Maybe I'm missing something, but isn't declaring a dividend before you've even sold anything counter-intuitive? If a share of profit is returned to investors through dividends, you have to have a profit first. Paying out dividends with the funds people give you for the business just for the sake of declaring a dividend and paying something out sounds too much like a ponzi. If dividends were based on a share of profits and were a return on investment, you would declare them every two weeks based on the profit of what you sold in the previous two week period.