Sherwood Cooperative

A cooperative company-builder owned by the people doing the work.

Sherwood is a cooperative conglomerate. A parent co-op that builds companies owned by the people who do the work.

The structure is simple on purpose: one member, one vote. The legal wrapper is a limited cooperative association, because I want a real company with real ownership, not a vibes-based project that collapses the first time money shows up.

The idea

The way I said it into my voice recorder in June:

“It really feels like there ain’t nobody talking about doing good in the world… that we have the capability to do it without venture capital. It’s either ‘make a million dollars’ or ‘we’re all gonna die’ — those are the two messages.”

Sherwood is the third path.

My bet is that AI changed the math under almost every small company. Software is cheaper. Legal work is cheaper. Research is cheaper. The old capital moat — the thing that made you feel like you needed venture money just to begin — is not gone, but it is cracking.

That matters because venture money does not just fund a company. It writes the ending. It says growth first. It says exit. It says the people who do the work can have wages, maybe options, maybe a nicer dashboard, but not control.

Sherwood is built around the opposite premise. If the cost of building useful software and doing the company formation work has collapsed far enough, then a mission-driven collective with almost no capital can compete on merit. Not everywhere. Not instantly. But in the places where the incumbents are only strong because they own the network and the paperwork.

The important part is that members own the umbrella, not just one company. If one company gets disrupted, the equity does not vanish with it. The conglomerate can form the next company under the same roof. This is also my best route to pension-like benefits for people the law says cannot have pensions.

What exists today

• Sherwood has a built website, but it is not publicly reachable yet because the domain is not attached.
• The first operating subsidiary is RideCoop, a driver-owned rideshare co-op for Philadelphia.
• Amber is the forever media hosting project under the same umbrella.
• Elsewhere is the local-first journal and social network project under the same umbrella.
• The legal structure is in progress as a limited cooperative association.
• The operating model is chapter-shaped: many small self-sustaining chapters, not one branded company trying to swallow the country.
• The ownership thesis is written down: workers own the parent co-op, and the parent co-op can keep creating new subsidiaries.
• The first practical question is not branding. It is people. Drivers, organizers, insurance help, co-op lawyers, and people who have already done this the hard way.

What it isn’t yet

Sherwood is not a functioning cooperative yet. It does not have members. It does not have elected governance. It does not have a board. It does not have insurance products, tax workflows, member onboarding, capital accounts, or bylaws that I would ask anyone to rely on without professional review.

It is also not a shortcut around the hard part. A cooperative can have better incentives than a normal company and still fail if nobody answers dispatch, nobody reconciles payments, nobody handles conflict, and nobody does the boring weekly work.

The site being built is not the same as the institution being built. I am trying to keep those categories separate.

Where it’s going

The plan is to make Sherwood useful first in Philadelphia. Not abstractly useful. Useful to drivers who are tired of making money for an app that can change their life with a terms update. Useful to organizers who want worker ownership without pretending every neighborhood needs to invent its own software stack.

The first proof is RideCoop. If the $10 ride can be split so that $8 goes to the driver, $1 runs the company, and $1 builds the driver’s own capital account, then the argument becomes concrete.

After that, the point is repetition. Groceries. Delivery. Care work. Local services. Small chapters with shared software, shared legal patterns, shared accounting, and shared ownership at the umbrella level.

I do not want one heroic company. I want a roof.