I love the term "Lifestyle Entrepreneur" and wear it with pride. There was a time when I thought it was all about raising investment money. Then I realized that such a prospect was completely outside of reality, and furthermore, I didn't need the money. Then I just hunkered down and got to work.

Feel free to rename it if you want, but I'll stick with the original. It suits me.

I think this is a nice contrast to the "Fail Fast" idea. I hear that thrown around all the time, but no one ever takes the time to define either part. "Fail" is often quite subjective (making no money? making a little money? enough to live on?), and "Fast" is definitely up in the air. I'd even say that 13 months is pretty optimistic, depending on what you're definition of "success" is.

Well, I give up. It never worked right with Facebook, and since I only really care about FB and Twitter, there's nothing here for me.

*crickets*

Good points, especially about near term vs long term.

For me, I'd say near term (ie. give unconditionally) is 1-2 hours / week max, and that's mainly because I'm already maxed out with a dayjob, a startup, and a second startup that I'm spinning up. I just don't have any more time to give. To give more would require me to reduce my commitment to my startups, and I'd need a real incentive to do that. In fact, such an incentive probably doesn't exist.

I guess if it's volunteer vs play XBox, it's probably better to give away your time on something worthwhile. Still, I'd steer those people toward OSS, since I think that's better for the overall health of the whole community.

In any case, good points.

What bothers me about this approach is that a seed-stage company is all about risk and luck. The founders believe in it, so they're willing to take a leap of faith, but the payoff can be big for them. Not so with the interns, even though they're taking pretty much the same risk: working in their spare time with no direct compensation.

If the founders work hard, are good, and are lucky, they get rich.

If the intern works hard, and is good, and is lucky, PLUS the founders work hard and are good, and are lucky, PLUS the founders are kind and appreciative, the intern gets a job.

See the imbalance? The intern takes a bigger leap of faith but gets less in the end.

Access to the mentor network and experience with a startup is definitely worth something, but as a hacker myself, I believe that anyone hacking even part time on a seed stage startup deserves equity, and a real amount of it. I'm happy to donate a few hours of my time to help a fellow startup, but if they want me on the project long term then it's time to talk equity.

This sounds like a neat idea, but it seems like the TS companies really get the sweet part of the deal. At the very least, shouldn't the hackers get some equity for their work? After all, 15h a week for 12 weeks is a lot of effort. Surely that's worth at least 1% of a seed-stage startup.

I'd argue that FB is not moving to being more open. They're just more popular. They have complete control over FB connect and can change it anytime they want, for whatever reason they choose. If you look at all the uproar from FB app developers about the design changes, it's clear that FB feels free to change any and everything they please, and third party developers often get the short end of the stick in the bargain.

Myspace went the OpenID route, and so did Google (sort of...) FB could have done the same, but decided to make their own standard, just like they did with FBML, FBJS, and others.

Anyways, I do appreciate what you're saying about giving choice to the site owners. I'm simply arguing that we web developers should consciously avoid proprietary standards and favor open ones.