If the 18th century can be defined as the age of industrialization and competitive advantage of the nation state, the 19th century by the power of the corporation, and the 20th by corporate financialization, then, I believe, the 21st century will be defined by ownership.
Our friends over at Wegner CPAs posted this blog on reporting 1099-PATR income on your individual tax return. We know that for our cooperative clients navigating tax season can be confusing and employee-owners may have questions about what to do with their 1099-PATRs. Bruce Mayer provides a concise and easy to understand assessment of individual …
Click here to view Jason Wiener’s recent webinar and learn more about alternative investment vehicles such as convertible notes, revenue-based financing, and guarantees.
In this series so far, we have analyzed the potential for a sistered for-profit entity and cooperative entity to separately optimize for financing and member-orientation. Since publishing this series, I’ve received some good feedback from readers. Some have asked about additional terms and benefits that could be designed into the TechCo – Cooperative “pre-nuptial” agreement. …
Click here to read the previous post in the series, Part 3: Option A – The Integrated Tech/Data Cooperative In light of the design and practical challenges that face certain kinds of #platformcoops, we have re-incarnated a traditional private equity strategy that houses different operational functions within separate legal structures. I call this the “TechCo …
In the previous blog post, I used real estate development as an analogy to illustrate a #platformcoop. In this #platformcoop model, the technology architecture is developed, funded, and deployed within the same legal vessel as that which processes, distributes, and monetizes the throughput data. The tech platform is owned by the same stakeholders as the …
Most (if not all) of our clients enter into an independent contractor relationship at some point in their existence. The reasons vary: start-ups do not know whether they will be successful in the long term and therefore do not want to commit to an employment relationship; established clients need help for a brief period or …
Click here to read the first post in the series, The Marriage of TechCo and Co-op. If traditional tech platforms are generally designed to maximize liquidity value, and cooperatives are generally designed to maximize use value, how can the #platformcoop movement successfully blend both models to meet the needs of all stakeholders involved? We think one …
Over the years, we have advised our clients on dozens of #platformcoop designs, formations, and fundraising campaigns. While the cooperative structure has been used for decades as a legal vessel for both collective asset ownership (e.g. affordable and market-rate housing, commercial real estate, electric generation and distribution, manufacturing, processing, etc.) and for collective distribution access …
In our previous blog about mission protection for traditional companies, we discussed how golden shares, a type of share with special voting- or other rights, could be used as a tool to preserve an entity’s social mission. In this blog, we discuss voting trusts and voting agreements as another mission-anchoring mechanism for a tradition entity …