Startup Gets You Weekly Cash Gifts For Your Work

The Launchpad is a series that introduces Mashable readers to compelling startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

Name: Gittip

One-Liner Pitch: Gittip is a cash gift platform for professionals and groups to fund each other's work.

Why It's Taking Off: Open-source software communities have adopted Gittip as a way to show appreciation for each others' work, and it's possible other communities could benefit from peer-to-peer cash gifts as well.

Chad Whitacre is a self-proclaimed hacker who develops in Python and has created software used by fellow developers. His current project, Gittip, is a cash gift platform that launched eleven months ago.

The site now sees 1,000 weekly active users exchanging $3,000 total each week. Mashable joined Whitacre for the above Google Hangout to talk more about Gittip.

Most users of Gittip, like Whitacre, build software. Open source software by definition can be used, copied or modified by other developers, and often developers invest time and effort into open source software as members of the community, but don't directly generate income from it (or pay for what they use, since it is all free and accessible on the web).

But the site has broader potential — other communities could find use for it as well.

"You need people giving and you need people receiving. You need people doing awesome stuff that other people want to give to

"You need people giving and you need people receiving. You need people doing awesome stuff that other people want to give to," Whitacre says.

"The places where it's taking off the most are communities that have taken it on board as a whole."

Whitacre intentionally designed Gittip to provide a reliable source of income for users. The minimum a person can give each week is 25 cents, and the maximum one person can give another is $24. All contributions are weekly.

Accounts can be created through an existing Twitter, Github or Bitbucket account. Gittip itself is free to use, and does not take a cut of donations — rather, it allows users to donate directly to Gittip just like any other user.

For someone who wants to spend, say, 20% of their time doing creative work, being able to generate 20% of their income via Gittip might be a good deal. The challenge is whether other endeavors will draw generosity the same way programming has.

"The goal actually is for people to find a living on Gittip"

"The goal actually is for people to find a living on Gittip", Whitacre says.

Because code can often solve problems related to work, a developer can assign a value to the benefit received from access to another's open source code. Most likely, the same can't be said for poetry, or painting.

However, the model could work for non-profit fundraising (churches, for example, often take weekly contributions from attendees, who might appreciate an easy way to turn the giving on and off). It could also work for all forms of education. I once subscribed to a weekly newsletter for $5 a month to gain expertise on a topic. The newsletter was shut down because it didn't end up being profitable for the writer, but the information was valuable to me.

Gittip's model is less transactional — Whitacre's hope is that givers will give out of appreciation, rather than to receive a direct product in return.

Cash gifts are not tax deductible at this point, but it's something Whitacre is looking to add. Another feature he's developing is a community aspect that will help like-minded people find (and hopefully fund) each other.

Would you give cash to someone you admire, or accept gifts through a website? Tell us in the comments.

Homepage image courtesy of Flickr, davedugdale, Gittip