That's interesting, but I was thinking something possibly even farther. That the members of the co-op are the people that pay for the SaaS itself. Essentially the yearly fee is "dues" towards the organization.
But what you described truly is the most direct way to align the interests of stakeholders/users with the direction of the company/product. A downside I think in this case is that it becomes even more imperative to know who your “customers” are, as pivoting will be quite difficult.
I definitely think there is a way to make this viable at small scale in a tech/SaaS context. But to survive and grow to larger scale, I think you basically have to ensure your business following this model is not "too profitable" or else someone will want to crush and replace you, and hoard the profits for themselves.
It's kind of forgotten about now, but it's a bit of a minor miracle that Vanguard's unusual structure survived the early days, then grew to become an investing behemoth. I suppose the reason nobody tried to kill Vanguard to steal their customers is because the business model was pretty boring and profits were unsexy enough that others just let them do their thing (I mean, low cost index funds, and the boring type of customers attracted to them? Talk about a ceiling on profits, compared to what a more adventurous fund manager could make elsewhere selling a typical 2-and-20 deal to greedier customers...).
As far as I know this is how places like REI or some groceries work. They are essentially customer owned. I'm not an expert in this, which is why I was asking for advice.
I wouldn't say they work well, though, given the state of REI and grocery customer cooperatives.
However I believe the board nomination process used to be open, but now only board members can nominate people for a board seat
Given that customers often want to avoid lock-in on any purchasing decision, it seems hard to build a service that has a larger up front psychological and legal commitment. I love the idea of getting bonus points in life for building structures with collaborative ownership, but realistically most people and businesses only want a simple “buy a service that I can cancel” relationship.
That said, I'd love to see someone try it! I think it could work well in a niche environment, or something like a Kickstarter where people feel they helped bring something into being.
I buy shares in the farm per my needs. The CSA takes my money and buys seeds, fertilizer, etc. I get discounted (100% :-) products from them throughout the growing season. They also sell their goods at farmers' markets, do deliveries, etc. My CSA has been growing for years. They're a part of a larger co-op org that spans the NE US, IIUC.
So yes, the "beautiful vision" can be, and is, implemented. Even in tech; I'm sure you've heard of neighbors getting together and building their own local networks because the local ISP won't service them.
The main advantage to this is that it gives customers incentive to support the business financially, not just take the assets. You can still have cashflows in way that don't exist in open source models, and around products that can't be open sourced (like loafs of bread, pints of milk, as per the Co-op model).
While People change, companies change even more as "good people" may leave and even "good owners" may sell the company, in additionally to changing themselves