are you, or anyone here, aware of a co-operative modeled SV style startup? I think 10yr (or 20 if that's possible) options is a good step towards that model so that you get back compensated for your contributions regardless of how long the investors resist IPO

if it's cooperative, then the workers are themselves the investors, and they would have had to put capital into the company. There's no need for options in that case (since those workers already would own the shares for putting in the capital!).

What you might be referring to is to have workers who _didn't_ put in capital, but still get given long dated options, along with their salary. This is funded by investors. So - the problem here is that there's no downside for the workers. If due to bad luck, they lose out on the value of the options, but still get paid their salary in the mean time, and yet get the upside of the long dated options should the company succeeds. The only people to lose out are the investors - who had to give up some of their shares (as options), for almost zero upside. I dont think it will work - no investor is going to be that sucker.

Once the company is more than a handful of people that's all pretty theoretical.

The John Lewis Partnership[0] in the UK (which owns a chain of department stores[1] and the supermarket chain Waitrose[2]) has more than 80,000 employees and operates like a cooperative.

Technically it's a Public Limited Company (albeit one wholly owned by a trust for the benefit of its employees), but it does run an internal democratic system.

Profits are distributed to employees as bonus, which is a uniform percentage of their salary. 2021 is the first year they won't distribute a bonus (because of Covid), but historically it's been between 5% and 20%.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lewis_Partnership

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lewis_%26_Partners

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waitrose

That’s cool but isn’t it similar to the incentive pay programs or RSUs/ESPPs offered by traditional employers? Not to mention that once the company is large, it’s hard to feel you have that much control over the success of the entire company.

Employees of JL don't own any shares. They cannot be bought or sold or given to employees. 100% of the shares are owned by the Trust.

That also means that every employee effectively has the same stake in the company - those high up in management, for example, don't have a lop-sided number of shares compared to those on the (both literal and metaphorical) shop floor.

JL employees also elect colleagues to hold the management to account, and appoint people to the Board and Trust. How many "traditional employers" allow that to happen?

It doesn't have to be. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation

I don't doubt you can make a large co-op. What I do doubt is that working at a large co-op is much different from working at any other large employer (I guess unless you're on the executive team).

At Mondragon, employees can choose their managers by vote (the corporation is run like a democracy inside), perhaps that can make some difference. I have no experience, therefore no strong opinion on this; sounds good to me, but maybe it introduces its own problems that I wouldn't guess.

That's interesting. Maybe it's more different than I would have imagined. At least it would seem to give some recourse if the manager is a tyrant.