The Cooperation Economy 🤝

Cooperation is the winning strategy in the Great Online Game.

As my friend Dror Poleg wrote in NFTs and the Future of Work, “Technology will make it possible to compensate each person according to their economic value. That’s pretty bad news for most people, and very good news for some.”

DAOs make it easier to form, organize, and compensate Liquid Super Teams.

While big funds need to have sharp elbows -- they need to prove to founders that their money is better than their rivals’ -- solo GPs can pull together Liquid Super Teams of other solo GPs who, together, would give the company a better chance of success. Companies like Party Round will make this even easier and more common.

Similarly, if people follow people, not companies, then bringing together a group of people, all with their own audiences and toolkits, should create more reach and ability, more cheaply, than a company that employs all those people, if they could even hire them in the first place.

Liquid Super Teams are like bubbles in a lava lamp. People float in and out, join forces when it makes sense to, bounce away when it doesn’t.

Liquid Super Teams are powerful because they increase talent density by lowering the commitment required of each participant. People who would never work for another person again happily join Liquid Super Teams from time to time.

But fluid doesn’t have to mean solo. In the Cooperation Economy, individuals can join forces to create Liquid Super Teams.

The takeaway is this: individuals have more power than ever before, and they depend on companies for their survival less than ever before. But I don’t think the real freedom here is working alone; it’s the freedom to choose how, and with whom, to work.