In my role as the Executive Director of Start.coop, I am inspired every day by the impactful work solving some of the biggest issues of time including climate, housing, childcare, elder care, etc. The best part of my work is meeting entrepreneurs from across North America (and the rest of…

A shared ownership model is important but startup co-ops will fail to thrive without an equally robust business model. Shared ownership is having a moment. The past few years have shined a new light on the economic, social and racial injustices of our society, and as people look for opportunities…

This post is the second in a two-part series on investing in cooperatively-owned businesses. Part 1: Provides context on why cooperatives need outside financing, the emergence of co-op loan funds, an understanding of where undercapitalization has slowed growth of cooperative ownership, and a recap of recent innovations in co-op financing. …

This post is the first in a two-part series on investing in cooperatively-owned businesses. Part 1: Provides context on why cooperatives need financing, the role of co-op loan funds, how undercapitalization slows cooperative ownership, and recent innovations in co-op financing. Part 2: Provides a more hands-on look at the specific…

Of the almost 6 million businesses in the United States, firms with fewer than 500 employees account for almost half of U.S. economic activity, and they employ almost half of all American workers. These small and local businesses make up the lifeblood of our communities, and they are also the…

Despite the many benefits of cooperatively owned businesses, the cold hard reality is that 99.9% of new businesses are still traditionally owned. In the long overdue discussion about race and wealth in our country, we can’t ignore that the gap between rich and poor is actually increasing. As Malia Lazu…

Why Ray Dalio and other captains of industry are rethinking traditional “winner takes all” capitalism? Why shared ownership is having a moment Last November, Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater Associates, with $160 billion in assets under management, the largest hedge fund in the world publicly exclaimed that “Capitalism basically is…

In Fall 2018, we opened applications for the inaugural cohort of our new co-op accelerator, Start.coop, to help businesses that are focused on shared ownership, social impact, and scale. Given these requirements (a niche within a niche, we thought), we really didn’t know how many people would apply. We were…