Ok. But what stops me from paying myself $0, working a profitable project over summer and having all the 100% to myself during the year?
I apologize in advance if I'm impolite but it sounds like a ripoff and is even worse than Rentacoder's slave wages.
In fact, here is my counter-proposal: come to Seattle where I live, work on my ideas and if you're successful I will give you 50% of the profits. It's like: work for a summer get paid for five years!
I may or may not give you office space but I guarantee that I will micromanage you and give you advice even though I don't actually know your area of development.
Forget "ideas." We have working, proven software and a platform for extending it. We have hard won domain knowledge and battle-tested business processes that deliver. We have a pipeline of revenue-producing products that we can't get to because we're short handed. As PG has suggested, ideas on their own are worth nothing. We have the product and the adoption.
It sucks that this sounds like a ripoff to you. Can you elaborate on why? It also seems like you're trivializing the challenges of "working a profitable project over summer." This is not an either/or situation, either - most people probably aren't trying to figure out whether to (a) intern or (b) start their own company. The two are generally pretty distinct.
So the only thing that stops you is everything else.
1. We have some projects that bring us money.
2. We have some ideas.
3. You develop those ideas without any pay.
4. If they succeed, we'll give you measly 10%.
5. Our platform is worth 90% of your revenue-generating product.
Microsoft also has products and platforms for extending them. Adsense is a battle-tested business process.
And as much evil as MS is, they don't practically own your company just because you happened to built on their platform, whatever that means.
I apologize in advance if I'm impolite but it sounds like a ripoff and is even worse than Rentacoder's slave wages.
In fact, here is my counter-proposal: come to Seattle where I live, work on my ideas and if you're successful I will give you 50% of the profits. It's like: work for a summer get paid for five years! I may or may not give you office space but I guarantee that I will micromanage you and give you advice even though I don't actually know your area of development.