist with the growth in their Safecoin investment. Still we do need a clear well written explanation of how investors might be able to profit.
@DavidMc0 I like those ideas … I’m not sure about what the correct percentages would be and perhaps that we might custom tailor percentages depending on the project? Or maybe not, a fixed percentage has appeal too.
Consider that if we support some really big projects (e.g. the future facebook of Safenet), we may well lock in a solid ROI for our investors.
Another possible way for us to get ROI for foundation investors is to give them tokens of projects. Not all projects, perhaps only a few, will have their own ICO - I don’t know, but we could offer that our investors will get a certain percent distributed and/or we can offer them the ability to get in on the pre-sale of the token at very low prices.
@Nigel - yes yes yes! I would definitely want a system of pre-defined hurdles for projects. While I am in favor of bounties for whitepapers, they will definitely need to come up with a good business plan - although we may be able to facilitate that process by giving developers access to each others plans for ideas - and of course we would carefully read through and evaluate each plan and use a feedback/review mechanism to help them along.
We will have some coders as advisors, don’t know how many yet. So quite likely that the elected board will also.
Yes you are. The big discussions were on PtP (pay the producer/uploader). Only a few were against the PtD
PtD is really essential to allow a developer to be rewarded for their work according to the usefulness of the work.rather than how many adverts they have. PtD will actually help to stop the cancer of advert Apps