In some ways, it seems ironic that our businesses, which arguably have their entire basis in the idea that people working together are more effective and efficient than people competing, must nonetheless compete with each other.

Although it’s a shallow, meaningless moral victory, I take comfort in the fact that BountyUp was underway before the likes of Causes, Crowdfunder.com, or ChipIn made any appearance. It doesn’t give us any particular business advantage (we derive that from the differences in WHAT we do, and HOW we do it), but I sleep better at night knowing that we came honestly upon the idea.

Here are the pieces of the collaboration space:

• Ideation - Letting crowds of people come up with ideas
• Organization - The “Folksonomy”
• Voting - The traditional “wisdom” of crowds selects and/or refines those ideas
• Funding - Aggregating funds from the crowd (Crowdfunding)
• Fulfillment - Best/Cheapest vendor from the crowd (Reverse Auction)

Every collaboration project attacks one or more of these items. Spigit, for instance, has a great approach to Ideation and Voting. ChipIn focuses solely on Funding, etc, etc.

In the space that BountyUp addresses (Funding and Fulfillment, so far), there are really only TWO close competitors: Cambrian House (who also address Ideation and Voting), and Crowdfunder.com.