Giving equity to contractors is a bad idea. Contractors can't vest, and you're effectively granting unlimited upside in exchange for the assumption of very, very little risk (he's literally promising "evenings and weekends" time) and the delivery of transactional services.<p>A better plan for an offer like this is deferred compensation.
I hate to be that guy, but part time, evenings and weekend only, remote workers who want equity and not hourly/project compensation are basically the exact opposite of the type of employment arrangement startup founders are probably interested in. I'd be happy to proven wrong but sounds like a pretty raw deal for founders, since this type of arrangement not only dilutes them or takes from the options pool (which, if they are funded, is a <i>much bigger deal</i> than paying the person) but also introduces all kinds of overhead and unnecessary pain in dealing with the logistics and lack of focus the employee will inevitably have.<p>The only time this could be a good deal is if there was a real lack of engineering talent available for hire, so I guess if you consider startups outside of the talent hubs it could make sense. But even then, if the startup is considering remote workers, this is far less appealing than a full-time, M-F, salary based employee.
This is an interesting idea. As posed though, I don't think it is workable. As noted other places in the thread, equity for contract dev work is pretty silly.<p>Posed slightly differently though, he could be a technical co-founder for someone else who is also still working a day-job. Helping do bits of work for a "startup" with full-time founders does not deserve a large piece of equity. (I know the article said "small", but 8-18% as noted elsewhere in this thread by OP, is not in fact small.) Being a technical co-founder though would deserve this kind of equity or more, depending on how many people involved and what the work/money requirements were.
I was initially very skeptical of this idea but then I thought: "Well, some of the money that investors would put into a startup would just go employees and other service providers - why not skip a step?"<p>There are definitely alignment issues and other landmines that may make this a bad idea, but at the same time, the best way to find out what's wrong with this model, how it can be improved, or how it could work in some form, is to try it out.<p>It'd be great if you posted a follow up in a month or two after you've gotten some traction.
Handy to do the time zone translation, but keep in mind that there's 4 time zones here, so that's a 3 hour swing :-) I'm guessing you're assuming Pacific time - contrary to what HN might suggest, there ARE startups in the US that aren't in California. :-)
In general, I like your idea :) and I've tried this route myself. Here's how it failed for me:<p>Outside people can rarely judge the quality of your work. If you're willing to work for free, they'll assume that your work is worthless. At least I was treated quite bad by the startup that I tried to help...
Cool idea! I'd be down for a similar arrangement if anyone's interested<p>UI, UX, design. Frontend developer, backbone experience. YC alum. SF<p>bp@brandonpaton.com