Invitation

Startups need a new story about what and who they are for. We are overdue for a better way.

• The usual startup story’s feedback loops are spinning out of control.
• Gig platforms offer a dystopian “future of work,” wiping away long-fought-for protections that anyone selling their labor should have.
• Social networks vacuum up personal data and face investor pressure to monetize it with ever creepier schemes, leaving behind frayed societies and neglected civil liberties as collateral damage.
• The usual startup story widens divides. “I am a manufacturer of economic inequality,” the celebrated investor Paul Graham has written. “Ending economic inequality means ending startups.” Maybe his kind of startups—ones designed to disrupt whole industries and deliver the spoils to a homogenous few.

We think it would be far more excellent to make startups that spread wealth across communities. We think startups would be more usefully disruptive if they delivered their rewards to the people who make them valuable rather than to the already wealthy. Our technology could have more capacity for good if it were accountable to the people who use and build it. Startups that create active, loyal communities of workers and users should have the chance to exit to community—ensuring those communities meaningfully co-own the company and help to determine its fate. Real democracy should be at least as available as more oligarchy.

Exit to Community (E2C) is a strategy in the making, a different kind of story that connects the founders, workers, users, investors, activists, and friends who have been trying to feel their way toward a better kind of startup. Its endgame is to be a long-term asset for its community, co-owned and co-governed by those who give it life.

Exit-to-Community (E2C) vs startups

• Startups are enterprises with ambitious ideas or technologies but without a confirmed product-market fit. They are inherently risky and require flexibility, creativity, and the ability to make quick decisions.
• Involving a community early on could hinder the startup's ability to remain lean and flexible.
• E2C captures the benefits of both the startup's dynamism and the community's loyalty and accountability.
• The E2C process has three stages:
  • The Startup Phase: Founders and early investors lead and bear the risks.
  • The Exit to Community: The community takes stewardship once it is established.
  • The Community Phase: Community governance oversees management to fulfill community needs.
• E2C allows startups to evolve into organizations that serve their communities.