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by nathan_f77 3041 days ago
Sometimes I think about starting a tech co-op where every member has an equal stake, and we just build SaaS services and mobile apps or games until something works. I've been doing that by myself, so it would be nice to diversify and get a stake in a number of other projects. Similar to an angel investor who invests in a lot of startups, but we'd be investing time and effort instead of money.

I'm thinking we could have a group of 10 people working on 10+ different projects, and we would each own 10% of the parent company. Then we could try a bunch of different ideas and focus on the ones that work. I would want to build passive "lifestyle businesses" that make 4-5 figures per month, and we wouldn't need to aim for an exit. We could just take a salary and retire, or keep making apps and games because it's a lot of fun.

It would be awesome to share a lot of boilerplate code, so it's super fast to get started on a new idea. We'd also have a single kubernetes cluster on AWS that runs all of the backend services, maybe with something like Deis Workflow. And who knows, maybe we turn that into a business as well, and provide hosting to other companies.

Sorry for the tangent, but that could be one way to solve the imbalance.

Here's another discussion about tech coops: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7634152

EDIT: I decided to put together an application form to see if anyone is interested: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1dnm-SZxbcKuQ7PUU9ArRnlD1LiK...

There will be a lot of challenges, but I think it could work. Just need to find the right people.

2 comments

Once you are established, have applicants work long hours for entry level wages as "associates" in the hopes they could become "partner" one day. This is obviously the law firm model. I have also wondered why it hasn't been (to my knowledge) replicated in tech. The cynical answer is that once you have a suite of profitable applications bringing in money, why share that with new employees when you can get the same work done for "crumbs"
Law firm hours are directly tied to revenue. You can't measure things this way in a SAAS shop.
True. But law/accounting is similar to an MLM model, where the rain-makers kinda get paid some proportion of the hours billed of their subordinates.
I have been thinking the same idea for a while now. Not in a place that would be able to commit, but if you really try this I would like to follow up.