How to build a multi-stakeholder co-op with Felix Weth from Fairmondo.

For each stakeholder group, you need to define their member value, the value the co-op is creating for them. And I believe like it's really, it's great to involve people in value creation and enabling them to contribute, to make a difference.

Once again, Felix, I really appreciate you doing this and making time to connect. For me these days, key focus is developing a community. We have some things we need to iron out strategically, like how to plan to go forward. But what I see, if we can't build a community, it'll be hard to, to grow it. It'll take some time to do that, to grow a following and to, and to get people to come out to whatever we do to acquiring users online or acquiring customers online has become very costly and challenging. So building a community to me is very key. Was thinking a lot about a multi-stakeholder cooperative. And I've been thinking about it a while. Once again, you're the one who planted multi-stakeholder cooperative, that word. I never had heard of it until I watched a video of you mentioning it. So thank you. And first off, before I dive into it a little bit more, I'm just curious, what was your journey to, you know, understanding a multi-stakeholder cooperative and like trying to build it? I would just like to understand that journey that you went on.

Well, my specific journey was slightly different in the sense that I started off also by myself in the beginning, mostly with a vision of creating a, well, a marketplace with a focus of involving users as customers and designing this kind of corruption-resilient model so that users could make sure that the company actually follows the values it states and publishes. So this for me was the core point. Then we had people joining, um, in the early stage, joining the team, co-shaping the whole project, um, someone bringing in this fair trade perspective, um, others going more towards sociocratic governance. And so we kind of put it all together. Also, some people came from the open source community, so it became more and more a community-shaped project on the way. The idea of being accountable to users and anyone who is actually, yeah, if you want, a stakeholder or someone affected by the company, by the business, this was for me the original motivation and what we tried to realize with our specific statute. Then It also became kind of an amplifier of our activities in the sense that we could involve people more authentically, taking them into ownership. And this was really, I think, a key feature for the successful start of Fairmondo, of our successful crowdfunding, of various steps that we took where people have just been very supportive, giving a lot of feedback, a lot of co-design input, and I think this is a good way of going, so to create channels how people can co-design and co-create the whole project, because people always come with their own ideas and perspectives. And well, that's, I think, one important thing to really create the ground for that, that people can express themselves. It's also what I see now in other community building projects. Like, I accompanied SuperCoop, which is kind of the Park Slope of Berlin. They copied their model and changed it a little bit, but basically built up such a co-op, and it's running now. They have a good member base, and they're developing their processes. And they spend a lot of time actually community building, doing all this. They're a multi-stakeholder co-op. They are member, like a consumer co-op, like consumer member co-op. But more and more they become, I mean, yes, employees are also members. And since they have this Park Slope model in the sense of consumers who— customers are also contributing work hours. So they have this double role even in their members. And they also opened up to business customers. So basically partners or others, other even shops from the area can become a member. Yeah, but I think like the multi-stakeholder component if you really do it by design. It has also the challenge of seeing the different perspectives of the different stakeholders. So in a marketplace, you always have providers and buyers. It's kind of also two challenges in terms of community building, of reaching out and of speaking to people. Providing value to them. It's a little more complex, it's also more interesting. And for me, this kind of co-design aspect was actually crucial. So communicating this openness and this value of co-ownership. On the other hand, it's also important to have that core team who actually keep things together and have their specific vision. And also, and this is also an aspect of multi-stakeholder to me, that if you have worker ownership to some extent or employee ownership, these, in my view, people should have a special role in determining some of the, some of the steps and, and business decisions, given that they are directly affected and also directly doing the work.

Their livelihood depends on it.

Yeah, and also they have to be motivated to do things. I was always a little skeptical of these kind of distance voting mechanisms on specific issues. I mean, it's good to have obviously general assemblies and have people have avenues for people to take part in decisions, but It's not nice if you're doing work and someone else is sitting on their sofa and kind of taking decisions what you should do. We always saw it more like, okay, people can create working groups and by merit shape more the way the co-op goes the more they engage and actually get active. And then certain basic decisions, in particular when it comes down to accountability and questions of values there, it's obviously important to have the whole membership to have a say.

You brought up a bunch of things. First off, you know, one thing you, I don't know if you've checked out already or have heard about them, Zebras Unite, have you heard about them?

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, okay, so you know, yeah. Yeah, so they're a pretty interesting model. They're multi-stakeholder. I actually just became a zebra myself. And, you know, they're definitely doing some of the components of this— what you were— I think this other model that you were sharing with me, you know, a few months ago. So, you know, they're doing like some of this backend work to try to support other cooperatives and other businesses. So really interesting model, and they're doing some really cutting-edge work on, you know, financing and voting and all this stuff. Something just, just on your end, if you haven't investigated them a lot, I would encourage you to maybe go back to. The other thing I wanted to— you brought up a bunch of great points that I was curious about is like, firstly, I told your point about, you know, being authentic and, and having different voices and, and, uh, you know, co-developing it. Like that's something, some of the stuff I've been noodling a lot on. Been noodling a lot on leaderless leadership and that concept, and maybe we can get into that a little bit later. But like, one thing you mentioned right away was like, you kind of sounded like you had a lot of community involvement from the very get-go. I'm curious, like, how did that happen?

No, it didn't happen. It was As I said, I was by myself. I was basically pretty soon after talking to some people. Yeah. Then I started— at some point I felt ready. I created a little website. I, um, I was reaching out to two friends of a friend who were developers, um, who immediately joined in, um, but completely focused on, on the software side. Um, and then I created this website. I was actually going to some events, um, starting to reach out to people and not finding co-founders right away. And then I was reaching out through some networks that I had, um, alumni networks, other networks, and putting up this website, well, saying, describing a little bit where we want or where I wanted to go and what I thought this could become, um, even including like an aspired salary that we wanted to pay ourselves. By stating we have to create this to be able to pay ourselves a salary. And then people started applying, and in the first round of co-founders, everyone was doing this part-time beside me and beside the two developers actually who were doing the work in the background, um, who weren't participating much in other discussions, but The, this first round of co-founders actually proved not so reliable. So I also had this downsize of the team. Um, and at some point I told myself, um, if I have more work coordinating people than actually getting things done by other people, um, this doesn't work. So I made another advertisement and this time said, you commit at least one full day per week. If you want to join this. And then actually the first guy came who committed full-time. Other people came committing days, and then we became really productive. And then we started becoming a community, organizing also like a flea market. We organized— we had our first crowdfunding campaign.

Where did you share this? Like, when you said you found your first, you know, first— like, I'm just curious, like, very on a very detailed level, like how did you do that?

Like what does that mean?

You post it on Twitter? Like, well, I posted on Facebook. Like, well, where— how did you find people like that?

Yeah, obviously it depends a little bit on your networks. I've been before active in kind of NGO work and student networks, so at the time I was posting it through some student alumni networks. I was posting it through some kind of newsletter lists of people who were interested in responsible consumption and things like this. It was a different time, obviously. It was a good 10 years ago. Yeah. Um, so actually social media also were a little different. Facebook's algorithms weren't as mean.

Yeah.

Facebook was actually quite a good way of spreading stuff because if someone shared it, it was just spread. There was no algorithm trying to curtail, to make you pay for things.

Yes.

Um, so this was a different time in that respect, but still I believe that today it's the same. It's using existing networks and people sharing stuff, um, depending obviously who you're looking for. Um, I saw like SuperCo-op, for example, also I was a little bit involved in their crowdfunding And they wanted to be very local because they were putting up their supermarket in one suburb of Berlin that is actually not so gentrified, not so many, well, organic or supermarkets or shops were there. And they really, they were hanging up posters, they were going in the streets talking to people. They were trying to do things online, but also quite a lot of offline stuff and managed to do this very local crowdfunding.

So when you started, so when you started, you know, sharing stuff and you got, you got this initial team, then the word started spreading a little bit more quickly and people started really getting very interested.

Yeah. I mean, then at this point, we, I think what you need to do, and this is also for me a key to community building, it's always having projects. Small achievable projects like doing your event. That's a great thing. Something where people can, you know, get involved, get something to do where they feel they use their skills and get a result. This is really motivating, rewarding. And this, I think, was key. Like, we organized this flea market, which was a festival at the same time. Pretty cool event. We had even some, some press writing about, about it. Yeah, we participated in this competition for crowdfunding campaigns, um, won that competition in terms of community action activity, um, by just being really active, producing a lot of content, um, sharing a lot of things like our daily challenges. That for me, it's also like crowdfunding is a wonderful tool, and the key to it is, in my view, share your, share your worries and your small hopes and disappointments, but also obviously successes, and really be open there.

Got it.

Normal kind of social media thing, but for me, um, this was really how we did it. Just being quite open and also talking a lot about our mistakes, what didn't work so well, even our doubts. Yeah, this seemed to have attracted people. So as I said, like, when we were basically— when we were creating the co-op, we were already 12 people working full-time unpaid. And it was all from the vision, all from intrinsic motivation and motivation that came out of the team and out of this community vibe. And one thing that was really good was actually that we, yeah, that we won the scholarship for a startup incubator or like impact incubator, which basically only meant that we got one desk at the beginning. So I had a desk, but then I could also have my co-founders sitting with us pretty soon. And then They gave us a little bit of funding and we used that funding to pay for more desks and got a good deal with them. So we— that was actually the core point, I guess, that we also had this, this place where people could be sitting in a nice, inspiring environment where we could hold our meetings, cook dinner, lunch together. So having a venue is really key. I mean, that's what we're doing right now as well. We created this coworking space here. For me, this is also a crucial thing to have a physical space as an integrator where people can show up and see things and meet people.

Yeah, no, we were just talking about that, the power of, you know, connecting in person and that value that's, you know, it really makes you feel— I think there's something you can't replace with digital connections.

And that's obviously harder in pandemic times. So, well, some things have gotten easier maybe right now. Not the easiest time. Totally.

Okay, so that's really interesting. I mean, I guess one— I'm trying to translate this into, into like where we are, right? So, you know, we had these, you know, 3 people We're really dedicated. We've been part of this for over a year. And this really aligns with what I was trying to hope to get out of this conversation or seem like— or get some inspiration from this conversation. By being a multi-stakeholder, you could potentially create a really powerful community around what you're creating. So we're these 3 people.

Yeah.

You know, we have some components of the vision where we're starting to beta test some versions of it. Right. And, and I see if like I do another event or if I'm going to post something on Instagram or whatever it is, like trying to amass a community around what we're creating, um, would be a powerful way to make sure that our next beta test, there's a bunch of people excited and ready to come out and check out what we're doing, support the other vendors, support us, you know, follow us on social media, follow us on email. Like, what is— so what would your recommendation be? What's like the next step? Is it to say, hey, Vivek, post something on Facebook or write a blog post about this, or, you know, like share a YouTube video or like post on Zebras Unite, like what you're doing and, you know, people will come? Or is it like, hey Vivek, actually, why don't you get some more of your fundamentals down, um, so that people know what you're joining and you know what you're looking for? Like, what, what is your— like, now that you went through that, and I know you went through some pain in that development process, like you had some, you know, you had more people at times that maybe was making it like causing trouble and causing— or not causing trouble is not the right word, but it was, it was, you know, hard to coordinate and get people, you know, focused perhaps at times. What, what would your recommendation be, you know, for me to do or for us to do next if we want to try to develop a community?

Yeah, I, I think, I mean, yes, it can be a challenge of, well, like that what's happened at Farmondo at some point that we had kind of, since we were multi-stakeholder, we had too many stakeholders who were a bit at a distance and who were critical of some things, and then, um, just took energy to, to be managed. And you always get these individuals who get really, um, ideologically, like, they have a lot of time Yeah, so those individuals, you have to find ways really, in my view, to kind of harness them or engage them, get them productive, or find ways of not stealing your time or other people's productive time. Yeah, so the core for me is still defining roles for people. Like if you do advertisements, really define the roles clearly. We're looking for this person who could do this. And define the specific tasks and events or roles or activities that people could do. So rather than saying like, yeah, we have this project, who wants to join? More like saying, well, we need to get this done, who could help us with this? And then have more of this kind of options. Regularly. What seemed to have really well worked were these regular weekly meetups for SuperCoop. We didn't do that with Famando, but they did it, and they did it throughout a long period, and they really built a solid membership through that. Having like this new— like, for new— like, once a week newcomers could just come and get some information. Just for 1.5 hours or something. And that's obviously work, but if you want to build community, I think it's quite effective because soon they outsourced this to one of the people who came and then wanted to organize these regular meetups.

Yeah.

So define this type of tasks, find people to do them. What I think also is really important are these kind of common meetings, but you already had them, um, of sharing strategic challenges. Having like a weekly team meeting is very important, I think.

And then we really clearly define what we're expecting and see who responds to it, are you saying?

Yeah. Um, so also share a lot of the challenges. I think that's a key point, like share the vision and the challenges, and then A lot comes out of around this, and if you look at the stakeholders, I mean, that's what we realize right now also with our Berlin City project, where we work with local shopkeepers, and we have to do like very specific activities for them. They just have different perspectives and time available, and so on. So also consider obviously the needs of your stakeholders. Consider maybe having different specific dedicated channels of communication and options of participation.

Got it, got it. And just to be clear, like, when you see different stakeholders, like, in this scenario, it sounds like if I'm asking for specific roles or help, it's like this person would be like kind of like a supporter, almost like a worker member, you know. I don't know how I create sort of this consumer side of it, you create the consumer side of the multi-stakeholder, or even like a vendor side or something like that.

Yeah, I mean, for each stakeholder group, you need to define their member value, the value the co-op is creating for them. And I believe like it's really, it's great to involve people in value creation and enabling them to contribute, to make a difference. So for example, customer members could help defining the product range and identifying interesting providers. They could— like, we had people defining our standards, screening all the different labels and making a selection which of these labels we actually adapt. So all these specific tasks where people can dive into something and really contribute and shape the whole thing, I think this is key. Your participation, a feeling of ownership, feeling of, yeah, having co-created something.

That's awesome. Yeah, that's good. I know with Zebras Unite, I think to a certain degree the way they did it is they put this these blog posts out that, that drove a lot of, um, interest. And then they organized their first conference pretty quickly after, I think, their second blog post that kind of blew up. And I think that conference was for anybody that sort of the story resonated with, that, you know, they connected with. And, and so they had all these different stakeholders show up for that, right? Uh, and then you talk about sort of the same thing is uniting these different stakeholders, you know, and getting them to help define and put the pieces together of this vision. I guess just, you know, logistically, I'm just trying to, I guess, having a hard time imagining how to, how to do that, you know, is it, is it a big event? Do I do that? Maybe it's like you suggest, it sounds like you're more suggesting like specific tasks. I kind of want that momentum. That's what the power in theory to me, like for me, it feels very theoretical. Like I can't exactly put the pieces together mentally, but in theory, like that's what I'm trying to do is like, okay, I want all these stakeholders. I want consumers to be excited and to believe in the product selection and what we're trying to create, the ethos of it. I want to create a workplace for workers that they feel like they're growing and developing. As a human being, and they're doing something that's really meaningful for them in terms of their environmental impact. Uh, you know, I want to get vendors involved and all these different people involved, but that coordination, you know, and do— or do I do it one piece at a time? Or, you know, it's like, that to me seems very unclear.

Yeah, I mean, I wonder— I think your role is more putting the vision out there and spreading also your needs and also your even fears, but in particular the vision and how you will transform what you want to transform. I mean, that's probably what Zebra— I haven't followed their story in detail, but I've read one of the early posts and I felt like, yeah, they have a great approach. Combined a lot of good things and they had this vision and they spread it and they transmitted that feeling of, yeah, this is possible, which attracted a lot of people. And then trust people to actually self-organize. Many people who join, if specific tasks are around, they are able to organize around them. You don't need to actually do that detailed coordination so much in the beginning. I mean, once you have more regular business work to do, that's there needs to be more coordination, I guess. But in this community building, I think it's mostly about like spreading the vision, spreading the needs, defining concrete areas of responsibility, giving people this responsibility, giving them the sense that they can take this on and shape it.

Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. That, that's awesome.

Yeah.

That feels, that feels more clear to me. So yeah, you're basically saying, hey, Vivek, Yeah, just put that vision out there. Be really clear about your needs and fears, maybe some expectations or something like just in terms of like commitment or something like that. And then let people see if they come, you know, see who comes and people will self-organize probably. Did I get that right?

Yeah. And the one thing is like really also, so obviously there will be also disappointments or people not showing up or it's not an automatic process.

Yeah.

But I think if you keep doing things, if you show that distance and that dedication, that's really motivating to people. And you have that spirit. I mean, I already feel it. So got it.

Yeah. Okay, cool. Yeah, I think that, I think that makes sense. I was thinking about that too, as I read, as I was reading their SuperZoo Knights blog post, I was like, why don't we like Why don't we write something like this? Like we have a very, you know, in some ways very similar story and we want to put our flag down also and tell the world this is something and let's see who comes, you know? And I've been thinking so much about, you know, self-organizing and so much about leaderless leadership. You know, when I look at these, you know, especially these days, you know, all these different movements that are going on, whether it's, you know, Black Lives Matter and whether it's different efforts in regards to workers' rights and things like that, there's no Gandhi or Nelson Mandela or whatever. These things are being led by just people showing up every day because they're motivated by the cause. And that's amazing. That to me is powerful. And I would like us to do something similar where We're sort of putting out that vision, you know, people self-organize. We, we, we, we try to steer people in a direction as they need help or assistance, but like not, um, yeah, not put all this work on us because that, that'll be, that'll never be as fast as, as a, as a, I think a group of people that's motivated and, and has, and has the freedom to sort of make decisions to a certain degree. But how to do that, yeah, that's the tricky—

Yeah, so on this leadership question, I remember we were also talking about this at our first discussion, and as I said then, for me, leadership is quite a challenging, delicate topic in this, in this realm, because it's actually quite important still, I believe. There are leadership roles, and they are crucial, and I think even in these movements, you will always, you can always identify maybe not one central leader. That's— it's not so much about central hierarchical commander type of leaders, but there are a lot of inspirational people, and it can be a very small scale, but people who take this kind of— who do the next step, and then other people see, okay, wow, this person does the next step. So this kind of inspirational leadership is still very important and also quite hard because oftentimes it's also about keeping up the motivation when it's not so easy. And also really sticking to the vision and believing in the vision and this type of things. Don't underestimate it. And I think also don't undervalue it. Like it's a strong, important value. You're taking that role by pushing things and that's great. And that's how the project evolves. And I just can say from my side, I kind of neglected my leadership role too much, reduced myself too much, and that was sometimes not healthy. It's not about, like, you know, letting your ego play, and— well, just, um, it's not so much about, like, you know, celebrating yourself as the big leader or something. It's, it's more about acknowledging that this role is important and challenging and, and, and quite straining. I'm always to have the motivation, always to be the one who is not giving up. And if everyone is kind of critical and disillusioned, to say, like, well, guys, we can do this. And it's an important role in my view.

No, you're totally right. I mean, I've listened to a lot of conversations about leadership within cooperatives, and everyone always, you know, says that leadership is still required in our cooperative, right? And you're totally right, even all these movements have you know, leaders, maybe not central, but they, they still have their own mini leaders. And an example that I actually draw a lot of inspiration from, maybe surprisingly, maybe not, is an event like Burning Man, right? So Burning Man obviously is this, uh, event that's put together by— it's put together by an organization, but really the organization doesn't do all that much. What makes that a festival amazing is participation by all these different people. They put some ground pieces together so that people can assemble and they can do what they do best in whatever area that is, but they don't manage the experience from A to Z, right? They put the basic infrastructure, they put together the basic principles that we're working towards, and then everyone else sort of takes over and does their part. And I think that's what I kind of want to work towards It's like, hey, this is what— this is the moonshot we're working towards, guys. And these are sort of the ground rules or values that we really need to— that is important for us to abide by, or maybe even, you know, to some degree we figured out that together.

But okay.

And then what you're saying is like, hey, you know, put together, hey, we— this is some of the things we are— we see that we need, like we can use some help with. Who wants to get involved? Like, that's to me is What you're saying, and I'm trying to work towards, I want to make that happen. I do remember that conversation. You saying that I haven't ignored that. I definitely, I know that's the case, like in any situation, if there's vacancy, someone will step up. It's more of that, like how to bring all these different stakeholders together in a way that's smart, that's efficient or relatively efficient. Doesn't have to be, you know, German efficient. I'm just kidding. But, but, you know, relatively efficient so that people can, can organize and know what they're getting involved in.

Yeah, no, I know what you mean. And efficiency is very important also to not frustrate people. Yeah, exactly. So, and there again, I think there is definitely a need for leadership in the sense of someone needs to coordinate a little bit, push a little here, push a little there, and in particular keep that flag up and say like, guys, we— let's do this transformation here. But I still think This is important, the vision/leadership kind of role. I was wondering if Burning Man, I mean, it's an interesting example. The one thing I was wondering is, since there's, it's so much about, well, basically fun and rewarding activities where also everyone participates in the fascinating results. Which is a little different if you set up a cooperative where it's a lot about also just getting work done. And it's not as, you know, as entertaining maybe, although you can create probably a lot of cool community vibes and so on that make it really fun. Yeah, I think like it's an interesting balance, but I just want to say like, don't underestimate your role there of taking leadership, saying, hey, I want to do it this way. And also, like, they always call this, you know, like, this space creation enabling people to understand that there's a space where they can contribute and shape something. Yeah, this kind of encouragement and— how would you say that— that aspect of Creating the ground. Yeah, in any case, I mean, I think that's pretty—

it sounds all pretty good, actually.

Yeah, foundation, but also holding the space, making sure people can actually— like, a lot of people have their own constraints, their own doubts, and helping people to kind of overcome the doubts. This is all leadership in my view. And it's a very nice one. It's more like a coaching or even friendship type of leadership, ideally mutual. Also asking people for help is great, I think. It's also a great form of leadership. Yeah.

That's a lot of the stuff we've been trying to do and doing. And, you know, and, but yeah, I think that the key now is to, is like, I think we need to internally, you know, really figure out a strategy to put that, put our flag in the ground and get the message out. But then, but before we do that, being really clear about the process of getting people involved and like, what is that going to feel like? We're going to put in the flag, we're going to get 5 people, we're going to get 2 people, we're going to get 100 people. What is that process of onboarding them, uh, and getting them to focus, or getting them to focus on something? And, uh, but not too much structure where it's like we, we, we just over-design this for the next 10 months. It's like, it's enough design so that people can onboard, they can get involved, they can be part of this, uh, but it's not too overly designed where it's— we're creating an org structure before there's any— we know if anyone's even interested.

No, maybe not that, but you— I mean, for example, there's also this one, uh, friend of mine who created a social startup, um, where he said from the beginning, I want to create a startup where The basic principle is nonviolent communication, and I want this to be a holocratic organization, so really applying the methods of holacracy. And this also attracted a lot of people. There was like a clear picture, okay, this organization is going to run by these principles, and we want to try this out. And then it's an experiment anyways, and there's lots of space to to shape, but having some of these things clear can also be pretty helpful and attractive.

Yeah. Yeah, no, totally. I think, yeah, we definitely need to, we need, we needed to find certain things because I don't want the team that including myself to be overrun by, and then we lose all of our motivation, right? Because a bunch of people join just because of some value and we didn't create a, some degree of some framework for the process of joining in and, and participating. So I guess a couple, a couple additional questions. Like, first off, if you were me, like, what would you, what would you say is like the next step? Yeah, that's the first question I would say. Like, what would you say do tomorrow of the bake or start planning out in the next couple days with your team?

I mean, that's hard to say for me. I mean, I don't really know your, your specific challenges right now, or maybe I didn't get that question right.

I guess like what you do know Like, if I was going to take what you know about the project and where we're trying to go, you see the community is important to us. Multi-stakeholder is important for being authentic, for creating checks and balances. It's not saying we'll definitely do that. I'm just saying, what are some ideas? Like, you went through this process, so I'm just saying, like, you probably— and you've probably seen a lot of stuff since then. That gives you inspiration, you would say, like, I'm just looking for like maybe 1 or 2 tips of like, hey, why don't you try this or this? So think about that.

Okay. If I had 3 things, I would say, first of all, as I said, like define these tasks, roles, very specific tasks, and make some of them quite creative in terms of, okay, we did this event. Is there someone who also wants to do this such type of event? And then the second would be to really look at your channels. Like, I would definitely tap into Zebras and other communities that are there and just share your challenges there and your vision. Oftentimes they're very open. And thirdly, I would probably announce some regular meetup and keep it going. Like weekly or whatever open session where you do an intro and people can contribute. I think that's 3 tools that can be pretty effective.

Yeah, that's awesome. That's really great. That's exactly what I was looking for, precisely. You nailed it. And then—

OK.

And then another, for a follow-up question is, I know you guys had some challenges. Obviously in this process, we talked about this a few times. What's like one or two takeaways you would recommend? I know one of them is definitely about knowing that being a leader is important. I'm assuming that's probably one of the things that come to mind. Is there other, other things that, you know, you say, hey, you know, we did this, you know, try to avoid that?

Yeah, I mean, for— I think I mentioned it also, like, for one of the key lessons for me is take care of your own sources and don't overspend your energy. Um, I think it's really, really crucial and underestimated. Um, like, you have that positive energy now, and it's, it's really important to keep it and take care of it. Um, maybe you're good at it, but I see it with a lot of people who overuse themselves and don't take care of the, the actual sources, whatever they are, that that give them this energy. That's for me one of the big learnings. Well, the, uh, yeah, and then obviously economic success, um, shouldn't be underestimated. Um, it's great the moment once you can properly pay people.

Yeah.

And, um, they're getting, getting consultancy if you need it, or, um defining a business model that pays off quite quickly, that's really, really helpful, I think.

Got it.

Okay, cool.

Yeah, this is, this is great. And last, this one's probably an easier question. This last major question is like, any good, good materials or tools on the subject that you would recommend? Like, hey, read this book, Vivek, or read this blog post, or watch this video. Like, any tools or tips that you think would be, would be helpful?

I've just been rereading Reinventing Organizations from Frederic Laloux, which I still think is one of the— like, it's full of great tools. And, um, another thing that we are looking into now is the whole sphere of cryptos and DAOs. Um, not sure if that's your thing, but, uh We're looking right now how we can— well, it's happening with the whole platform co-op movement, and we here with our team in Berlin in particular, we're basically conceiving a set of tokens right now. So this could also be a world to connect to if you want. Yeah, I mean, they've been developing quite a lot of tools. Yeah. And I mean, it's just another interesting kind of movement, but since they're developing a lot of technical tools, some of them might be useful. I'm not such a big— I don't know, such a big believer in tech tools as the drivers. For me, they're tools, but what you do around with them is around them is more important. So I don't have like my core recommendation there.

I mean, I used to be very, you know, interested in following along in the whole crypto space maybe 6, 7 years ago, but these days not as much so. And when it comes to cooperatives, like, I personally, I just haven't heard a thesis, not to mention, not that I've been investigating it a lot, But I haven't really heard an explanation where, like, you know, for cooperatives this is so important, because cooperatives have been creating and building for centuries in really efficient, positive ways. Like, I don't know how this would make it better. And these things are already as complex as it is. I don't know if I need to go down the rabbit hole of trying to understand this component as well. So I've been hesitant on that front. But But the, but the book I'm going to, I think you mentioned this in the past and I didn't get it in the past, but I'm particularly now that maybe, maybe now that the, I'm like in, in the weeds of building a co-op more, it's like, oh, like, oh, I see all these different challenges that are like, could be more applicable now than my life. So I'm going to grab this book. That's, that's, I think that covers it for me. Um, Felix, unless you have any other thoughts or input you would like to share?

No, I think it's been a lot, and I think we can continue the conversation. I'd be really interested in hearing more how things go for you. And as I said, like, um, I'll be in better internet connections. So, um, yeah, let's just do another session at some point, and I'd like to learn also from your experience, and, um, and then at some point also see how we can collaborate. I still think that's— that at some point could also happen.

Oh, I mean, yeah, Felix, I would love to. I would love to collaborate with you. We've had a couple of these conversations, always inspiring, and I feel, you know, more energized. If one of my sources of energy comes from you, Felix, just your openness to help and collaborate has always been so motivating. This has been a great conversation. I'm really glad we hit the record button. Yeah, and we can definitely do another one. I would love to share what we're doing and anything that I can be of help to you, certainly be happy to do that. But before we pop off, assuming people get a chance to listen to this, what's sort of the best ways for them to follow along what you're doing and maybe, you know, get in contact if you're open to that, but maybe just follow along in what you're doing.

That's an interesting— I'm just about to restart my Twitter. I haven't used Twitter the last years, and I have kind of abstained from most social media. Same with Instagram.

Um, what about— is there, is there a website? What about you? Yeah, I mean, what you're working on, where should, where should they check out your web, where you're, what you're working on currently?

They can, obviously they can web check out my website, which is in German. Um, so it's, it's a bit of a mess right now in this sense. Um, but I'm on the way of communicating more, and I'll I'll just share stuff with you and you could share it on. I think that's the best way because right now it's just not there. And you can share, of course, my, my website, fdo-solutions.de, but then people would have to translate for themselves. And on the other projects, it's, it's just not yet out and it's going to be out in January. So it's going to happen.

You won't have a web address?

There's loads of information on platform.coop and so on.

So will there be a— is there a web address that, you know, because maybe someone will listen to this after January and they'll know where to go. What would be that web address?

There's platform.coop, which has loads of resources, not specifically from me, but loads. And there's fairmondo.com, and I might actually use fairmondo.com to spread out some of the stuff that's, that's gonna happen.

Okay, cool. Perfect, perfect. So yeah, great. I really appreciate, uh, once again, Felix, being able to connect with you. Uh, always a pleasure. Very insightful. Lots for me to, to think about and chew on. I'm going to share with the team. I actually regret not inviting my teammates to this call. I've done that in the past, and I, I kind of assumed that maybe he was just, you know, catching up in some ways with you But it was more casual, but I should have invited them. They probably would have had questions and been curious.

It was good today. I mean, I'm in quarantine. Let's do it next time. We'll find another— oh, it would be great to have like actually a conversation with more people. Yeah, but yeah, I enjoyed this.

Cool, likewise. Well, I'll be in touch. You have a great week and feel better, and thanks again. Cool.

Have a nice day.

You're breaking up a little bit. Nice day then.

Yeah, you too.