My name is Chris and I’m a founder of a tech startup called Sechoia.
We’re only a small company just finding our feet as we are transitioning from full on bootstrapping to actual grown-up revenue generation.
I’m really keen to grow Sechoia as a worker cooperative but as you’re all probably aware, good supporting material to help with this is quite limited.
Does anyone have any useful information or advice for changing from a traditional limited by shares company to a cooperative? It would be great if anyone wants to have a call to discuss this but even if just some example company policies can be provided it would be much appreciated!
Hi Chris, good to see you made your way over here!
For others, I had a call with Chris last Thursday, he’s passionate about the Mondragon model as an alternative to the venture capital cycle of growth that companies can find themselves pushed into.
And very interested in the systems that coops use to find clients, recycle surpluses and generally manage themselves.
Hey @Sechoia welcome, tell us a bit more about Sechoia?
Also wanted to flag that it is possible to be a company limited by shares AND be a worker co-op! Check out our Articles of Association if you want (feel free to copy and paste as liberally as you like if it’s helpful for you).
Hi Lucy, thanks for the info, I’ve had a good read through and it’s very useful. Whether it’s the right route for us I’m not sure yet but it will definitely help us when making our decision!
As for Sechoia, we are primarily a developer of computer vision systems, with an aim to combine vision and machine learning to provide numerous applications to smart cities (Parking, traffic management, safety alerts, pedestrian counting, town planning analytics etc.). For the last 2 years or so we have been in R&D phase and have been making good progress towards the development of our own stereo vision camera with embedded edge hardware, capable of running our own neural network based pixel matching algorithm.
We are close to securing a grant through the Cornwall Development Company that would allow us to continue development over the next 12 months or so and hopefully reach a stage where our tech is more commercially viable and a marketable system offering.
In the meantime, we have also been outsourcing our software development skills for small projects to generate some revenue for the business and allow us to expand our team further. So far these clients have mainly been Defence and Aerospace companies but we’re hoping to extend our services to more exciting commercial projects that we might be able to assist with.