@chadloder
Our small team at https://www.socialroots.io/ has four women, (Serbian, Irish, Nigerian, and a New Zealander) and two guys (one Anglo, one Arab) and we are a cooperative.
Early funding for tech coops is nonexistent, so if you’re interested in helping coops we’d love to talk.
@christina
> Early funding for tech coops is nonexistent
It's frustrating to hear this is still the case, despite all the great work behind done by the folks at the PCC, the Open Cooperative, CTA etc. There were a few new startup funding projects being promoted at a couple of the conferences I went to in 2018/19, I'm guessing Covid has probably taken the wind out of their sails. Hopefully at least one of them will bounce back. Equity crowdfunding is the root we're looking at.
Yeah, equity crowdfunding might be a pathway for a team with a huge mailing list or name recognition. Looking into it we found that the cost of a successful crowdfund is reasonable for later funding but not seed stage.
All the cooperative funding options want revenue, and so many are debt-based, and even those funds still look for unicorns.
I’m so grateful to the @NSF grant program, but we were the first cooperative they funded.
It seems like there should be groups of cooperative-aligned angels who don’t feed into the VC pipeline but we’re really struggling to find them. Investor awareness/ education about how to invest in tech cooperatives seems to be a major gap.
Chad Loder
christina b
Strypey