Comment by eikenberry
4 days ago
Given the general sentiment in the comments here, why aren't co-ops more popular? Or any model with a shared ownership. If you eliminate the employer/employee, hierarchical relationship then the 'transactional' model goes away and you can have loyalty that matters for all parties. But there are almost no such places. I've always thought it was more a regulatory issue, but would be curious what others think.
Yeah I think there’s a bit of regulatory and or legal hurdles, but I think the other part is co-ops aren’t as incentivised to grow so big. There are some smaller co-ops in tech they just usually do stuff more local scale. Less likely to hear about them and be spread widely
coops have great difficulty raising money, and this is a VC forum.
That would explain way they aren't discussed here to much but doesn't explain why there aren't more out there.
Well, a difficulty raising money makes starting them hard too. I mostly know of successful worker coops in businesses like grocery stores that have somewhat predictable margins, flexible pricing, and not a strong incentive to expand. It seems to work well for the employees in those coops at least, and they're pleasant to shop in.
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