[Y_Y]

I haven't seen, but would love to, a tech startup that is guaranteed not to sell out. I don't mean a promise from the founder on a blog, but a legal structure. I'm not sure what what form this would take or if it's such anathema that it could never be but it would be great to see.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who's tired of the bait-amd-switch of companies who are all about freedom until they get acquired by a giant and then start hastily walling their garden.

[aaronax]

Cooperative

Customers are members/owners.

Examples: Tessitura, NISC

[Y_Y]

Someone posted this list of such co-ops recently: https://tech-coops.xyz/

Is it true that they couldn't sell out though? I imagine if the buyer offered a pile of money then the majority of the owner-workers would go for it, even at the expense of the users.

[aaronax]

Interesting how your list focuses on worker-owned cooperatives. I had mostly thought about customer-owned cooperatives up until this point. Most of my exposure is with customer-owned ones, perhaps due to living in an agricultural area (grain elevator co-ops, fuel co-ops, rural electric co-ops, rural broadband co-ops). And working for one!

I think that a worker-owned cooperative is not really in line with what I would consider to be the traditional cooperative spirit.

Customer-owned has a clear mission to deliver value to its owners. That value would be to provide various services essentially at cost. Workers are paid market rate to get the work done. Profits are given back to the owners (customers).

Worker-owned also has the mission to deliver value to the owners. The workers are going to value making as much money as possible, though being careful to not go past the point where they would find themselves without a job. So this type of co-op will be trying to extract maximum value out of the customer. This is a significantly different proposition. This type of co-op seems more like a company with an ESOP.

I could see either type choosing to sell out. I guess either the workers or customers would think they have better places to invest the capital. So I guess co-ops too have up and down lifecycles like a standard company. As the co-op becomes ineffective or no longer needed, the capital invested in it would be re-deployed.