I wrote awhile back about Rob May at The Business Experiment and the business is was trying to build based on what all web participants thought and how they responded. The idea was could a group of strangers build a business voluntarily? Rob brought us up to date this week…

"There seems to be a problem at TBE. We put something up for a vote, and we get emails and forum posts about how we aren’t ready to vote on that issue yet. Nothing is getting done. The business plan has been "open" for weeks and it is going nowhere. This wisdom of crowds process for creating a business simply does not work. There is no accountability. We are experiencing the classic free rider problem where each individual lets everyone else do the work, and hopes that the crowd does good work and they get their cut of the next big thing. As a result, nothing gets done. Yet the moment I talk about moving away from giving out equity to everybody, I get a bunch of complaints about how then there will be no incentive to participate. Let’s face it. Participate in what? As of now there is no business.

Think about this for a second. In this era of WEB2.0 hype, we have the only company attempting to bring users together to create a real business or businesses. We have a talented and creative user base that is interested in these ideas. And we are getting ready to get a lot of attention as a major business periodical will publish a story about us late next month. Don’t give up just yet.

The major change at TBE is this – we are going to create an "upcoming vote" blog and "upcoming vote" forum. The blog will list polls opening in the next few days. The forum is where you can discuss options that should be in the polls. When the polling day comes, the poll is posted. If you didn’t get a chance to contribute your opinion, it’s too late. Options will be pulled out the forums and posted so that you can vote. If no options are posted, Sean, or the teams, can make the decision without input from the crowd. We can’t wait on every one of you to give us your opinion because this has to get done someday.

Finally, the equity issue is becoming a very big problem for us. Seriously, there may be no way around it without spending a whole bunch of money. Even if we give options or warrants or promises or anything like that, if there is a chance you end up with equity, the SEC requires us to go through an expensive disclosure process. However, if groups stay small, that is irrelevant. If you want to use TBE to find 5 people to start a company with and split the equity in that yourself, it is fine because that is a small number of people. So, next week there will be a vote on how TBE will solve this problem. If you have a proposed solution, post it in the forum and we will put it up for a vote.

There is one new open poll, about whether TBE should pursue other businesses right now or just focus on WOU. Many users seem not to like WOU, so perhaps those of you that don’t would rather work on something else.

This has been an experiment, and round #1 has failed. Help us define the next direction for the site. Somewhere in all of this, there is a new way of doing business. Yes I know, you don’t want to share it with the crowd because you want compensation for your idea. Didn’t we cover the value of ideas already? Log in. Make TBE what you want it to be, but let’s make it something other than a freerider’s utopia.