VCs talk to 200 people a month with a single CEO or maybe the odd co-CEO. Along you come with a 20 person co-op leadership structure. Why would they take that dive? They want you to look/act/speak/organize like their previous successes. (Which is the same general reason why non-white males start at such a giant disadvantage )

I think one reason it's harder is because typically VCs pay more money to have more decision making power and many coops are founded on the one member one vote principle. So despite how much money they'd contribute, they'd have no more say than the average member.

The defining feature of a worker coop is that it’s owned by the workers. That means they can’t give shares to VC’s. I’m sure there’s hybrid models where the company is only majority owned by workers, but I don’t know how common they are and I doubt they’re very attractive to VC’s for reasons others have mentioned.