Portions of the below are from a forthcoming article in the [Tampa] Bay Area Business Magazine.
If you’re going to start a Company 2.0, you’re going to memorialize your agreements with the other folks helping you out. You’ll need some contracts.
Most contracts have two parties, a buyer and a seller. When you boil an agreement, no matter how complex, down to its bare essentials, that’s what you get: a buyer who’s willing to pay to get something the seller has and is willing to give up for that money. Nearly every business relationship can be reduced to a buyer-seller relationship and nearly every contract ultimately describes one.
The most important provisions of any contract, therefore, consist of the terms that describe what the buyer gets for the money, how the buyer and seller will be able to know whether the buyer has gotten what was promised, and the terms that describe what happens if the buyer does not get what was promised. Provisions not obviously in support of these goals may be excessive or unnecessary. COntracting parties should demand consistency, uniformity, and above all, simplicity.
I think there is a way to normalize that standard buyer-seller agreement in a computer-mediated context to enable to fluid dealmaking substrate upon which to form and build a Company 2.0 (which, btw, would enable tools #6, 7, and 8 from the Company 2.0 manifesto).
A friend of mine is working on that now. See http://www.thememehive.com/.