X-Message-Number: 6560 From: Brian Wowk <> Date: Fri, 19 Jul 1996 11:50:34 -0500 Subject: Prometheus: Who gets it for free? Paul Wakfer writes: > At first your idea of royalty free use of > the technology for all pledge/share purchasers seemed like a great idea to > me. But on second thought it is not right again to apply it equally to all > sizes of pledge/share purchases. I am going to suggest implementing the idea > in two parts. > 1) All pledge/share purchasers will have the right to use their shares as > technology credits towards their own suspensions or the suspensions of > "family" in the same way that cryonics organizations can. > 2) Pledger/share purchasers of $5K per year or over will pay no royalties > on their own suspensions. The concept of Technology Credits imposes a firm mathematical relationship between royalties, technology credit per share, and the market value of shares upon the completion of the Project. Specifically, Royalty per cryopreservation case Market Value per share = -------------------------------------------- Number of shares that can be exchanged for a royalty waiver This is a minimum market value per share because it doesn't assume that the company will ever make money. I think all planning should proceed on this conservative basis because we really don't want investors who are "in it for the money". We want contributors who personally want the technology. Accordingly, shares can be conservatively valued in terms of the cost of the technology they can be exchanged for. Where does this leave us? Neglecting the time value of money, and assuming we want to avoid share depreciation, Paul's suggestion to allow royalty-free access for $5K per year contributors effectively pegs the royalty at $50,000 per case. I think this is near the maximum the market will tolerate (pusing the cost of neuropreservation to over $100,000). However there is a problem. We must plan for share *appreciation*, not stagnation, so that people who stay on the sidelines will pay more for this technology than those who help develop it. Accordingly, the contribution threshold for royalty-free access must be lowered to something like $2K per year (or the royalty raised, which IMHO is not tenable). I know this is not conducive to raising the larger pledges that the Project will need to succeed. However we are constrained by two important factors: * Setting a post-project royalty affordable enough so that the Project will not become an exclusive immortality club with no market appeal beyond the original contributors. * The need to reward original contributors by offering to exchange shares for technology credits worth more than they paid for their shares. I think these two considerations require a royalty of no more than $50,000 and at least $2.50 of technology credit for each $1.00 share purchase. Further discussion is welcome. *************************************************************************** Brian Wowk CryoCare Foundation 1-800-TOP-CARE President Human Cryopreservation Services http://www.cryocare.org/cryocare/ Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=6560