Since you collectively have the majority of votes you can simply vote to change how profits get distributed and the founder has to accept it because they don’t own the cooperative, you all do.
How do you change it? By voting to take away the founders shares? Voting to make shares worth unequal?
I would NOT want to be the founder of that co-op. Imagine investing hundreds of thousands, taking out loans, and putting in 80 hours a week for the first few years to get the business running… and then a bunch of new hires vote that you shouldn’t get shit.
The only way to have any equality is for everyone to be equal from the start. Which means everyone putting skin in the game. Which means it’s inevitably only well-off people who could have a co-op with any sort of equality.
Law firm partners have buy-ins, that’s like the closest thing to a co-op with equality and everything. Except the issue here is that the buy-in grows as the company becomes more valuable, so at one point new partners might not be able to afford the buy-in at all. If the co-op is worth a billion dollars and you’re selling shares at ten thousand dollars and there’s 1000 employees owning equal parts of the company - they’re all forced to sell at significantly below market share. Not a great place to be as one of the employees. So the buy-in at this stage should be a million dollars for things to be equal. But who tf is going to be able to afford that?
How do you change it? By voting to take away the founders shares? Voting to make shares worth unequal?
I would NOT want to be the founder of that co-op. Imagine investing hundreds of thousands, taking out loans, and putting in 80 hours a week for the first few years to get the business running… and then a bunch of new hires vote that you shouldn’t get shit.
The only way to have any equality is for everyone to be equal from the start. Which means everyone putting skin in the game. Which means it’s inevitably only well-off people who could have a co-op with any sort of equality.
Law firm partners have buy-ins, that’s like the closest thing to a co-op with equality and everything. Except the issue here is that the buy-in grows as the company becomes more valuable, so at one point new partners might not be able to afford the buy-in at all. If the co-op is worth a billion dollars and you’re selling shares at ten thousand dollars and there’s 1000 employees owning equal parts of the company - they’re all forced to sell at significantly below market share. Not a great place to be as one of the employees. So the buy-in at this stage should be a million dollars for things to be equal. But who tf is going to be able to afford that?