Crypto, Culture, & Society hosted Austin Robey to talk about both the opportunities and challenges inherent to building better collectively-owned-and-operated organizations

Building a next generation of user owned and controlled tech cooperatives won’t be easy. Co-ops are more difficult to finance in the initial stages. There’s a lack of mentorship, legal difficulties in starting a co-operative and little information available on how to start one. The hegemonic startup ecosystem largely ignores ideas that don’t provid... See more

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