The pandemic catapulted tech giants to further heights of profit and control over the world. This past month we saw tax-evading billionaires using some of those profits to launch themselves into space. Amidst the backdrop of a new Guilded Age, how can technologists fund ethical platforms that avoid the trap VC funding sets of rapid growth and selling out to a larger company?
Drivers Coop is combining the platform model with ethical investment to bootstrap in way that retains worker power. We talked with Kaleidos CEO Pablo Ruiz-Muzquiz on how his company shifted from a digital agency building tech for clients to incubating their own open-source projects. They're using a combination of thoughtful VC funding and the power of the open-source community to build and sustain their products.
Groups like Zebras Unite!, the Ownership Matters newsletter, Exit to Community and OpenCollective are paving the way with new models of financing and ownership. In fact, OpenCollective just updated their mission to explicitly serve the solidarity economy.
And let's not forget the role government can play. The reality is that many startup founders take a chance on their dreams because they have the wealth to risk it. A universal basic income and/or jobs guarantee would help the rest of us do the same.
A future where technology is funded ethically and wealth is generative and distributed would dramatically shift its design and functionality. If we invest in these models now and help one another start new projects using a community model, we can make it so.
Rushkoff summarizes ideas from his book Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus on how Silicon Valley, often operating like a sped up, supersized version of Wall Street, is destroying sustainable business. His solution is to look to small, local businesses that focus on providing something of actual value to actual customers.
Another source of venture funding is the government. Not just directly in contracts, subsidies, or employment; but indirectly in meeting the needs of a labor force to do the work they want to do. UBI or a job guarantee, along with other social services like universal health care, food assistance, public internet and utilities could allow for just that.
A List Apart founder Jeffrey Zeldman unpacks just how destructive VC funding has been for tech startups, particularly those with ambitions to improve the world.
Ben Werdmüller, former venture capitalist and Indieweb startup founder, responds to Zeldman's essay Nothing Fails Like Success, with an elaboration on the traps of VC funding and the potential that "zebras" and the Indieweb hold for ethical funding of tech projects.
The Exit to Community (E2C) project is a collaboration between MEDLab at the University of Colorado Boulder and Zebras Unite. They outline a healthier alternative for startups which often get acquired or go public. Instead, they argue for an "Exit to Community — a path for startups to become owned and controlled by users, workers, and stakeholders who value and depend on the startup."
The NYC-based cooperative that offers a driver-owned economically equitable alternative to Uber and Lyft has launched a crowd investment campaign on the WeFunder platform. Their goal is $1m and are over half way there.
OM is a great online newsletter about startups and funding for the solidarity economy. It's a Substack-style site of interviews, reviews and original features put out by Washington DC cooperative development group Community Cooperative.
OpenCollective is transforming the way that open source projects are funded by making it easy for project maintainers to set up a donation platform. On the Changelog Podcast, Pia Mancini explains what OpenCollective is, the journey it's on and ways to make open source projects sustainable.