Sounds great! 
(here are more characters to get around the fact Discourse doesnāt like short posts)
Just to sayā¦
That might sound expensive (I must admit it did to me when I first heard it), but just imagine how many billions couldāve been saved had the NHS contracted Go Free Range as Gov.uk did!
How did this project to develop a āStart a co-op platformā pan out @dansmallaxe?
I would be very keen to hear about any progress.
I canāt believe nobody has cracked this yetā¦
thatās such a weird website - it says everything about setting up a co-op but refuses to use the word āco-opā!!! why would that be?? is āco-opā a dirty word???
It has way too many annoying pop ups - and no explanation of the pricing - or any real explanation of what the user gets vs just setting up an LLP themself (which can be done for way less than Ā£90+vat)
As you work your way through the sign up form it slowly becomes obvious (especially since the funding for the site came from co-ops UK) that you are being encouraged to set up a co-op and to give your data to co-ops UKā¦ such a weird way to present the proposition. 
@dansmallaxe is that what you built?
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I really donāt understand the fashion for using Colombian TLD names for UK sites, especially since yourlevel.uk is available 
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yeah - or why the site encourages you to start a āLevelā in the first place when really itās offering help setting up a coo-op - whoās going to google āset up a levelā!!! I thought part of the idea of co-ops was to spread the word about co-opsā¦ not hide them from view?
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Indeed, one would have thought that a domain name such as setup.coop would have been easier to findā¦
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Iāve typed āset up a levelā in duckduckgo and this wikihow page came upā¦ If you type āset up a co-opā this Co-ops UK website pop up. It has a broken image, but some useful information too, at the bottom of the page there is a link to āSelect-a-Structureā, which very can quickly (Express mode) determine a suitable form for your co-opā¦ perhaps both tools could be fused?
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I agree. I came to the conclusion that it was an attempt to reach out beyond the co-op niche, and I suppose I canāt judge whether it is effective in that context cos Iām not that demographic. I donāt get the domain name, and as I recall it is super-easy and cheap to create an LLP, so not sure whoās getting the margin.
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Yeah the standard fee is Ā£40
And this lot claim to do it for Ā£32 in 3-4 hours:
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Personally I think this is a good effort.
Outlandish started as an LLP because we couldnāt really understand what co-op meant beyond the āSeven principlesā: hugging trees, being lovely, eating granola, etc.
It took us many years to enter the co-op fold, although we considered ourselves to be some sort of co-op.
I think this tool might be useful for allowing people to quickly and simply set up a co-op and get started, without having to deal with the FCA or understand the Somerset rules or sacrificing your first child at the full moon.
All that said, being an LLP cost us hundreds of thousands of pounds in excess tax so we still need to do the big job - making it easy to set up all forms of co-op - but this seems like a good start.
Thanks @dansmallaxe ! Also, be aware you can change your Discourse user name here: https://community.coops.tech/admin/users/30/dansmallaxe
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Yeah, I agree. I think this approach is pretty awesome, @dansmallaxe. Yes, I want people to eventually know that they are a co-op, and be introduced to concepts, but I vibe with a drip marketing approach (though not sure if thatās their angle).
I really like the idea of āhey we make this stupid simple, so weāre going to charge $30 for all your valuable time we saved youā, and then you have a sustainable tool, and a list of people whoāve signed up to the core principles, with whom you can slowly introduce to a set of co-op values and existing communities. Frankly, feels kinda genius. And likely an approach my mind never would have stumbled on, even just 8 months into this co-op adventure. I like the idea of an ecology of approaches, some deep right away, and some shallow but gaining depth
Also, as someone who started in Drupal (and is grateful to that community), I would emphatically support that NOT using Drupal was a great idea. Sorry! 
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Hi All,
Super late to the game on this one, and LOTS of posts to read through. Iām a bit confused on the overall endgame here, however wanted to flag that we obviously put live the new system for FCA last year which allows for easier and digital registration of Co-ops.
It may be Iām completely wide of the point here, but wanted to flag this as itās already up there and live, in case thereās risk of duplication of effort.
Feel free to ignore if you are trying to achieve something else
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Hey Nick, congrats on getting the FCA to accept digital applications - it didnāt sound easy!!
I think Level is kind of more about the āentry levelā co-op - e.g. a couple of mates who want to do a thing together and donāt want to be each othersā bosses but donāt currently have a clear way of doing that (e.g. Outlandish when we started). None of us knew about co-ops beyond the seven principles, and we needed some company articles, etc. In the end we went for something like LLP Company Formation - Ā£26.99 and ended up with totally generic articles, and we werenāt on the co-op movementās radar.
As @patcon says, itās part of an eco-system rather than The One True Solution.
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Me too. But I also have an allergic reaction to pointless neologisms. Why do people so often feel the need to create a new (meaning for a) word when there is no apparent reason to do so?
@dansmallaxe can you explain the reasoning? Why called these LLPs a āLevelā? Whatās the point?
And as @olisb says why not just call them co-ops, given that is what they are?
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Interesting. How so? I mean LLPs are tax transparent in that they themselves donāt pay any tax at all. And the vast majority of accountants and tax firms are LLPs (and they know a thing or two about not paying much tax), so would love to hear a fuller explanation of how this came to pass? (although this is off-topic so perhaps I should create a new threadā¦)
LLPs work great if you plan to distribute all the money to the members, but if you make a large surplus and want to use it for good then you end up losing 40% of it every year, which is twice as much as any other company loses. Oops.
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Yep itās to do with what you do with profits, after taxation. If you plan to distribute/spend other than to partners, youāre effectively spending out of money thatās already been taxed at your highest marginal personal tax rate (in this case 40%).
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Also this is a good guide to legal forms and their main features:
https://www.uk.coop/sites/default/files/uploads/attachments/simply-legal-final-september-2017.pdf
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