The YouSA aims to eventually offer a variety of benefits to members. Currently, we’re experimenting with the Imps, a collection of items related to the future of humanity. It aims to make accessible what is important, rather than what is new. Though the news contains important items, they easily get lost in a flood of attention-grabbing stories with little relevance to humanity’s future. Thoughtful and caring people interested in improving the world, and in creative ideas for tackling major problems facing humanity, are invited to join the YouSA Imps.
One of the YouSA’s fundamental principles is that those helping it succeed should benefit from their contributions. To best reward those investing time or money in YouSA efforts, it should be recognized that both financial and non-financial rewards are important. Generally, financial rewards should be correlated with the amount of money or time invested, and with the effectiveness of any effort made. Earlier contributions are riskier, so they should expect correspondingly greater rewards.
In the YouSA’s infancy, lacking stock or stock options, this reward principle operates informally. Instead of a specified grant of stock or stock options, the earliest YouSA collaborators must rely on the assurance that if the venture succeeds, some way will ultimately be found to provide suitable rewards. Trusting such an assurance adds to the risk; so the ultimate reward should be correspondingly greater. Since the YouSA is not primarily focused on maximizing profit, and the path to profitability is unclear, the YouSA is not the best bet for someone focused solely on maximizing financial return on investment. The YouSA is better suited for, and invites the involvement of, people who care about improving the world.
In sum, the YouSA holds strongly that those taking the risk of participating at an early stage deserve extraordinary compensation later on, assuming our success makes that feasible.