Pragmatic Coop 🤝

Companies’ success is usually measured by a single unit: money 💵. Most successful startup stories go like this:

• founders have an idea/prototype
• founders raise capital from external investors (rich guys), so they’re the founders’ bosses now
• founders build a team with that external money
• investors match company success to their economic return, so the team focuses on growth with a single goal: an exit (bigger investment round, sale, IPO).
• An exit happens and the founders get more money than they can spend wisely, and investors (remember, rich guys) get even richer.
• Some early employees get a nice bonus (or nothing at all) but most just keep on going with their salaries and life.
• Founders explain how great it is to build a startup, how great is having made money, and fuels the dreams of the next generation of founders, so they keep working towards the big goal of being one of those few chosen ones.
• The rat race continues forever.

There’s one thing to note here: only a few make the most benefit from it (usually in terms of dollars). Most of the worlds’ population dream of becoming richer than they are and spending more than they do now, never getting there. And every day more and more people struggle to barely make a living with increasing inequality rates both in rich countries and poor.

Whenever someone asks you what makes you happy in your life, do you ever say: “having money”? Happiness in life, in my case, comes from the feeling of freedom. Waking up whenever I want, wherever I want. Surfing, running, being in the mountains, traveling in my van with my wife, cooking a meal with my family, or swimming in the ocean at sunrise. But it also comes from the fulfillment of working in something meaningful, building products, programming, philosophizing, reading books, growing plants, or building things that make other peoples’ lives better.

Money doesn’t represent what makes us happy. So why do we measure success with money? from countries’ GDP to the achievements of our own children.

This capitalist, ultra-consumerist, ultra-globalized mentality has led us to the destruction of our planet and our happiness. And we are stuck with this mentality, worried that our economy will shrink after Covid-19, without reflecting on why its’ impact is so huge.

I’m proposing that we change how we measure success in business.

These are just a few (not thoroughly thought of and probably naive) ideas to start with:

• Fair compensation: every one should get compensation aligned to their contribution to the company. We are several orders of magnitude more productive than previous generations, but we are busier than ever. We produce enough wealth for all of us to have all we really need without devoting all of our time and energy to work. We need e redistribution of wealth. I think a model of shared distribution of ownership and profits has the potential to build a real sense of shared ownership, being in it together and building community. I want to research what models have been already adopted successfully by coops.
• Employee happiness index: ask employees regularly how happy they are with their life and work-life balance. A cut in work hours might increase the index more than an increase in productivity or income. If the cut affects productivity (and therefore income as it is shared by everyone) it will naturally degrade the index value. At this point, I’m thinking that the course of professional careers might change completely, from focusing on advancing in the path of becoming a manager/executive with a big salary to making more humble career choices that align more with what you really value.
• World positive impact and meaningful work: how is your company affecting the world? Is the company contributing to your vision of how the world should be? what’s your world? It probably starts with the people around you, your town or city, and then move on to a bigger scale. Can you impact directly on improving the world around you?

I’m not envisioning an NGO or coop that focuses on solidarity projects and makes little profit. I’m thinking that we can play by the current capitalist tech world rules, building successful products that generate profit but contribute to taking people out of the rat wheel.

This change of point of view and profit distribution is based on a greater vision that we should change our own personal priorities of what do we work towards in our life, what does it really mean to be rich. From this we can derive: what’s a fair compensation?

A compensation that allows me to live my life in a way that I enjoy it as much as I possibly can (so naive, sorry). **Having a lot of free time, being more relaxed and less stressed, deciding what to do every day with your time, when, and what to work on sounds like a fair compensation if your material needs are covered.

I’m confident this can also be very attractive to prospective employees, as hiring is a big challenge that most tech startups face.

We have a great opportunity to change our perspective of business, society, and life to choose how we live in this world. Now let’s get to work.

Other related thoughts:

• An organization like this, if profitable, could return value to undervalued necessary activities by supporting them with part of their profits (local sustainable agriculture).