Loomio
Tue 5 Sep 2017 3:38PM

Wortley Hall Topics 2017

LS Louise Scott Public Seen by 62

A place to suggest topics for the face-to-face Wortley Hall meetup

KWO

Kayleigh Walsh Outlandish Tue 5 Sep 2017 4:39PM

This is a relevant issue for the network to consider and I've also heard it when given reasons to not become a tech co-op.

Presuming there is no simple answer, I'd like to get my head around solutions at Wortley Hall. Who can help us?

Thanks for raising it Louise.

DS

Daniel Stanley Tue 5 Sep 2017 10:32PM

Its a vital question for sure. A big issue seems to be the lack of equity in most (all?) coops - most startup investment is based on selling equity, so this is a major blocker for most investors, who just dont get it. Solutions I've seen so far have tended to be pretty niche around coop specialist funds - I think theres a need to look a bit wider at trying to influence mainstream investors, and/or look at hybrid structures that might make traditional investment possible. I have heard there are also some interesting ideas around mutual funds etc (which I dont fully understand...). Definitely one to consider in November - be good to get some specialists along if we can?

CCC

If we aiming to use this Loomio group primarily for decision making I wonder if this thread would be better on the community forum?

HR

Harry "Outlandish" Robbins Thu 7 Sep 2017 2:08PM

Taken from Louise's original thread description:

Investment in Tech Co-ops
So, one of the things that a local ex-tech-co-op here in Glasgow raised with me about 'the problem with co-ops in tech', is that the co-op structure is an obstacle to inward investment for tech company development. He told me that he ended up ditching the co-op model after failing to attract investment and set up the business as a more traditional business model, which would allow equity investment into his new FinTech company. I don't have direct experience of this myself, but it does sound like something worth exploring more: does anyone in the network have experience of this? what are the barriers to investment - in projects? in companies? is there a co-op workaround? Possibly one for Wortley Hall?

HR

Harry "Outlandish" Robbins Thu 7 Sep 2017 2:13PM

@louisescott I've moved your "investment" topic into a comment rather than the thread description so that we can re-use this for other topics (I assumed that was the intention from the title of the thread)

re: investment - Enspiral have done some interesting work on ethical investment models such as fixed-return bonds. As agencies we don't generally need a lot of investment but I can see that product businesses might. If Outlandish wanted to do such a product we'd spin it out into it's own company, which could then be partly owned by Outlandish and partly by other investors. Of course, investment is likely to run counter to the co-operative principle of democracy since investors tend to favour one share, one vote.