Felix Weth as Part of Who Owns the World? PCC Conference at The New School 2019

Summary

Felix Weth at Who Owns the World Conference, convened by the Platform Cooperativism Consortium at The New School in November 2019. Evans is a speaker for the Town Hall 1 – The Capital Conundrum panel discussion.

Without access to real capital, the cooperative digital economy cannot thrive. Platform co-ops around the world struggle to access start-up funding given that traditional venture capital is not appropriate for these enterprises. Various groups have received foundation funding. British cooperators are using the Community Shares Model, which allows them to benefit from tax incentives for startups. Adapting the Mondragon process, cities like Cleveland (US) and Preston (UK) follow an ecosystem approach to launching and funding worker cooperatives. Yet others explore ways of creating “user trusts” to democratize the Internet. Learn about diverse financial instruments and strategies that can help groups to launch an upstart without venture capital. Together with the International Cooperative Alliance, philanthropists, and communities worldwide, we need to urgently take bold steps to meet these challenges.

Felix is the founder of Fairmondo, an online-marketplace owned by its users. He holds degrees in political science, philosophy, economics, public policy, and administration. As an anti-corruption activist, he traveled through Africa and other “developing countries” where he saw how corruption deprives especially young people of life chances. For him, this experience highlighted the structural deficiencies of our economic and political systems. Later, he developed the model of “cooperative 2.0” and founded with Fairmondo its first implementation as a corruption-resistant, transparent, platform cooperative.