It's a shame there's not a YC like incubator for tech worker coops, cut out the VCs and have milestone based funding in exchange for a percentage of future profits that would be reinvested in future projects.
Another problem is law. At this point it favors the common ownership forms of business. Starting a coop is hence much harder than it should be. This is what i think where the "it's a shame" make most sense. We should make w-coops easier to start and give them tax benefits as they are on the long run much more beneficial/ less detrimental to society.
While I believe you are correct that co-ops are not a great fit for the growth business strategy that VCs make their bread and butter on, I believe that on many metrics co-ops tend to be more sustainable than the corporate alternatives[0]. This means they are more likely to be around tomorrow to pay off a loan.
All this to say, it would be great to see more capital for co-ops in the form of traditional loans with favourable interest rates.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/social-enterprise-network/2014/m...
Sure, that would be great. But what can govt do today to incentivize that?
I'd say just relax (tax) law on w-coops to incentivize them compared to the less favorable forms of incorporation.
The Canadian gov't offers some grants for co-ops, but they are a pittance. Making debt cheaper for co-ops relative to corps (maybe via additional tax breaks on interest?) is, I think super important.
For example I know Germany has structures like works councils that are foreign to us in N. America (though this is not a worker coop structure). However these structures historically arise from labor movements, not from top-down planning from authorities or electoral politics, which takes more than thinking up a design for a better society without considering who and why it would be implemented
Cuba has many, but also usually are state initiated and somewhat state controlled. China, Vietnam and DPRK have many "not true worker coops" also due to state control.
Finland, Italy and Basque/Spain also score high, and we're talking about actual worker coops there.
So as an example you could have hypothetical opensource.coop that funds open source projects like signoz or posthog, giving the team a year of runway in exchange for a cut of future profits, with follow on funding if certain milestones are reached.
Same could work for "indie hackers" or boostrappers, merge a few successful companies into a holding company that shares office space, accounting, legal and etc, and reinvests a fixed % of profits to seed new projects that apply to join.
I agree with many VC-backed startups develop toxic behavior.
In a Co-op you put up your own money to buy into a co-op. This is the opposite of VC where an external party joins your org with money.
So a co-op model would only help to serve the already wealthy.
However, maybe it would be interesting to have a co-op for developer resources for example. As in companies or startups can buy into the coop in return for cheaper rates and more vertically integrated team augmentation.
You offer founders that apply a coworking space and a stipend that can get renewed each year if the members of the coop agree to keep funding it. In exchange the new member commits to giving up 10% of their future profits that get split into an investment budget and dividends.
If a company is failing the members can vote to stop funding them and set them free of the agreement.
If a company needs way more funds and VC route makes more sense you spin it out as a c corp, convert the 10% profit agreement into equity and let them raise funding like any other startup would.