Commons Pool

When a group of founders share a building, a residency, or an accelerator cohort, they occupy the same physical and intellectual space. They eat together, troubleshoot together, introduce each other to investors. But economically, they are strangers. Founder A has no financial stake in Founder B’s success. The mentor who spent weeks helping a founder ship has no upside. The venue that hosted the residency captured rent, not value.

This creates a structural problem. The people who contribute most to a founder’s success have no economic reason to keep contributing after the residency ends. The founders themselves have no incentive to help each other beyond goodwill, which doesn’t survive a 14-hour workday when your own company is struggling.

The Commons Pool is designed to fix this.

How It Works

A Commons Pool is a shared equity portfolio created by founders who participate in an incubation residency. Each founder contributes a small stake in their company as part of the residency exchange. The operator retains the majority of each contribution as its portfolio position. A defined percentage is returned to the contributing founder as alignment asset units, representing diversified exposure to the entire pool of companies, not just their own.

The founder is not simply giving up equity for services. They are exchanging concentrated risk in one company for a combination of services (mentorship, housing, network access) and diversified exposure to a portfolio of peer companies at a similar stage. The effective cost of the residency is lower than it appears, because part of the contribution comes back as an investment.

When Founder B’s company succeeds, Founder A’s alignment asset units appreciate. The mentor who earned units through verified contributions participates in the upside. The venue that hosted the residency holds a stake in the portfolio. Everyone’s incentives point in the same direction.

The Swap

The core mechanic is a value exchange with a built-in diversification return.

A founder enters the residency and contributes a stake in their company, typically structured as a SAFE with a Most Favored Nation clause. The MFN is important: for pre-seed companies with no priced round, it means the contribution converts on the same terms as the founder’s next lead investor, eliminating the need for the operator to set a valuation that the market hasn’t determined yet.

The operator retains the majority of this contribution as its portfolio stake. A defined percentage, typically around 20%, is returned to the founder as alignment asset units. These units represent pro-rata exposure to every company in the pool. As more companies join across successive residency batches, every unit holder’s diversification improves.

The pool accepts mixed instrument types within a single cohort. Equity-structured companies contribute SAFEs. Token-native projects contribute token warrants with equivalent mechanics. What matters is that each contribution represents a real, enforceable claim on future value. The instrument adapts to the company’s structure.

Ecosystem Contributors

Not everyone who contributes to a founder’s success is a founder themselves. Mentors, venue hosts, community members, and infrastructure providers all create real value. The Commons Pool includes a reserved allocation for non-founder contributors who earn alignment asset units through measurable activities.

This is where the model becomes a network, not just a fund. A retreat center that hosts a founder for three months earns alignment asset units. A mentor who provides verified advisory hours earns units. An infrastructure provider that donates compute or tooling earns units. Each of these contributors now holds diversified exposure to the portfolio of companies they helped build.

At scale, this creates a physical and intellectual infrastructure network that is economically aligned with founder success. The venue doesn’t just charge rent. The mentor doesn’t just collect goodwill. They hold a stake in the outcome.

One Pool, Many Cohorts

The pool is designed to be rolling, not cohort-bounded. All portfolio companies contribute to the same pool regardless of which batch they entered through. This follows the model established by Protocol Labs’ Alignment Asset, which operates across hundreds of network companies in a single shared structure.

A single pool maximizes diversification for every participant. Early contributors benefit as later cohorts add new companies. Later contributors benefit from the track record and appreciation of earlier cohort companies. The pool grows with each residency batch, and every unit holder’s exposure broadens accordingly.

Sub-networks and partner locations can run their own local alignment programs and feed a portion of their pooled assets upstream into the Commons Pool, creating a layered alignment structure. A building-level equity pool at a co-working space, for example, could contribute a percentage of its assets to a network-level pool, giving local participants exposure to the broader portfolio while maintaining their own local alignment dynamics.

Relationship to Revenue Participation

The Commons Pool sits alongside the HyperClaim, our revenue participation instrument. They are complementary mechanisms that address different return profiles.

The HyperClaim creates predictable, usage-correlated cash flow from protocol fee revenue. It is the steady-state return on infrastructure that gets used. The Commons Pool creates speculative, exit-dependent upside from equity appreciation across the portfolio. It is the venture-style return on companies that break out.

Together, they form two distinct asset classes. Revenue participation pays the bills while you wait for the breakout. Cross-portfolio equity exposure captures the upside when it comes. Neither mechanism alone tells the full story; together, they represent a complete financial relationship between an incubator and the infrastructure projects it supports.

Why This Matters

The standard incubator model creates bilateral relationships: operator takes equity, hopes for exit. Each portfolio company is an island. The people who actually build the ecosystem - the mentors, the venues, the community - capture none of the value they create.

The Commons Pool turns an incubator’s portfolio into a cooperative. Founders hedge their concentrated risk. Mentors and venues earn real upside. The operator builds a diversified portfolio through a mechanism that founders perceive as fair, because they get something back. And the resulting incentive alignment - where everyone benefits from everyone else’s success - compounds over time in ways that purely bilateral relationships cannot.

This mechanism is generalizable. Any incubator, accelerator, residency program, or builder community that brings founders together could deploy a Commons Pool. The parameters are configurable: contribution amounts, return ratios, contributor point values, and pool structure can all be adapted to the operator’s context. We intend to publish reference implementation guidelines and welcome collaboration on the standard.