(Edit: The Daeken Discount Program is closed. While an interesting exercise, it resulted in only one sale, but it was of the 25% discount level so I can't complain too heavily. If nothing else, it was fun to try something.)
A long while back, I saw people selling shares in themselves. That is, you invest in the person and get a portion of their earnings and such, just like investing in a company. While I like the idea in theory, I can't see selling off a large (1 %) part of myself that I'll likely never get back. However, the idea's stuck with me. So while I was laying in bed last night, I came up with an idea.
The Daeken Discount Program
I'm launching an experiment. As of today, you can buy a lifetime discount on any of my products; rules and restrictions are below.
- $50 gets you a 5% discount
- $90 gets you a 10% discount
- $200 gets you a 25% discount
I see this as a win-win. If no one buys into it, I'm out an hour worth of work and write this off as an interesting failure. If people do buy into it, I potentially lose some future profits, but the people who would do so are going to be more likely to buy from me anyway.
Why should anyone buy into this?
I think that people will see that I build cool things, and it's a small enough amount of money that everyone that buys into it will eventually at least break even.
How does it work?
The discount will be tied to the email you put in the Paypal purchase (although if you end up changing emails, I'll move it over to another, of course), and when you use it for purchases on anything of mine, you'll immediately receive the discount.
What does it apply to?
Any product purchase of mine, whether one-time or recurring. The obvious exception is if I don't have the right to do this, e.g. a product I build for someone else. However, all of my future companies will fall under this.
How long will you run this?
Probably no more so than a month or so. If it succeeds, I'd rather not have a million people with lifetime discounts on my products; if it fails, there's no point in leaving it up.
What have you built and what are you building?
Product-wise, I haven't built much; the biggest thing I've built was Alky, which allowed the conversion of Win32 binaries to run natively on OS X and Linux. It was a marginal success, although it ended up failing later for business reasons.
These days, I'm working on a few things:
- Renraku: This will eventually be combined with
- OpenBAMF/IREctive: Reverse-engineering platform and module store (My primary for-profit project right now)
- Books
- The Emulator's Handbook: A book on building an emulator from start to finish. There's simply nothing there yet, which is a damn shame -- we need to get people involved here.
- So far unnamed: A book on reverse-engineering game protocols and emulating them.
In the future, I'd like to be developing and selling Eyetaps and other hardware around Renraku.
What if you never build anything interesting? / What if you never start another company?
In the (I hope, unlikely) event of one of these happening, I'm deeply sorry. I do my best to create things that people will want, but it's entirely possible that I'll fail. If I end up working a day-job for the rest of my life and someone buys into this program, I'll do whatever is in my power to give you the discount, even if I have to pay the difference myself.
Can I buy it multiple times?
No, sorry, but this does apply on top of any other discounts available.
What if you renege on the deal?
Then I'd hope that I'd be outted as a fraud and prevented from ever doing business again. Seriously, I wouldn't do business with someone who pulled something like that, and I'd sincerely hope that others wouldn't either.
Questions?
Post a comment or email me at cody.brocious@gmail.com. I'm curious to see whether or not this takes off; would be cool for it to do so.
Happy Hacking,
- Cody Brocious (Daeken)