Articles

The Problem: Traditional Crowdfunding Is Broken Kickstarter’s Fatal Flaw You back a project: $50, $100, maybe $500 You get: A product (if it ships) You don’t get: Any ownership in what you helped create The creator: Keeps 100% of the equity Result: You funded someone else’s dream, but you don’t share in the success StartEngine’s Missing Piece You invest: $100, $500, maybe more You get: Equity shares You don’t get: The actual product you want Result: You own part of something you can’t use The Choice Nobody Should Have To Make Traditional crowdfunding forces you to choose: ...

I Built an Aircraft Carrier to Launch My Plane How One Founder’s IP Funds a Cooperative Platform The Problem I have an airplane. A really good one. Forty years of design. Nine years of active construction. 1,200+ documented innovations, prototypes over 23 years. The patent portfolio includes 99% utility patents — not design — protected by 210 formal claims across 7 applications. Eight definite with 9 more out of the first 130 so far have survived a deep dive against the U.S. patent office with no prior art found. ...

An Open Letter to Tatiana Schlossberg Dear Ms. Schlossberg, I read with great sorrow your New Yorker piece about your diagnosis and the maybe year you have left. About the medications that might buy you more time, if you can afford them, if your insurance approves them, if the system deems you worthy of another sunrise. I’m a stranger, but I’m writing anyway. Not because I can fix what’s broken in your body. But because you’ve spent your career documenting what’s broken in our systems, and I think you’d like to know it can be changed. I have the math, and the application, live and working, to prove it. ...

Anticipated Critiques & Preemptive Responses Strategic Defense: Answering Objections Before They’re Raised “The best defense is a good offense. Or in this case, a thoroughly researched response written before anyone attacks.” Why This Document Exists We spent nine years building Liana Banyan. We’ve thought through every objection. Rather than wait for critiques to arrive and respond reactively, we’re publishing our responses now—complete with embedded treasure hunt keys for readers who engage deeply with our counter-arguments. ...

Liana Banyan Patent Economics: Fair Upside, No Feudalism Liana Banyan treats its patent portfolio like an aircraft carrier: shared infrastructure that lets thousands of businesses take off, not a private moat for one owner. The economics are designed so the cooperative and its workers stay in control, external sponsors are rewarded well for real risk, and nobody can extract rent forever. Who Owns What For the patent portfolio we’ve already built (1,200+ documented innovations over 23 years): ...

Why We’re Not Looking for VC Funding How Liana Banyan’s Economic Model Differs from Traditional Venture Capital People ask: “Why aren’t you raising venture capital?” The short answer: Because VC funding is designed to extract maximum value, and we’re designed to sustain it. The longer answer requires understanding two fundamentally different economic philosophies—and why they can’t coexist in the same organization. The Core Comparison Dimension Traditional VC Liana Banyan / IP Load Balancing Ownership concentration Few funds own large equity blocks Platform 60%, creator ~20%, external capital 20% max, spread across many small stakes Return profile Power-law, unbounded; a few 100× outcomes drive fund Per-stake returns capped ($10M) then recycled; no permanent rent streams Control rights Investors often take board seats, vetoes, liquidation preferences Platform retains majority; creators choose control tier; external capital has economic rights, not governance control Early vs late entrants Early investors capture most upside; latecomers pay high valuations Caps and splitting reopen slots at fair value; new participants get “first-round”-like opportunities even late Geography / currency Strong-currency investors advantaged; weak-currency founders often excluded Three-gear currency equalizes internal purchasing power via Credits/Marks/Joules Goal Maximize financial return to LPs, often via exits or IPO Sustain platform, workers, and communities; “enough” is encoded in margins and caps What VC Funding Assumes Traditional venture capital operates on a power-law assumption: ...

Unlimited Throws: What If the Carnival Game Was Free? Jonathan R. Jones Founder & General Manager, Liana Banyan Corporation In November 2017, a user on Hacker News wrote: “Entrepreneurship is like one of those carnival games where you throw darts. Middle class kids can afford one throw. Most miss. Rich kids can afford many throws. They try over and over until they hit something, then give speeches about meritocracy. Poor kids aren’t visiting the carnival. They’re the ones working it.” ...

Unlimited Throws: What If the Carnival Game Was Free? How cooperative business simulation addresses entrepreneurial access inequality Jonathan R. Jones Founder & General Manager, Liana Banyan Corporation A growing body of research confirms what practitioners have long observed: entrepreneurial success correlates more strongly with access to capital and tolerance for repeated failure than with talent, education, or effort. Studies from the Kauffman Foundation, the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, and Hurst and Lusardi’s work on household wealth and business formation consistently show that the single best predictor of who starts a business is not skill but financial cushion — the ability to absorb losses and try again. This paper proposes a structural intervention: a cooperative business simulation model that decouples entrepreneurial practice from financial risk, enabling iterative failure at near-zero cost within a shared-knowledge ecosystem. The model is operational and its mechanics are drawn from nine years of development, 1,200+ documented innovations — 99% utility patents, not design — protected by 210 formal claims across 7 applications (eight definite with 9 more out of the first 130 so far have survived a deep dive against the U.S. patent office with no prior art found), and the author’s own documented experience with high-volume iterative failure in competitive domains. ...

SCE to AUX — The Call That Saved Apollo 12 “I can’t stand to be around anything that I don’t know how it works.” The Lightning Strike On November 14, 1969, Apollo 12 launched from Kennedy Space Center. Thirty-six seconds into flight, lightning struck the Saturn V rocket — twice. In Mission Control, every screen went haywire. Telemetry showed impossible readings. The spacecraft’s guidance platform tumbled. Fuel cells dropped offline. ...

Designed for Efficiency: Zero-Cost Value Creation “A timing shift that costs nothing but adds value.” The Philosophy Most platforms create value by taking from one group and giving to another. Liana Banyan creates value through structural efficiency — designing systems where benefits emerge naturally without additional cost. This article catalogs these innovations for patent documentation and as proof of the platform’s genuine value proposition. Example 1: Reserved Joule Conversion (Progress Bars) The Problem Poor users with 25 dollars buy Credits. Credits and Joules have identical value at purchase. But Joules are “Forever Stamps” — they lock in value. Poor users should have the same value protection as rich users. ...