The waterfall
A waterfall, not a pie: value fills one pool and overflows into the next, and the order is the values.
Most bodies divide income like a pie — everyone argues over slices, and whoever holds the most power cuts first. A waterfall replaces the argument with a sequence. Value enters at the top, fills the first pool, and only then spills to the second. Nothing in pool four is touched while pool two is unfilled. The sequence is decided once, in the open, before there is anything to divide, and after that it decides for you. What you pay first is what you actually believe.
The order, at local scale, adapt the names and thresholds and keep the order: keep the work alive (rent, tools, materials — without which nothing happens) · the people who do the work (a fair local living for contributors, before any return to capital) · a cushion (a reserve toward about six months, so one bad season cannot end you) · a capped return to any who lent (honoured, limited, never control) · repair and the commons (regenerating what the work touched, the shared Commons, and the founders made whole for the unpaid hours and gifts they gave at the start) · the surplus shared by agreement, with a tenth flowing inward through Voluntary Tithing.
Four principles matter more than the exact pools. Order before amount — the sequence encodes values more truthfully than any percentage. Capital is capped and subordinate; it is rented, not enthroned. The asset lock holds; no member, founder, or funder ever takes out more than what they put in plus honest pay. Everything is visible — every member can see the state of every pool, always; transparency here is the immune system, not a courtesy.
Do not skip the fifth pool's ledger. The commonest way a founding team quietly poisons itself is by forgetting who gave what at the start. Keep a plain record from day one — each founder's unpaid hours, money advanced, gifts contributed, and an agreed figure to be made whole — settled by honest mutual agreement, not audit. People give freely at the beginning; recording it freely is what keeps the giving from curdling into resentment.
Also called: Where value flows · Where Value Flows · the value waterfall Stands on: Capital Subordinate To Purpose · Value · Transparency · Commons Opens onto: The asset lock · Voluntary Tithing · The Founder's Fund · Compressed Pay Ratios · Wealth · Usury In play: table · Home · beyond Sources: Where Value Flows (The LIØNSBERG Community Guidebook, Toolkit; draft — the six pools, the principles, the Legacy Pool and Ledger) · Capital Subordinate To Purpose / Twelve Irreducible Elements (canon-grade) · Before and Beyond Mondragon (the lineage cited by the tool itself) · The DNA of Heaven, Part IV (Fable synthesis — carries the same order, plus the six capitals) · lionsberg.wiki: Where Value Flows Open: The Guidebook's fifth pool names a Legacy Pool for founders; the wiki root page The Founder's Fund describes a differently-shaped fund resourced by each new member's opening contribution. Two instruments, similar intent, not reconciled anywhere.