Founding Creator — Terms of the Offer

The Founding Creator programme has 100 spots. If you get one, you keep a better revenue split than any creator who joins after you, for as long as you have an account. Below: what you get, what you owe, and what the numbers look like.

This page is the offer in plain English. The binding legal version is in our Terms of Service. Read both before applying.

What you get

1. 10% platform fee, for life. Standard rate is 15%. Founding rate is 10%, on every sale, for as long as you have an account. The rate doesn't reset if you take a break or pause listings.

2. Founding Creator badge. A gold pill on your profile, your listings, and any reviews you receive. Permanent. Buyers see it before they see your work.

3. Featured on public launch. When we open to the wider audience (Product Hunt and press), founding creators get prioritised in the launch feature. Some get individually spotlighted with linked content. We choose who based on what's shipped by then.

4. Private Discord with the team and the other founding creators. First place we ship bug fixes, take feature requests, and announce changes. We invite the first cohort once five spots are filled, then everyone subsequently as they're approved.

What you owe

1. Ship at least one skill within 14 days of approval. Doesn't need to be polished or paid. Just real, runnable, and yours. If you need longer, tell us and we'll work something out. The only way to lose your slot is going silent for 14 days.

2. Hand-reviewed quality. Every skill goes through review before going live. We may ask for changes before approving. If something isn't working, we'll always offer a rework path before rejecting outright.

3. No promotion of competing platforms on Techne. Don't link buyers to off-platform purchases of the same skill. Don't DM other creators to migrate them elsewhere. The standard "anti-disintermediation" clause. It keeps the catalogue worth being on for everyone, including you.

What it costs in practice

Take a £19 skill sale.

You keep about 85% of the sale price, locked in. Standard non-founding creators keep around 79% on the same sale.

Fine print

• The 10% rate is locked to your account and can't be transferred.
• Stripe and Connect fees are passed through at cost. We don't mark them up.
• The programme is capped at 100 spots in total.
• Approval is at our discretion. We're looking for craft, fit, and demonstrated taste.
• We can revoke founding status only for material breach of the Terms of Service (for example, circumventing platform fees or repeated quality violations). We won't strip it as a unilateral business decision.

How to apply

Visit techneskills.ai/apply if you haven't already. It's a 7-step form that takes around 15 minutes. We reply to every application within 48 hours.