Apply to the Cosign

Undergraduate teams of 2–5. One wins. We build your project to shipping standard — on camera, for zero cash — and hand you the keys.

One undergraduate team, every season, gets the thing a dev shop would bill $25k–$120k to build: their own app, game, or platform — designed and built by Outright Mental to the standard we actually ship at, for zero cash, up front and ever. Then we hand over the keys.

Here’s the catch, and it’s the entire point: you’re not hiring us — you’re co-founding with us. Your project becomes a co-op, our build hours enter it as equity on the exact same terms your own team earns, and you keep control from day one. If what you want is a vendor who ships a deliverable and disappears, close this tab — you’ll be happier somewhere that takes cash. If you want a co-founder who’s spent twenty-five years shipping things and will put their name on the line next to yours, keep reading.

Who can apply: teams of 2–5, all currently-enrolled undergraduates, all 18 or older, at any accredited school. The project has to be yours to build — your own work, not something your university or a past investor owns a piece of.

New to all this? Cosign #0 tells the origin story → — where the one-hour-one-point model came from, the decade of receipts behind it, and why zero-cash-for-equity actually works. Everything below is the deal itself.

The two conditions

Every applicant agrees to two conditions before we score a single application. They’re the price of the Cosign, and they’re the heart of the charter your co-op signs at formation. Here they are, word for word:

1. Your project incorporates as a cooperative on the points model: one pool, hours × schedule rate = points, ownership = your points ÷ all points, the full ledger visible to every member.

2. Outright Mental’s contributed hours enter the pool on Schedule A1 — zero cash, 1.000 points/hour — logged on the ledger like everyone else’s, visible to every member.

In plain English:

• One hour of work is one point. Ownership is your points divided by everyone’s points — recomputed every time anyone logs an hour. No founder multiple, no preferred shares, no side letters. If you can divide, you can read the cap table.
• We earn at the same rate you do. Our build hours log at 1.000 point per hour with no cash attached — the same founding rate available to your team. We negotiate nothing, because there’s nothing to negotiate.
• You keep control. One member, one vote, regardless of points. A team of 2–5 always outvotes our single vote. “We hand you the keys” is written into the bylaws, not just said out loud. We never take cash, board control, IP assignment, veto rights, or preferred anything.
• Your books are yours. The full ledger is visible to every member, always — and public to no one unless your co-op votes to publish it. The model is public; your numbers are yours.

You’ll confirm you’ve read these in the form. A team that won’t sign them wants a vendor, and this is a co-founding.

How we choose

We publish the rubric because a score you can’t see isn’t a score. Here’s exactly how every application is weighed — weights and all — and the same rule that governs our paid research applies here: if a claim has no source, it doesn’t count.

Who this isn’t for

We’d rather you find out here than at the finalist call. Don’t apply if:

• Your project needs a license we can’t get. Anything that turns on holding customer funds, diagnosing patients, or clearing another regulated bar is a lawyer’s build before it’s ours.
• It runs on gambling or engagement-bait. Loot-box psychology, dark-pattern retention loops, anything engineered to hook rather than to be good. Not here.
• We couldn’t demo it with a straight face to a room full of hackers on a Tuesday night. If the idea embarrasses itself in that room, it’ll embarrass all of us on camera.
• You want a vendor. You want a thing built, handed over, the invoice paid, the relationship closed. That’s a real thing to want — it just isn’t this. This is a co-founding, not a commission.

The application

Everything above is the deal. If it’s yours, here’s the form — six questions and your 60-second video, about 30 minutes if your team already knows what it wants to build. One person reads every application and replies within 48 hours (two business days), including a no. No third-party form service ever sees your details; it comes straight to the studio.

If you’re not the one we pick: applying gives us no claim on your idea, your code, or your team — you keep all of it. Your video and anything you send stays yours; we never use an applicant’s footage without your explicit say-so and we pull it on request. One team wins each season, but a strong idea that isn’t the pick gets a real answer with a real reason, and next season’s door is open.

Membership is earned through your own work, not bought — this is not an investment offer, and nothing here promises a financial return.