Exit To Community | NOEMA

In early 2019, for example, the founder of the Shanghai electric-car company NIO transferred 50 million shares into a “user trust.” While the founder retains voting rights over the shares, the trust enables its members to help decide how to use a portion of the company’s eventual profits. This was not an act of charity; in the disclosure documents,... See more

Or consider Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s plan, announced in late 2019, “to develop an open and decentralized standard for social media” — one in which Twitter as we know it would be a mere client. Dorsey said that he saw potential in spreading out responsibility for moderation, recommendation and other processes that were becoming unwieldy under the c... See more

If you’re forming a startup, there are generally two kinds of stories to choose from about what the startup is for. Keep in mind that startups are companies that are trying to take over some subsection of the world. It’s ambitious stuff, so they tend to take on lots of early investment. They get somebody to give them a lot of money so they can hit ... See more

There’s also a category in the Silicon Valley lexicon called “zombies” — the companies that don’t quite become unicorns but aren’t failures either. They’re a dead weight on the investors’ balance sheets because, for one reason or another, nobody wants to buy them. Even if a company like that is making a profit and pleasing users, it can be worthles... See more

What if there were another way? What if a startup that successfully builds a community could opt for an exit to ownership by that community?

This is not so crazy. The more I look, the more I find activists, lawyers, investors and entrepreneurs around the world who are exploring options along these lines, often while seeking to address some of the deep problems of internet culture. Community ownership could be a way of rooting out the abuses that we often see with the billion-dollar “uni... See more