Tool 04 · The Great Rebellion
How To Run Things As A Coop
Meet Sherwood
Own the work, share the upside.
Doing all the work and owning none of it.
Every pitch you hear right now is one of two messages, and I'm tired of both of them.
“It really feels like there ain't nobody talking about doing good in the world… that we have the capability to do it without venture capital. It's either ‘make a million dollars’ or ‘we're all gonna die’: those are the two messages.” me, June 2026
Sherwood is the third path: a cooperative conglomerate. A parent coop that owns its companies and is owned by the people who do the work. One member, one vote. Not a charity, not a unicorn. A structure old enough to be boring, pointed at software.
Here's why I think the structure is the whole ballgame. The good version of everything keeps losing, and it's not because nobody builds it. It's because the money that funds the good version is required, by its own math, to make it worse. The moment a project takes the big check, the incentives to keep it good fall off a cliff. So the fix isn't a nicer company. The fix is a company that structurally can't be flipped, because the people who do the work hold the votes.
The first company is RideCoop: driver-owned rideshare, Philadelphia first. The math fits on a napkin. On a ten dollar ride:
About 90% stays with the driver, against roughly half at the platforms. And the dollar that goes to ownership is the interesting one: it means every ride makes the driver more of an owner, not just less tired.
“Always take one dollar every ride… whether it's a twenty-five dollar ride, ten dollar ride, hundred dollar ride. And drivers get ownership in the coop, the umbrella conglomerate… they get the conglomerate going, form other companies under it.” me, sketching the model, June 2026
That last part is the conglomerate trick. The drivers don't just own a rideshare company; they own a share of the parent, and the parent starts the next company, and the next. Elsewhere and Amber are being built under the same roof for the same reason: the things that hold your memories and your life's work should belong to the people who run them, not to whoever buys them next.
What you can do today
Sherwood is live. The front door is sherwood.thekitchen.co, and it explains the structure, the companies, and how to get involved. Of the four tools on this site, this is the one you can walk into today.
Honesty about the first company: RideCoop exists as a full working prototype (rider flow with fare estimates, live driver tracking, a driver dashboard with earnings, payouts, governance voting), but it is not on the road. No drivers yet, no insurance or legal wrapper yet. It proves the mechanics; it isn't giving rides.
This is also the tool where I most need people instead of code. If you're a coop organizer, a lawyer, someone who's run a business, or a Philadelphia driver who wants to own the thing you work for: write me.
Where this is going
A shelf of humane companies under one member-owned roof. Each new company starts with the conglomerate's shared infrastructure and its members' votes instead of a venture check, so it never has to take the money that would make it worse.
RideCoop on the road in Philadelphia, structured as a limited cooperative association, with drivers as member-owners from day one. Then the next company, formed by the members themselves.
It works without permission. That's the point. Nobody has to approve the third path for it to exist.
The steps are free
This tool is almost all steps. Coop law is public, the structures are old, and nothing about them is secret:
- Pick the structure. Coops come in tested legal shapes (worker coops, limited cooperative associations), and your state's statutes are free to read.
- Write the member math first: who's a member, what a vote is, how surplus splits between cash and ownership. If the math isn't fair on paper, the company won't be fair in practice.
- Start with one real service and real members, not a manifesto. Ours is rides.
The plan is to publish everything we file and figure out (bylaws, member math, the operating agreements, the works) as we build, in the Pantry. Or join Sherwood and skip the paperwork.
Browse the PantryThe other ways out
Come build the third path.
Visit Sherwood today, or leave an email and I'll tell you as the companies open up: RideCoop rides, Elsewhere invites, Amber hosting. No feed, no algorithm, no spam.
Until the hosted list is live, this opens an email straight to me: zach@thekitchen.co. It's really me on the other end.