Overview

Our average total cost to launch a new startup is 500k€ (salaries of OSS members + cash and expenses + initial equity investment). As co-founders, we take 25% of the newly created company.

We typically incorporate the company when the first revenue opportunities are coming through, and will be signing a shareholder's agreement that constitutes a healthy basis for the future.

We’ll keep pushing until the startup closes between 5k€ to 20k€ recurring revenue, and then expect you to be fully in control and in position to raise fund and ramp up your team.

Money

• Out of our estimated 600K€ launch cost, we allocate 50K€ (cash) to be invested in the startup once its incorporated. This is not an upfront 50K€ check at the beginning of the cohort process. Rather, this is an equity investment which will only be made once the company has reached the right milestones.
• We understand that you will need to cover small expenses (e.g., software tools, field trips to meet with prospects, etc.) to get things off the ground. A virtual debit card will be created for your cohort. These launch expenses will be recharged to your startup once it exists as a legal entity. In other words, your startup is borrowing from the 50k€ envelope and you should spend wisely. If we don’t launch, they are our loss.
• Once we’ve invested 50k€, should you need additional financing to hit fundable status, we are able to advance up to 100k€ in the form of a shareholder loan (to be paid back once you raise funds).
• Each founder also gets a BSA allocation (options to buy shares) into OSS (around 7k€ worth), vested over 4 years. This represents our commitment to create a community. Said simply, when one company is a smashing success, we all profit from it. Historical founders are up 7x on those, and it represents our willingness to create a real community and not just a Slack channel, as per our Create and Share Value principle.

Legals

• To ensure that you can easily allocate the equity prior to the first funding round with external investors (if you change/add cofounders), our initial investment is made in the form of a convertible shareholder loan rather than a share capital increase. This avoids a premature valuation markup which otherwise has adverse tax implications for the cofounders (= you may not transfer shares at par value once the startup has raised capital).
• When you raise your first (pre)seed round with external investors, we will issue an invoice for 10k€ which allows us to assign and transfer all the intellectual property of the work performed by OSS team members (design work, coding, etc.) to the startup. A proper assignment of rights is required by all professional investors and must be made in exchange of a reasonable consideration to be valid (in other words, OSS cannot just waive its IP rights or transfer them for 1€).

Our Standard Terms