[ryandvm]

I can tell you what worked well for me - find a few other like minded devs/designers and one VERY GOOD biz dev person and you can have a lot of success as a co-op studio. We did this and we were immediately quite profitable from day one. Our model was pretty simple:

* Every full-time person (over 30 hours) is an owner in the company that is awarded an equal amount of company shares EVERY QUARTER.

* 10% of your earnings go to the company (of which you are now part owner)

* 10% of your earnings to the biz dev rainmaker that set up your contract

* Everything is decided democratically

This worked extremely well for us, but if you're at a small size (<6 owners) then you will have a heightened risk of single-point-of-failure because you can probably only afford to pay a single full-time biz dev person.

[wahnfrieden]

I recommend looking into Sociocracy consent-based decision making, for a helpful framework for democratic decision-making with less risk of paralysis or committee design