Flying the Coop

#18 EMMA Technology Cooperative: Businesses need more verbs

Listen Later

"When you take infinite growth off the table, this entire world of possibilities opens up." — Ramsey Nassar, EMMA Technology Cooperative

We make this show to learn things, ask good questions, and let really cool people shine (and maybe occasionally get a little clever ourselves). This conversation did something different: it reminded us that what we're building isn't just a business model. It can be radical. And maybe it should be.

Ramsey Nassar, Gwen Pasquarello, and Andy Wallace at EMMA Technology Cooperative have spent five years as a worker-owned co-op building software and hardware for video games, theater, public installation, and media arts. And theme parks. And custom programming languages. And a nonprofit arcade collective. They're thriving.

This one gets into:

  • Why consensus produces the highest quality decisions at the lowest velocity
  • How their compensation model works: flat salary plus a percentage of every invoice cleared, paid out throughout the year as patronage dividends
  • How they survived a 10-month dry spell: suspending commissions, recording a debt to members on the books, and plugging away regardless
  • The Venn diagram problem: useful and interesting work vs. profitable work
  • Also: Emma Goldman (now on our reading list), and the strong case for EMMA jumpsuits

    • ----

    Flying the Coop is brought to you by Strange Birds, a strategic marketing cooperative. We help small yet mighty teams figure out what actually needs to happen — and then we go do it with them. Most partners bring only thinking or doing. We bring both to your big idea, and we stay until it's shipped.

    Find us at http://strangebirds.land

    ...more
    View all episodesView all episodes
    Download on the App Store
    Flying the CoopBy Janel Torkington