Late Labs was a really stellar idea... I followed it pretty closely for awhile (even rocked a sticker on my laptop!). I was sad to see it go, but it's interesting to see this post-mortem.
It does sound super tough, and a scary environment for a VC to get involved. Double taxing sounds pretty bad, and is one more reason for a VC to avoid the risk.
I know Assembly is a somewhat similar idea, and they've raised a bit of funding. I wonder if they got around that limitation somehow.
hey there. Founder of Late Labs here. We could have avoided the double tax problem if we didn't try and keep a small piece of the equity for the company.
Would have to play it like AngelList did for investment (they never actually handled any money or helped with negotiation). Our idea was to keep a very small portion of the equity from each deal to create a big pool of high risk early stage equity... which ended up being our downfall.
Bountysource looks like it can avoid that because they only act as a marketplace for introductions. Make sense?
It does sound super tough, and a scary environment for a VC to get involved. Double taxing sounds pretty bad, and is one more reason for a VC to avoid the risk.
I know Assembly is a somewhat similar idea, and they've raised a bit of funding. I wonder if they got around that limitation somehow.