Platform cooperativism

Platform cooperatives are businesses like Uber, but owned by the participants.

eQuality Technology is building a Platform Cooperative around MediaWiki so that third-party users of the technology can not only benefit more greatly from the technology, but also control it's future and destiny as one of history's greatest collaborative efforts.

What do we mean by building a cooperative? (Aren't you just trying to control things, and get rich?) We mean like the loconomics example in San Francisco.

How do we make decisions as a group? Well, for one, we will probably be using Loomio for that, and following the sage advice in their handbook. But also, we have open discussion forums^[1] and shared workspaces like Phabricator and Wikis where we can sort out the issues.

Reading and Resources

Quick Comparison with other business structures

The coop business model is obviously different from the traditional 'C-Corp' model (whether shareholder, or sole-proprietor, LLC, or other variants of the 'incorporated business'). But, it's also different from the 'B-Corp' model - which stands for Benefit Corporation ^[2].

Accounting

Need accounting services for your Coop? There's a coop for that: https://bookkeeping.coop/

United States

United States Federation of Worker Cooperatives

Local Groups

The Greater Boston Chamber of Cooperatives includes worker co-ops (businesses owned by the employees), consumer co-ops (businesses owned by customers), and housing co-ops (housing owned by residents).

Funding

http://www.cooperativefund.org/

References

↑ Will shortly be converted to multi-tenant so that we can separately provide forums for each member
↑ "Benefit corporations are a new legal tool to create a solid foundation for long term mission alignment and value creation. It protects mission through capital raises and leadership changes, creates more flexibility when evaluating potential sale and liquidity options, and prepares businesses to lead a mission-driven life post-IPO." - http://benefitcorp.net/businesses

[1] Will shortly be converted to multi-tenant so that we can separately provide forums for each member

[2] "Benefit corporations are a new legal tool to create a solid foundation for long term mission alignment and value creation. It protects mission through capital raises and leadership changes, creates more flexibility when evaluating potential sale and liquidity options, and prepares businesses to lead a mission-driven life post-IPO." - http://benefitcorp.net/businesses

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[2]