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Working with Purpose, Forever

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Re: Working with Purpose, Forever

#11

Post by giomasce »

nivertech wrote: post #10
giomasce wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making profit is always a goal you achieve while doing something else: selling local seafood, writing software, designing chips, mining ores, whatever. So making profits and doing something else cannot be harder than just making profits. Also, companies receive and pay back loans all the time, it's quite a common procedure. Why should it be any different here?

> Making profit is always a goal you achieve while doing something else: selling local seafood It's selling expensive local seafood when your competition selling cheaper imported frozen stuff. > Also, companies receive and pay back loans all the time, it's quite a common procedure. Why should it be any different here? If there was no difference, then there would be no need in inventing alternative capital formation l…

They were already selling expensive seafood before, presumably with profit, why should that have changed? I imagine for a few years part or all of their profit will go to the lender while the pay back the loan. Then it's all for them again, except they're now owned by the trust instead of by the previous shareholders.

The point of having a trust is not to form capital, but to enforce a certain company governance system (as described in the legal documents with whom the trust is set up) without tying it to who happens to be the owner at any given moment.

Re: Working with Purpose, Forever

#12

Post by nivertech »

giomasce wrote: post #11
nivertech wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Making profit is always a goal you achieve while doing something else: selling local seafood It's selling expensive local seafood when your competition selling cheaper imported frozen stuff. > Also, companies receive and pay back loans all the time, it's quite a common procedure. Why should it be any different here? If there was no difference, then there would be no need in inventing alternative capital formation l…

They were already selling expensive seafood before, presumably with profit, why should that have changed? I imagine for a few years part or all of their profit will go to the lender while the pay back the loan. Then it's all for them again, except they're now owned by the trust instead of by the previous shareholders. The point of having a trust is not to form capital, but to enforce a certain company governance syst…

IMO governance/voting rights are an essential part of capital formation.

If you give somebody else governance/voting rights as part of the transaction - you might've created a security. That's why I mentioned capital formation.

There was an SEC paper which deemed "The DAO" (the first DAO) as a security.

I think most "governance tokens" also deemed as securities.

Re: Working with Purpose, Forever

#13

Post by giomasce »

nivertech wrote: post #12
giomasce wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were already selling expensive seafood before, presumably with profit, why should that have changed? I imagine for a few years part or all of their profit will go to the lender while the pay back the loan. Then it's all for them again, except they're now owned by the trust instead of by the previous shareholders. The point of having a trust is not to form capital, but to enforce a certain company governance syst…

IMO governance/voting rights are an essential part of capital formation. If you give somebody else governance/voting rights as part of the transaction - you might've created a security. That's why I mentioned capital formation. There was an SEC paper which deemed "The DAO" (the first DAO) as a security. I think most "governance tokens" also deemed as securities.

I can't know what they're doing, but it doesn't look like they're giving the lender any voting right. They're just borrowing some money and returning them in the following years. And I still can't see why this imply that the likelihood of the company failing is high.

Re: Working with Purpose, Forever

#14

Post by arethuza »

actionfromafar wrote: post #6
toomuchtodo wrote: post #2

> A Perpetual Purpose Trust (PPT) is a legal and organizational structure that allows a company to operate with a focus on achieving their overarching goal of creating purpose or impact rather than focusing on maximizing profits alone. Patagonia and Bosch are the well known examples of this ownership structure.

Maybe Zeiss too?

Possibly even better, the Zeiss Foundation seems to fund wider science and teaching using the profits from the companies they own:

"Carl Zeiss AG and SCHOTT AG use the dividends to promote science and teaching in the fields of mathematics, computer science, the natural sciences and technology."

https://www.zeiss.com/corporate/en/about-zeiss/present/facts...

Re: Working with Purpose, Forever

#17

Post by bawolff »

amelius wrote: post #16
bawolff wrote: post #15

This sounds like just a fancy version of a co-op, which has been a thing for a very long time.

A thing where? Afaict, no IT company I ever encountered in real life was structured as a co-op. EDIT: found this list: https://github.com/hng/tech-coops

This article isn't about an IT company either. Most tech start ups are VC funded, which isn't the most compatible with a Co-op structure.

Re: Working with Purpose, Forever

#18

Post by perilunar »

Call me crazy, but the idea that a company can be formed with no purpose other than to make a profit strikes me as somewhat perverse and malign. All companies should exist for a specific purpose, and when that is achieved (or no longer needed, or no longer possible), they should be wound up.

Re: Working with Purpose, Forever

#20

Post by c1sc0 »

From TFA: "By that time, though, Anderson was the sole owner, and she was tired. She was looking to sell and get out of the restaurant grind."

I've been looking into this for a project of mine & most of these transitions to a purpose-based company seem to happen at the end of the road. I'm really curious to learn if anyone know about projects who start like this from inception.

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