I've been exploring this space since 2010 and always wondered what it would look like if a tech co-op got as big as Facebook, Amazon, Google, or Apple.
I created an evolutionary economic model called Producism, which includes building an ecosystem of cooperatives and b-corps, alternative currencies, and other concepts. I wrote a book about it that's free to read online, http://producism.org/manifesto (updated version coming late May).
Our startup, Producia (screenshots of upcoming new version https://angel.co/producia), is implementing this new kind of economy on college campuses and local communities as a real-world social entrepreneurship game, that challenges players to kickstart and grow meaningful ideas into impactful businesses. We are a hybrid cooperataive (worker & member-owned) and instead of following a pure democratic model, we use the "Better Means Model" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdcAxGGRafc).
As far as raising funds for our cooperative, we are taking a creative approach. First, my founder and I are turning ourselves into startups, literally, and doing a similar deal like the music businesses "360 Deal", where investors get a piece of everything we do. We are also going to create a sister company (benefit corporation) that will offer a white label version of our platform to enterprises. We are pursuing an equity deal for that. So in all, it'll be a mixture of a royalty and equity.
If anyone has any questions or wants to learn more, feel free to email me at drewl at illvp dot com.