Quebec probably has the single best cooperative financing ecosystem in the world (1B+$). There’s a need for more risk-driven investment instruments in the sector however to seed early stage ventures. Most of the funds end up getting reinvested in existing cooperatives who can already access traditional funding.
Welp, there goes another SaaS platform in our corporate ops toolchain. Anyone have a recommendation for a tool to handle the cap table for an early-stage cooperative with several hundred members that won’t cost us an arm and a leg? Excel?
This was a fundamental question for me before taking the plunge into starting a coop. Long story short, I did a lot of research and there wasn’t anything that really compensated risk in early stage startups hence the dearth of platform coops.
We ended up structuring our coop to have equity split from voting rights to allow employees to have ESOPs and investors to invest as they do in traditional corporation minus their control of the board. In theory we would be able to IPO down the line, and perhaps become the first coop to do so without demutualizing or a separate investment vehicle on the side.
This is good feedback though, as I had the same issues. It shows the value of launching and iterating quickly with user feedback, rather than building in the dark in the guise of perfection.
Re solo founders. Would you consider a team with one founder and 1-2 "employees"?
The reason I ask this is because my partners and I have more of a mentor-tutee relationship and although we all share perks and they get equity (considerably less than my share, but still sizeable), they see themselves more as learning than being at the same level as myself in terms of responsibility.