Collaborative submissions can be initiated from the form anonymously
You may choose to start your submission directly if you're the first collaborator and you want to invite your collaborators in the form itself via fields.
If a submission is started from the form itself rather than from the collaboration flow in the dashboard, it can still become a collaborative submission with multiple collaborators. To do so, first check the Allow Anonymous Starts toggle on the Collaboration tab of your form settings.
The first visitor to the form will assume the role of the first collaborator anonymously since their email will not be known.
The Return to Previous Collaborator action can be leveraged as well. But if you're trying to rewind to the very first (anonymous) collaborator, you'll have to map the Assign Email setting on the action to the Feathery field containing the email of the first user. Assign Email will only appear when anonymous starts are enabled and returning to the very first collaborator.
This assumes the first collaborator entered their email at some point, and it allows us to de-anonymize them and send them a notification email when returning.