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Comment by Galaxeblaffer | Hacker News Reader

We need a new type of company that can never be acquired.

Ghost (blogging software) chose to incorporate as a Company Limited by Guarantee [1], which doesn't have shares and can't be acquired that way: https://ghost.org/changelog/moving-to-singapore/

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_company_limited_by_gua...

Sweet, i kind of knew it already existed, but this type of structure is just so damn rare.

I guess most founders are really just motivated by the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow :/

It only really works for bootstrapped non-profits, and for projects that are entirely volunteer-driven. No VC would be able to invest in something like this (unless it's a grant like what YC does for non-profits [1]).

Even Mozilla Foundation [2] was spun off from Netscape, and heavily supported by AOL in its early years.

[1] https://www.effectivealtruism.org/articles/why-nonprofits-sh...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Foundation#History

By definition, worker coops are never acquirable by private controlling interests; they are always employee-owned.

DAO:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decentralized_autonomous_organ...

So if I'm reading this right... the participants of the DAO can band together and sell their company to a company as well? It looks like a DAO just requires some kind of cryptocurrency to participate, and then the participants get control over the operations of the DAO. So ownership is transferable at any time by these parties.

It would have to be built into the DAO smart contract. You could make a smart contract where it can't be sold.

That definitely cannot be acquired. No sane business would want to convert actual money into fun bucks and put those into a buggy script that would lock everyone out if someone pwns it.

> convert actual money into fun bucks

What is more 'fun'? USD in bank account, USD as cash, DAO, or gold? I would think those are monotonically decreasing in 'fun'-ness. "Actual" money is not a good word for printable items of arbitrary scarcity. Not arguing for or against GP, just saying.

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