How many teachers might one have? What good is the equity if all of it is being siphoned off by past teachers. I’d much rather pay a once than have that hanging over my head my whole life. Buy-once cry-once.
I could see people on track to get significant equity looking to buy their way out of this indentured servitude.
If giving up 1% to a teacher-investor helps me create 10x more value, that’s a fantastic deal. Without factoring in their impact on outcomes, it’s misleading to call that “robbing.”
And let’s be clear about what’s actually at stake. If I sell equity in a company for $10M, and a teacher owns 1% of my personal token, they’d receive $100k — only at that exit event. Compare that to owing a bank $200k in student loans right after graduation, regardless of outcomes.
It’s also not indentured servitude: there are no guaranteed repayments, I keep full agency, and personal tokens could allow “ejection” of shareholders if needed. Startup founders don’t see themselves as servants of their investors, and neither should students.
And honestly, I wouldn’t even want to buy back equity from investors who are actively helping me win. I’d rather keep them incentivized to keep contributing. (Of course, if they stop actively helping me I would want to buy back shares from them because they are deadweight). I think this could be implemented in a way that gives such control to the individual (e.g., you can buy back shares whenever).
What if there is no exit event? So if the student decides to run a profitable company, the teacher that owns a share doesn’t get a cut of the profits? I’d expect the teacher to get a distribution any time the student does.
> Startup founders don’t see themselves as servants of their investors, and neither should students.
I haven’t founded a startup, but I’ve seen enough startups I’m a customer of take on funding from investors. Incentives change. They nearly always cave to pressure to produce more profit, so the investor can make their money back, even at the expense of the vision for the company or the long term health of the business. They are also more likely to seek an exit than to build and grow the company for the long-haul. That’s the deal when the investor invests.
As a student grows, they require different teachers. Your freshman accounting professor isn’t going to be the one helping you sort things out for a billion dollar company. If they are cut off as deadweight, it undermines the whole concept, as they were still a building block to get you to where you are.
For teachers, it just feels like a perverse lottery. Go for volume and hope one pays off.
Teachers can still realize returns through secondary sales (with the student’s approval). In that case, the student gives up nothing (their life isn’t affected) while the teacher profits. That’s why I framed “giving up” only around equity sales by the student because only that results in the student "giving up" something. But from a teacher’s perspective they can clearly profit without requiring the student to give something up.
> They nearly always cave to pressure to produce more profit, so the investor can make their money back, even at the expense of the vision for the company or the long term health of the business
That happens in companies because investors hold voting rights and can push out founder(s) or make decisions about the company. With personal tokens, shareholders have no control: they can’t fire you, push you toward an exit, or override your vision. If someone becomes toxic, you could buy back their shares at market price and even cut off contact. Personal tokens are designed to keep individuals in full control. Unlike company shareholders, personal token shareholders don’t “own” you.
> If they are cut off as deadweight, it undermines the whole concept, as they were still a building block to get you to where you are.
Agreed. Unfair ejections would kill trust. That’s why all actions would be transparent. If a student ejects a teacher without clear justification, they’d damage their reputation and likely struggle to raise in the future. Transparency is what keeps the system honest. But even in an unfair rejection, the student would have to pay market price for that equity (or get a new investor that buys from the investor they are ejecting). Assuming the student’s value has gone up, then the ejected investor would still profit.
> For teachers, it just feels like a perverse lottery. Go for volume and hope one pays off.
In the same way the best investors don’t see startup investing as a lottery but as a skill: where you won’t bat 100%, but you can be orders of magnitude better than average. Great teachers would have a knack for identifying and developing talent and won’t view this as a lottery. And for teachers who don’t want to play this game, nothing changes: they can keep teaching in the current system. This is about adding another option.
