Anyone else hit Stripe and UK competition law trying to run a pooled prize model?
Wanted to share something I learned the hard way recently in case it helps anyone else thinking about competition style models in the UK.
I'm a solo founder building a community platform for people with early stage business ideas. Basic idea is people submit an idea, the community evaluates it anonymously across four criteria, and the winning idea each cycle gets a permanent page on the site, distribution help, and a share of a community prize fund (55% of submission fees pooled, winner takes it). Felt right to me. The fee also worked as a seriousness filter so the platform didn't fill up with random low effort posts.
So I'm pivoting. Each cycle will have a sponsor who provides the reward instead. Winning idea still gets a permanent page on the site and help with distribution, just with the reward coming from a sponsor rather than the user pool. Cleaner legally. But honestly it does feel different. Less 'community putting money behind community ideas', more 'here's a brand backing the winner'.
Three questions I'd love thoughts on.
Has anyone else run into this with pooled prize or contest setups in the UK? What did you do?
For people who've thought about it more than me, does sponsor backed still feel community driven, or does it quietly change the platform's character?
For anyone running platforms for founders, how did you do early validation when you had no real data yet? What's the smallest signal that actually meant something?
Platform's live but no real users yet. Genuinely just trying to learn from people further along.