Why and how to build a platform cooperative

A platform cooperative is a platform owned and controlled by the people directly affected by it.

As a founder, why would you want to share ownership and control with the thousands or millions of people using your marketplace, software as a service, or other product?  Well, who better to own it?  Who better to safeguard your vision?

More importantly, can the platform cooperative model allow you to create a business you wouldn't otherwise be able to create?

In the sense technologists use it a platform is, like a physical platform, a technology that holds a lot of people up. It coordinates people and gives them a chance to do something they wouldn't otherwise be able to do. Platforms can often be natural monopolies due to capturing the benefits of network effects (one person with a telephone is pointless, having nearly everyone available by telephone is incredibly valuable). Amazon and eBay are both platforms for sellers and buyers, Uber and Lyft for drivers and riders, Mechanical Turk and TaskRabbit for piece-workers and buyers of their work.

A cooperative is a jointly owned and democratically-controlled enterprise formed by people voluntarily uniting to meet their common needs and aspirations. Agaric is a small worker-owned cooperative, Mondragon is a very large group of integrated worker cooperatives, consumer cooperatives are businesses owned by their customers, credit unions are financial institutions owned by their members (with a one person, one vote governance), and producer cooperatives like CROPP Cooperative are formed by member businesses (which are not necessarily cooperatives themselves).

Having a business owned by its customers can be a great value proposition for the business founder and for the customers.  For the founder, it is an alternative to venture capital or other investors or a bank which won't ever have the same genuine interest in your product or business as your customers.  For the customers, their crowdfunding-like investment comes with the extra satisfaction of ownership, and ownership with a say in the direction of the project.

Attendees will gain an understanding of what sorts of business models work for a platform cooperative, an introduction to some of the opportunities in this approach, and ways to address the challenges.