It is orders of magnitude more challenging to found a co-op. Let alone get enough capital to get started.
We've set up our society to make it difficult for worker owned businesses.
We've set up our society to make it difficult for worker owned businesses.
In short, worker-owned businesses are rare because individual workers are poor (relative to the capital that's needed) and they can't get external funding because the investors want control in return, which labor management can't provide.
That's why most large-scale worker-owned businesses are part of a federation supported by a bank - e.g. Mondragon's Caja Laboral. Institutional design indeed does matter.
Talk about founding a workers co-op that's democratically run? With shares issued to each worker? There's just no template for it. It's days of work to get it over the line.