Give What You Grow is a compensation model, framed by 📝John Zdanowski as an elevation of the finance phrase "eat what you kill," in which the people who cultivate an opportunity are rewarded with a voice in how its proceeds are reinvested into their community and its members, themselves included.
Investment bankers and venture capital firms often use "eat what you kill" to mean that individuals get paid on the business they themselves go after and close: under that model, the partner who sources and leads a deal takes most of the firm's proceeds from it. Benchmark, on the other hand, splits the proceeds from all deals according to the equity its partners hold in the firm, regardless of who brought the deal in.
Give What You Grow elevates this language and model in acknowledgment that this kind of self-interested thinking and behavior has originated much of today's economic toxicity. Within the 📝One Inc Cooperative, 📝Citizens are rewarded for opportunities they cultivate with a voice in how the proceeds are reinvested into the Cooperative and its Citizens. An established Citizen might choose to invest proceeds into opportunities that surround the projects they're incubating within the collective, while a younger Citizen seeking to buy a house and start a family might request a cash distribution; both avenues generate long-term value.
The Cooperative incubated the Give What You Grow model with the intention to cultivate 📝Living Systems with 📝Symbiotic Behaviors.