Founding Community Round

Author: McKim Jean-Pierre, Co-Founder Reviewed by: Andy, Co-Founder 
Purpose of this Page: To introduce the Founding Community Round and invite early supporters to help launch TechnoEthos and develop TEED.  

If you are here, you likely care about how digital systems shape our lives, just like we do. 

There is a structural gap in how modern software is build and governed that must be addressed. The decisions that shape millions of lives are increasingly optimized for speed, scale, and profit, often with limited human oversight, accountability, or recourse. TechnoEthos exists as an institutional response to confront this gap directly.

We are a community in the loop software company, incorporated as a Community Contribution Company (C3) in Vancouver, British Columbia. As a community in the loop software company, we center communities as core stakeholders and design technology to strengthen our collective well-being, agency, and dignity. We do this by building tools and governance structures that embed human judgment, legal accountability, and ethical reasoning directly into software development. 

Our foundations are in place: we are incorporated, we have a founding team and early contributors, and we have a working prototype. What remains for us to fully launch is the most important element of our company: our founding community. 

This is our invitation to you to join that Founding Community.  

We are developing the TechnoEthos Ethics Engine and Dashboard (TEED). 

TEED is a compliance and ethics evaluation system that translates laws, regulations, industry best practices, and ethical frameworks into actionable guidance for software teams. It is our core mechanism for increasing transparency and strengthening public agency in how digital systems are built and used.

For developers, TEED integrates into development workflows and flags: 

It explains why something is flagged and outlines available options, enabling teams to make informed decisions before deployment. 

Each evaluation contributes to a TEED Score, currently under development. This score will reflect the number and scope of laws, regulations, and ethical frameworks a product aligns with. The TEED Score is not a pass or fail rating. It is a transparent snapshot of how a product aligns with specific laws, standards, and ethical frameworks at a given moment in time.

Teams may choose to publish their TEED Score in a public TEED Scores Repository hosted on our website. This repository is designed to increase transparency and give users clearer visibility into how digital products are evaluated. 

Our first vertical is EdTech. This means the first TEED Scores published in our Repository will empower teachers, school districts, parents, and academic institutions to make more informed decisions about the technologies they adopt.  

We have: 

 
With your support, we will:

 
You can join us by:
 

If you donate to this round, here are the perks:
 
$10–$249
 • Name or username listed on the TechnoEthos “Foundational Supporter” page (optional and editable at any time)
 • Invitations to TechnoEthos development update town halls and Q&A sessions held three times per year via Discord
 • Early notices of upcoming team blog posts
 • “TechnoEthos Foundational Contributor” badge for personal websites or LinkedIn
 • Participation in light community votes

$250-$999
  • The ability to upvote feature requests in TEED via Discord

 
$1,000–$9,999

$100,000+
 • A fixed founding-era rate for TEED products for the lifetime of the product line
 

 
The first 20 donors will receive:

Anyone who donates or joins a waitlist within the first two weeks of launch will be entered into a draw to receive:

 

 
You are still welcome in our community.
 

You can sign up to be among the first contacted about:  

If you would like deeper information before deciding, we invite you to review our Open Architecture in our Proton Drive. It outlines our institutional structure, legal mandate, product architecture, and long-term vision.

You can also read McKim’s early thinking and development of TechnoEthos on her blog.
 

We believe technology should be built for community, with community. If this resonates with you, we invite you to help shape what comes next. 

Equity Crowdfunding Listing and Due Diligence
$10,000 CAD
This amount covers the listing fee and associated due diligence costs associated with most equity crowdfunding platforms in Canada

Equity Crowdfunding and Non-Profit Structure Legal Setup
$30,000 CAD
This amount covers onboarding a securities counsel and completing the legal work required to prepare TechnoEthos for equity crowdfunding. This includes development of an appropriate fundraising and governance structure, drafting and review of a Form 45-110F1 offering document, preparation of investor or donor-facing documents, security or membership structure design as applicable, and closing steps/regulatory filings.

This funding also supports evaluating and establishing a non-profit structure that can receive philanthropic and grant-based funding related to AI governance, ethics, and public-interest technology, thereby expanding TechnoEthos’ ability to accept relevant funds. Any required regulatory filing fees in British Columbia associated with a successful raise or incorporation would be covered by this amount.

Cap Table Management Tooling and Campaign Marketing Production
$50,000 CAD
This amount will help cover the costs related to ensuring we have a professionally crafted marketing push and materials for our crowdfunding campaign. It will also help cover the costs of tooling and admin work related to investor communications, documentation and cap table management.

Paid Technical, Policy, and Documentation Work Packages
$75,000 CAD
This amount covers defined, paid work packages across technical, policy, and governance tasks required to move TechnoEthos forward on a contract/part-time basis. This includes compensating founders and contractors for scoped deliverables, technical cleanup, documentation and policy research work.

External Review, Validation and Framework Translation
$100,000 CAD
This amount covers paid review and validation by subject matter experts in education, ethics, policy, accessibility, and security. It also supports professional documentation and writing assistance to translate regulatory and ethical frameworks into clear, legible materials suitable for future pilot participants.

TEED Pilot Readiness via Contracted Support
$150,000 CAD
This amount covers the preparation required to make TEED ready for limited pilot engagements using contracted and part-time support. This includes infrastructure preparation, onboarding materials, feedback workflows and the production of a pilot learnings and transparency report.

Team of 1
$350,000 CAD
This amount covers one full-time team member for one year. This funding is reserved exclusively for salary and related employment costs and enables the first fully dedicated, full-time role at TechnoEthos. For more information on salaries at TechnoEthos, please refer to our proton drive.

Team of 2
$700,000 CAD
This amount covers two full-time team members for one year. This funding is reserved exclusively for salary and related employment costs and supports sustained, coordinated work across technical, institutional, and operational responsibilities.

Team of 3
$1,050,000 CAD
This amount covers three full-time team members for one year. This funding is reserved exclusively for salary and related employment costs and enables the founding team to operate full time with clear role ownership and continuity.

Team of 9
$3,372,000 CAD
This amount covers the salaries of the three founders and six additional team members for one year. These additional roles have been identified and informally recruited as the first operational hires needed to support engineering, policy, design, and institutional operations.

TechnoEthos Launch Pad
$4,500,000 CAD
This amount covers one year of full-time salary runway for the founding and initial operational team, along with essential one-time setup costs required to launch TechnoEthos as a stable institution. This includes legal and administrative setup, technical and compliance tooling, infrastructure costs, and two machine learning engineering positions necessary to support TEED at scale.