Startups Need a New Option: Exit to Community | HackerNoon

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?

Usually, the exit is when the startup gets sold to a bigger, generally more boring company, or when it “goes public” on a stock market and pieces of it get passed among countless buyers and sellers. That’s when investors, along with founders and early employees, get their payday. But for startups that build communities—of users, or workers, or whom... See more

“The idea with exit to community is how can you create a model where the whole point is to create a vibrant community that will become its eventual stewards,” Schneider tells TechCrunch. “It seems like a natural fit, especially in a moment where we’re looking for increased accountability and the wealth distribution problems in the startup economy."

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

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

Yet I find myself asking one thing over and over again: is it really possible to build a long-term community modelled on the "Ownership Economy", without crushing the entire effort before it even begins under the weight of the "money game"?