I design information systems that bridge business strategy and technical execution through rapid low-code prototyping (MBA + data engineering background)—seeking product/operations roles where speed-to-value and stakeholder collaboration matter.
The public document - PLAN FOR THE ARTIST-OWNED INTERNET - zine subvert published yesterday has quite a bit of detail on the complexities and possibilities in the governance and benefit of the co-op. The team supposedly includes lawyers and economists.
> Is the only way to get a copy of the manifesto, really to purchase it (or join as a member)? How is someone supposed to even know whether they want to be involved in the project, if they aren't allowed to read the document first?
Mondragon is a great model demonstrating the greater possibilities within complementary-industry cooperative economy. Mondragon is partnership between and across industries.
I could see the regional distribution of industry across/within geography, as applied within Mondragon, mapping well to genre distribution across/within industry production tooling/technologies for Subvert.
I could see the economics working similar to OpenCollective, but different governance. I know OC announced a restructuring recently, but I don't think it's a co-op model.
It's structured as a multi-stakeholder cooperative, from what I understand.
"Building an artist-owned platform is a complex challenge, but it’s one we are uniquely positioned to solve. Our growing coalition includes founders of Ampled, a project that helped pioneer the concept of cooperative platforms, as well as artists, music industry professionals, and specialists in cooperative law and platform economics. "
I'm glad to see new concepts emerge like this that challenge the governance and benefit of platforms by shareholder corporations for their own self-interested purposes.
I joined as a "Founding Supporter" of the Subvert co-op last night when I saw a post on my Twitter (X) feed.
I really hope to see more tech cooperatives in the future. The dominant paradigm of neo-fiefdom tech platforms is both tired and uninspiring.
As a founder of a SaaS company that was formed as Delaware PBC, I will say that this route does make it quite hard to follow the traditional fundraising path.
VCs are spooked by anything that’s not your run-of-the-mill C Corp. PBCs are hard to get off the ground.