As a followup to my introductory post @ddevault suggested I dive into some more background as to why a few friends and I decided to start a worker owned co-op as a viable model to make a living working in tech/software.
The 3 founders have spent long careers working at places like Google, JWPlayer, EA Games, ngrok, etc. We got to learn a lot on the job while not only technically, but also from a finance, product, and business operations perspective. We have all been a part of some form of startup whether it was product or service focused and saw first hand the cut-throat and hostile nature of that model. We eventually all got sick of it and we wanted to find a better way to work and not only make a living doing it, but also ensure anyone who joins our company is treated as an equal across the board. We knew there had to be a better, more sustainable, and democratic way to run a business so we started looking into creating a tech co-op. We landed on officially starting Limeleaf Worker Collective, LLC (aka Limeleaf Collective) https://limeleaf.io
Our aim is to start very small (the 3 of us) and help underserved industries with our technical expertise that we gained in “big tech”. Our site goes into more details there so I won’t restate them here, but the bigger point is how we’re going to not only run our company, but also how we’d like to use FOSS tools and solutions.
From a funding perspective we’re not planning to take any outside money, but once we we end up all agreeing and voting on base compensation to cover living expenses, healthcare, etc here in the US we’ll be figuring out how to distribute donations back to the FOSS tools we use to build our products and services. That ends up becoming a line item in our contracts so that our clients know we use free software to give them what they need, but paying our consulting rate would mean that a portion of that will end up going towards FOSS maintainers.
Additionally, we’ll be striving to open source all products we write for ourselves and for our clients. I am sure there might be some cases where we can’t do this, but if we find the right clients then it could work well.
This is all still early stage for us as we navigate tax and small business law in the US while trying to maintain standard of living costs with our families and other obligications, but so far it looks to be on the right track. We’ve gotten immense support from other co-ops from all over and we’ve seen the model work so we believe we can do this too.
I am happy to answer any questions about this venture. We want to be transparent and open and show folks that you don’t need to run a capitalist-based business where owners get everything and workers get minimal.
My personal reasons for leaving the big tech life are over here if you want to read some more ranting/heated frustrations.