[HN Gopher] Open Collective Plans 'Exit to Community'
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Open Collective Plans 'Exit to Community'
Author : brightly-salty
Score : 48 points
Date : 2021-11-16 12:50 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.opencollective.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.opencollective.com)
| erulabs wrote:
| Now maybe I'll get some backlash for this, but I can't square
| this attitude I hear again and again:
|
| > Hyper-growth at any cost was out of the question, because it
| incentivizes profit over purpose and extractive practices toward
| users.
|
| If you believe, in your heart of hearts, that growth and
| profitability come _only at the expense of your customers_, then
| the chance of creating a successful enterprise is zero percent.
| Maybe it's a lie we tell ourselves, maybe it's the core
| foundation of capitalism, who knows: but you _have_ to believe
| customers are giving you their money because they want what
| you're selling - not because you're tricking them. You can
| believe SUCCESSFUL_COMPANY practices "extractive practices toward
| users", but clearly SUCCESSFUL_COMPANY doesn't believe that, and
| most likely their paying customers don't either.
|
| I really love so much about the entrepreneurial world, and I'm
| glad we've all walked back on the "hyper growth at all costs"
| mentality, but in both my generation and the newer one, this vein
| of "making money means doing bad things" runs deep. It genuinely
| depresses me. If there are only two worlds, the wolf-of-
| wallstreet world and and the "hey man, money is evil, okay?"
| world, I hate to say it, but I'll be putting on my blazer.
| crocodiletears wrote:
| A question I've had about OpenCollective:
|
| Do they have any relation to the commons project? Their logos are
| virtually identical, and the OpenCollective logo has a similar
| colorway to that of their CommonPass project
| (https://thecommonsproject.org)
| counternotions wrote:
| Sounds like websites like Open Collective shouldn't raise VC
| money in the first place. Now the community needs to make
| philanthropic donations to bail out the equity holders.
| [deleted]
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| They don't _need_ to. They may, if they value whatever they
| would get in the transaction more than the costs.
| ssivark wrote:
| The irony is that they went to VCs probably because they
| couldn't harness the necessary public investment. If they
| manage to do that now, they would basically have gone through a
| circuitous route -- with anything greater than a 1x return for
| the VC as a tax on the community investment, compared to direct
| community fundraising.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| Open Collective is venture funded? That's kind of grim; I thought
| it would be a clear case for a non-profit.
| zrail wrote:
| Really interested to see how this comes together. I wonder if
| it'll be something like an ESOP or worker collective.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| Worker cooperative would be nice; it'd be good to see more
| democratic org structures on the radar for the tech industry.
| jonathankoren wrote:
| I read this, and I still don't know what this means.
|
| > Rather than exiting to an acquisition or IPO, we want to
| transfer ownership to our community. We will be working to make
| that a reality.
|
| So... the shareholders make a private sale?
|
| There's a lot of fancy talk, but it sounds like they can't find a
| buyer, and are trying a Hail Mary whiles giving some "we deeply
| care about the mission and the people" clap trap.
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