TABLE OF CONTENTS
Overview. We hope to cover most of the questions you might have with this page. If we missed anything, please don't hesitate to contact us with questions.
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The data, intellectual property, and revenue that we (consumers) stream through our internet clicks make up the capital foundations that tech companies use to derive almost all of their worth. And these foundations yield personal insights and technological advances, like “artificial intelligence,” that expose each and every one of us to risks, like those to our autonomy and livelihood, that we can't practically fathom, let alone hedge. Our market system typically allocates company profits and control, or company “equity,” to those who take significant risks to capitalize companies, or, in other words, provide them with something they need to do business. Considering these realities of consumer clicks and market norms, we have an incontrovertible “fair-market” justification to wholly (100%) profit from and control the tech companies we use as their users, and it’s high time for a tech company to make such equity available to us. So, we (User Cooperative) have made it our life’s work to get you equity for your internet clicks, and we're getting it done through a cooperative, or “user-owned,” framework. If you'd like to see more on this, you can check out our Why Equity for Your Clicks? page.
Why equity for my clicks?
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The purpose of a cooperative. A cooperative company, also called a "cooperative" or a "co-op," is, as a corporate entity, a tool that enables any group of people to accomplish their common economic, social, and/or cultural goals through business activities.
What is a cooperative?
A cooperative is user-owned company. A cooperative is 100% owned and democratically governed by those who regularly transact with, or "use," it, like customers, employees, suppliers, or some other group of patrons. Such patron-owners are often called "members." A cooperative either reinvests its profits or distributes them in the form of "patronage dividends" to their patron-owners in proportion to their individual transactions with the cooperative, and each patron-owner gets an equal vote in corporate governance. Also, like a conventional for-profit corporation or a limited liability corporation, a cooperative is a distinct legal entity from its owners; therefore, the "corporate shield" applies to each patron-owner of a cooperative.
How a cooperative gets started. Like conventional companies, a cooperative starts with a group of people who decide to pool their resources in accordance with a business plan and go into business together as its common owners. Unlike conventional companies, however, a cooperative can't have investors, like venture capitalists, because cooperatives apportion their profits based on patronage (use), not investments of money. Initial capital for a cooperative necessarily comes in the form of de facto payments from patron-owners, like membership fees or member donations. Initial capital can also come from loans or grants.
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Yes. We operate day-to-day just like a regular company does with, for example, full-time employees and a board of directors that oversees them.
Is User Cooperative a regular company that's owned by members instead of shareholders?
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No. Ownership rights are reserved for members, and the founder and employees are members just like everyone else. However, in lieu of equity, we offer our employees competitive cash incentives based on both individual and company performance criteria. You can access the founder's employment agreement to learn more about our general approach to compensation.
Does User Cooperative grant equity to its founder and employees?
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Equity for clicks. For a complete breakdown of the features that comprise that, please check out our Membership Features page.
What do User Cooperative's members get?
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We believe that billions of consumers are ready for a more equitable and common-sense exchange for their internet clicks, and we hope that many of them will become a member to get one. Here are the data points that we interpret as a global consumer readiness for a cooperative internet technology company, like User Cooperative:
Do people actually want equity for their clicks?
(b) 85% of Americans are “very/somewhat,” versus "not very/not at all," concerned about the "size and power of large technology companies." 77% say they “believe that major internet technology companies like Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple have too much power.” 88% (of the 77%) say they have too much power because "they may misuse customers' data, and 87% (of the 77%) say they have too much power because "they possess a lot of data on people who use their websites, apps and products." Source: Gallup-Knight, Techlash? America’s Growing Concern With Major Technology Companies, March 2020
(c) 75% of Americans and 78% of a sample of the rest of the world ("ROW") believe "businesses currently benefit the most from personal data exchange," not "consumers e.g. me." Source: Data & Marketing Association, Data privacy: What the consumer really thinks, June 2018
(d) 76% of Canada, China, India, UK, and USA "call sharing personal information with companies a ‘necessary evil.’” Source: PwC Consumer Intelligence Series, Trusted Tech survey 2020
(e) 81% of Americans believe "potential risks of companies collecting data about them outweigh the benefits.” Source: Pew, Americans and Privacy: Concerned, Confused and Feeling Lack of Control Over Their Personal Information, 11/15/2019
(f) 72% of Americans believe they "benefit 'none' or 'very little' from the data collected about them by companies." Source: Pew, Americans and Privacy: Concerned, Confused and Feeling Lack of Control Over Their Personal Information, 11/15/2019
(g) 84% of Americans and 83% of a sample of ROW say "I would like more control over the personal information I give companies and the way in which it is stored" Source: Data & Marketing Association, Data privacy: What the consumer really thinks, June 2018
(h) 91% of American adults "agree or strongly agree that consumers have lost control of how personal information is collected and used by companies.” Source: Pew, The state of privacy in post-Snowden America, 11/12/14
(i) 87% of the world says “stakeholders, not shareholders, are the most important to long-term company success." Source: 2020 Edelman Trust Barometer Global Report, January 2020
(a) 85% of Americans are “very concerned” or “somewhat concerned” about “the amount of data online platforms store about them.” In many instances when respondents say they are “very or somewhat concerned,” many suggested that they feel powerless to prevent or avoid the practice, with responses including consumers who “...do a lot of online searching and shopping and don't think there is really a way to avoid it,” and those who are “...concerned about it but recognize that at present I am powerless to really stop it.” Source: September 2020 Consumer Reports, Platform Perceptions, Consumer Attitudes
(j) 87% of Americans say they can be “very/somewhat effective,” versus "not very/not at all effective," when "they act together to try to change companies' behaviors." Source: JUST Capital, 2020 Survey Report, October 2020
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Member dividends. We pay out our profits to our members in the form of patronage dividends. They can be in cash, in kind, or both, depending on the circumstances at the time of each dividend.
How does User Cooperative distribute its profit to its members?
Calculation of a member's dividend. Each member's patronage dividend is equal to our profit multiplied by the ratio of their individual use to all members' use:
Member's patronage dividend = profit x (member’s use ÷ all members’ use)
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"Profit" includes:
What is "profit" for the purpose of distributing profit to members?
(a) Earnings minus reserves. This is our calendar-year earnings minus the cash reserves that we retain for business purposes. For this purpose, calendar-year earnings exclude member donations.
(b) Purchase price in an acquisition. This is the net consideration paid for User Cooperative if we get acquired.
(c) Net assets remaining if User Co-op dissolves. This is any money that remains in a dissolution or liquidation after we have paid our obligations.
Note: In our documentation, we refer to item (a) above as "Surplus Funds," which is defined in Article 7 of our Articles of Incorporation and, by extension, Article 5 of our Bylaws. Surplus Funds are determined by our board of directors, which our members elect. Lastly, profit isn't guaranteed, and it depends on how much our members engage in, for example, building the membership community, governing us, and using our browser when it comes online.
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"Use" (noun) is defined in Article 9 of our Articles of Incorporation as a member's use of our consumer services, and it's quantified as both:
What is "use" (noun) for the purpose of distributing profit to members?
(a) Outgoing service calls. This is the sum of unique member-to-service calls, like a member’s clicks, taps, and swipes on an app or website.
(b) Incoming service calls. This is the sum of unique service-to-member calls, like automatic pings to a member’s mobile device to retrieve GPS data for a navigation app.
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Procedures. When we meet the conditions of the "early hostile takeover protection," members democratically govern us according to the procedures in our Articles of Incorporation and Bylaws.
How do members govern User Cooperative?
We make governance as easy as possible for our members. For every governance matter that concerns our members, we will email each member well in advance all of the necessary information and materials so that they can participate with relative ease.
Members must vote for themselves. We do not allow voting proxies or designees, so members must vote for themselves.
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Everyone has a fair-market right to get equity for their clicks, and we believe that there’s more than enough generosity among those who want it to meet our initial capital needs through donations.
Why is membership free?
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No, we're extremely grateful for whatever feels right for you.
Is there a recommended donation amount?
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Yes. If you're not ready to donate when you become a member, you can fill out the donation form to donate when you're ready. If you want to donate again, you can fill out the same donation form to do so.
Can I donate later or multiple times?
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No. To maintain the integrity of our "one member one vote" governance, we only allow one (1) membership per natural person. Also, it should be noted here that, at this point, our membership form has basic functionality, and it won't prevent someone from registering multiple times under, for example, the same name or different email addresses. We're going to modernize this as soon as we can. But for now, we reconcile multiple memberships per person on the backend.
Can I have more than one membership?
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Our browser will have two income streams: search engine royalties and targeted ads. To learn more, check out our Browser Business Model page.
What is the browser's business model?
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It’s too early to offer any guidance on this, but know that we’re the only company out to get equity for consumers' clicks in a multi trillion-dollar industry that's capitalized by them and poised to dominate the global economy in the not-so-distant future. We start with a browser business, but we don’t intend to finish there.
How much can I expect to get in member dividends?
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No. Members are the principal source of cooperative startup funding. Traditional startup capital sources, like angel investors and venture capitalists aren't available to us, and we're too early stage for a loan. If other sources of non-equity startup funding, like grants and subsidies, become available, we'll consider those.
Has User Cooperative raised any money from institutions, like venture capitalists, companies, endowments, and foundations?
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Yes, we have an "early hostile takeover protection" in place. To help prevent a hostile takeover when we're most vulnerable, Article 2, Section 1d of our Bylaws defers granting governance rights to members until we (1) reach, for the first time, ten thousand (10,000) members and (2) collect in cash one million dollars ($1,000,000) of cumulative gross revenue, which includes, but isn't limited to, member donations. Until those conditions are met, the founder is the sole governing member. This isn't a perfect setup, but it does provide us at least some protection against those who might attempt to gain, either directly or indirectly, enough votes and/or influence over votes to commandeer us as we ramp up. We'll email our members the moment we meet the conditions above.
Does User Cooperative have any protection against a hostile takeover?
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To update your first name, last name, and/or email address, please submit the Email Form and make sure to: (a) Select "Update member info" in the "Subject" field and (b) Include in the "message" field both (i) your current first name, last name, and email address and (ii) your updated first name, last name, and email address. We'll reply to your current email address to verify the update. We realize that this is a clunky process, and we're going to modernize it as soon as we can.