Smartup 0

Not through better apps. Through better ownership, better memory, and better governance.

This Open Collective is the transparent financial home for that experiment. Every euro contributed here funds the research, supports the contributors building the technology, and backs the currency that rewards their work. Everything is public. Everything is auditable. Nothing moves without a trace.

Humanity has never had more individual intelligence, computing power, or connectivity. Yet our ability to solve complex problems together—climate, democracy, health, equity—is barely improving.

Why? Because the tools and structures around us were designed for individuals, not groups. They optimise for personal productivity and corporate profit, not collective intelligence.

We propose a different path:

Systems deliberately designed for democratic ownership, shared institutional memory, and constitutional autonomy. And we’ve built a laboratory to test whether that path actually works.

Smartup Zero is the first live test of the Smartup Hypothesis. A real community of contributors is using our open‑source apparatus (SmartupOS) to build a real technology—an emergency communication network called ONLIFE—while every decision, task, and transaction is logged and measured against the eight indicators of Collective IQ defined by computing pioneer Douglas Engelbart.

We’re not asking people how they feel. We’re measuring what actually happens: how quickly the group learns, how well it remembers, how smoothly it coordinates. The evidence is public. The hypothesis is falsifiable.

Your contribution doesn’t just fund the research—it makes you an owner of the experiment itself.

This is how the experiment is funded. Every contribution enters a publicly visible treasury, here on Open Collective. Expenses are voted on. Budgets are logged. The entire financial history is open.

When a contributor completes a task, they earn Smartup Credits (SC). Each SC is a €1 claim on this treasury—backed 1:1 by the funds held here. Contributors are not working for promises. They are working for a real, auditable stake in the experiment’s future.

We are fiscally hosted by Open Source Europe, which means we are now eligible to receive grants and institutional funding. All funds flow through the same transparent infrastructure.

How to Participate

You can join the experiment as a funder, an observer, or an active contributor. Every path gives you an equal vote in governance. No matter how much you contribute, your voice counts the same.

### 🎙️ Student License — €0
For students, advocates and storytellers. Follow the experiment, share the mission, and earn Social Karma for spreading the word. Earn you Watch or Work license.

### 👁️ Watch License — €500+
For citizen‑observers. Full transparency into the ledger, objectives, and decisions. One equal vote. Hold us accountable.

### 🔨 Work License — €50+
For active contributors. Join a team, claim tasks, and earn Smartup Credits. One equal vote. Your work builds ONLIFE and generates the experimental data.

### 🏛️ Organizational License — €5,000+
For institutions and civic organisations. One organisational seat at the table. One equal vote—not one per employee. Your institution’s contribution is publicly recorded and fully transparent.

Contributions above the minimum are welcome. They strengthen the treasury for all contributors—but they do not increase your vote or your power. That is constitutional.

Every euro that enters this collective is publicly visible. Every expense is logged. Every budget decision is recorded.

- Ledger & repositories
- Public website & live data
- Expenses: visible in the Finances tab above

This is not a promise of transparency. It is transparency—built into the platform we chose, mirrored in the ledger we maintain, enforced by the constitution we wrote.

Robbert Schep — Firestarster, Timeline0 & Smartup Zero  
Researcher, sociotechnical systems designer, and the person who has been asking “why does collective ownership always fail in practice?” for the past decade. The Smartup model and the ONLIFE experiment are his answer.

Early contributors will be listed here as they join the experiment.

- [The full thesis](https://timeline0.org/0_timeline/)
- [How SmartupOS works](https://timeline0.org/0_timeline/smartupOS/)
- [The Smartup Hypothesis explained](https://timeline0.org/0_timeline/the-smartup-hypothesis/)
- [Join as a contributor](https://timeline0.org/onboarding/start_here/)
- [The technical blueprint](https://timeline0.org/smartup-zero/development-blueprint/)

Timeline0 is an open research programme. Smartup Zero is Experiment #1. The ledger is open. The ownership is yours.