Here's some good questions to answer about BitShares, because it will attract more stock-like investors than speculators:
What is its dilution model like? Is it fixed amount of shares, or will they issue more in the long run? Investors don't like dilution and there seems to be a lot of these shares, so it is a concern to an investor.
If ideas can be built on top of BitShares, then it's more like an exchange than an index fund or DAO. It may need to consider using something like BitExchange. On the other hand, if BitShares invests funds across ideas, then it is more like an index fund or DAO. We need to be careful about using new terms that outsiders don't understand. Let's use comparable finance terms so that outsiders get it too. For an example, when mentioning things like the DAO - it's like an index fund that requires investor input. People in finance then get it quickly.
What is its dilution model like? Is it fixed amount of shares, or will they issue more in the long run? Investors don't like dilution and there seems to be a lot of these shares, so it is a concern to an investor?
Dilution is actually something that the community can decide on. BitShares holders get to decide whether the chain should dilute to pay for future work (via worker proposals) or they can decide not to pay for development (and become deflationary). At present the community has decided it does not want dilution, so at present there over a billion bts set aside for potential development--and since the voters have basically shown the committee they prefer no dilution, the committee is considering burning over a billion bitshares...If the committee does not approach the community about this, however, and they upset the community by making a decision with which the voters disagree, they will be fired (and this can happen very quickly).
If ideas can be built on top of BitShares, then it's more like an exchange than an index fund or DAO. It may need to consider using something like BitExchange. On the other hand, if BitShares invests funds across ideas, then it is more like an index fund or DAO. We need to be careful about using new terms that outsiders don't understand. Let's use comparable finance terms so that outsiders get it too. For an example, when mentioning things like the DAO - it's like an index fund that requires investor input. People in finance then get it quickly.
BitShares is actually both. Worker proposals can be submitted and if it can pass the test of being seen as providing more value than dilution will hurt, then the community can pay for anything to be built. In addition, BitShares itself is also the platform where various projects will be traded on a decentralized, extremely scalable (see steem as proof), and versatile Decentralized Exchange (DEX). Anyone can create an IndexFund that has a tradable token on BTS and represents the value of that fund. For instance DAO does not need to be an entire new chain in bitshares (though it could be its own graphene based chain). Instead a token can be created that is meant to track the value of all listed DAO projects.