Exit to Community: A New Option for Startups?
December 11, 2019
10-11:30 a.m. Mountain Time
Webinar
What if startups could transition to ownership by the people who rely on them most?
When a startup company takes early investment, typically the expectation is that everyone is working toward one of two “exit” events: selling the company to the investor-owners of a bigger company or selling to stock-market investors in an initial public offering. What if there were a third option, an “exit to community,” in which a startup transitions to ownership by the people who rely on it most?
Those people might be users, workers, customers, participant organizations, or a combination of such stakeholder groups. The mechanism for co-ownership might be a cooperative, a trust, or even crypto-tokens. The community might own the whole company when the process is over, or just a substantial-enough part of it to make a difference. These kinds of outcomes could help prevent the accountability crises that now beset today’s most successful venture-backed startups.
In this participatory webinar, we’ll hear from entrepreneurs, investors, and activists who are working to make exit-to-community a viable option in the startup economy. We will also work together to devise some plausible pathways for how such exits might become a reality.
Speakers
- Camille Canon (Purpose Network)
- Bruno Haid (founder, Roam)
- Scott Heiferman (founder, Meetup)
- Arielle Jordan (founder, Curafied)
- Jonathan Moore (founder, RowdyOrb.it)
- Modupe Odele (attorney, Tiphub)
- Mara Zepeda (founder, Switchboard and Zebras Unite)
Read more
- “Startups Need a New Option: Exit to Community,” Hacker Noon (September 16, 2019)
- “Meetup to the People: How a Zebra could Rise from a Unicorn’s Fall,” @sexandstartups on Medium (November 5, 2019)
Hosted by the Media Enterprise Design Lab at the University of Colorado Boulder and Zebras Unite, with support from the Open Society Foundations, which are not responsible for the content.
