Exit to Community

= concept and project

URL = https://e2c.how/

[1] [2]

= "Rather than simply aiming for an acquisition by a more established company or a public stock offering, build structures for startups to mature into ownership by their community of stakeholders". [3]

Description

"Exit to Community (E2C) is a vision and strategy for founder and investor led startups to transition into community ownership and governance. It works as an alternative to the conventional startup exit. Rather than selling a company or listing it publicly, E2C asks whether the people who depend on and create value for a project-its users, workers, and communities, can become its owners and governors.

Unlike platform cooperativism, E2C does not require a project to begin as a cooperative. It describes a process (or recipes in the cookbook) of maturing into stakeholder ownership. That transition might take the form of a cooperative, purpose trust, federation, token-based system, or some combination of these."

(https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/blockchaingov-newsletter-36-august-2026-blockchaingov-wgcpc/)

The Project

"Exit to Community (E2C) is an effort to develop alternatives to the standard model of the startup "exit." Rather than simply aiming for an acquisition by a more established company or a public stock offering, could startups aim to mature into ownership by their community of stakeholders? Through policy research, popular education, and partnership with interested startups, MEDLab is exploring pathways for making the answer a yes.

This work occurs in partnership with Zebras Unite and MEDLab community fellow Danny Spitzberg, with support from the Open Society Foundations."

(https://www.colorado.edu/lab/medlab/exit-to-community)

The Concept

Nathan Schneider:

"What if startups had the option to mature in a way that gets them out of the investors’ hamster wheel? In the coming months, I will be exploring strategies and stories that could help create a new option for startups: Exit to community. In E2C, the company would transition from investor ownership to ownership by the people who rely on it most. Those people might be users, workers, customers, participant organizations, or a combination of such stakeholder groups. The mechanism for co-ownership might be a cooperative, a trust, or even crypto-tokens. The community might own the whole company when the process is over, or just a substantial-enough part of it to make a difference."

(https://ioo.coop/2019/09/startups-need-a-new-option:-exit-to-community/)

The Book

* Book: How to Exit to Community. A cookbook for blockchain communities. Tara Merk with Primavera De Filippi, Morshed Mannan, and Nathan Schneider. BlockchainGov, 2026.

URL = https://metalabel-o4trzb8.metalabel.com/record_de3ndnf6kbszz96cn?

"The Cookbook distills years of BlockchainGov-involved research into the practical business of transitioning a blockchain project to genuine community ownership: governance frameworks, institutional and legal tools & case studies."

Examples

In the Web3/Crypto/DAO sphere, by Kei Kreutel:

"Exit to community grew in practice through initiatives such as DXdao, which launched with the aim to give community ownership, governance, and value to software protocols. Today, with many decentralized finance software protocols guiding their development through DAOs, it's become clear that software protocols can both exit to and build with community. Because DAOs use early stage software tools, it makes sense that their first users and use cases would involve the governance of digital assets, such as software protocols. DAOs’ digital primacy is perhaps one reason that their resemblance to earlier cooperative movements often goes unremarked."

(https://gnosisguild.mirror.xyz/t4F5rItMw4-mlpLZf5JQhElbDfQ2JRVKAzEpanyxW1Q)

More information

• Case studies library at https://e2c.how/library

• blogpost on "The Internet of Ownership": Startups Need a New Option: Exit to Community https://ioo.coop/2019/09/startups-need-a-new-option:-exit-to-community/

• The E2C zine, Exit to Community: A Community Primer, is now available for free, digitally and in print. https://www.colorado.edu/lab/medlab/2020/08/31/exit-community-community-primer

• Video: Tara Merk on DAOfication as Exit to Community: "Exit to Community, is an emerging strategy aiming to transition the digital platform economy towards more cooperative ownership and control. In this talk I present the challenges, opportunities and most pressing open questions associated with using DAOfication as a means for Exit to Community."