Its an interesting concept. However, it may never work for one simple reason "risk". When my partners and I started our company the risk that we took was astronomical, leaving our high-paid jobs, masters, phd's to start a company. This risk needs to be rewarded and it is via equity. Building a company that is there only for its employees does not provide the founders with enough reward to warrant the risk.<p>This does not include the stress it takes to start and run a company, that stress should be equally as rewarded.
A lot of this stuff sounds interesting - in the same ballpark as what we're already doing at GrantTree, but some bits are jarringly wrong. For example:<p>> <i>The Company is primarily created to generate bonuses for the employees (not to get sold).</i><p>Ugh. What an uninspiring company mission statement. Surely the company should exist to do something worthwhile for its customers first. If it does no good to the rest of the world, generating bonuses for its employees is... lame.
With the background of coming from Finland and now living in San Francisco, I have to say that I'm a supporter of the "Default Employee Rules" section when it comes to working hours and fixed vacation time. While unlimited vacation policy is common among SF/SV startups it drives people to work all the time and not actually take holidays (or you're working on your holiday). No matter how much time you spend at the office people need rest.<p>The second author of the model is Michael Widenius, a Finn and co-founder of MySQL.
I like it, except for the democracy bit. Voting sucks as a method of making decisions. For quick unimportant decisions, sure, vote. But for important decisions either involve everyone and make it a consensus (i.e. unanimous, everyone has to agree) or give the authority and responsibility to one person.<p>Voting gives every vote the same weight, but some people are more knowledgeable than others and in a better place to know the right course (this is not 'some people are better than others' but 'some people have more information than others'). Voting also disables unpopular-but-necessary decisions, which will kill the company eventually.<p>I would replace it by either:<p>- all decisions are made by one person (not the same person for each decision). The management team select three appropriate employees to make the decision, and an all-company vote selects which one will make the decision.<p>or:<p>- the management team will make all decisions, but must provide post a written explanation of the reasoning behind the decision to the rest of the company, and any decision may be further discussed at a company meeting.<p>But that's just my thoughts after 5 mins thinking about it... someone else probably has better ideas :)
This is not good. Almost everything, if not everything, in this document is either specific nitpicking or uselessly vague.<p>> Transparent: We communicate in an honest and genuine way. Any information or process that can be made open, will be made open.<p>That's meaningless if a way of determining what can and can't be made open isn't included. Here's one of the "concrete tools" that's supposed to help the company be transparent.<p>> Corporate transparency - any information or process that can be made open, should be made open.<p>This is not helpful.<p>> The Company should make it as fun as possible to work for the Company.<p>Companies don't strive to make working less fun. This doesn't help.<p>> 2000 Euro hardware allowance at start of position (for laptop, desktop etc).<p>> 1000 Euro/year hardware allowance for everyone that requires new hardware to be be able to do their work.<p>The hardware allowances are just fixed numbers that don't take into account different currencies, job positions, or how the price of parts may change over time and differ by location. This is brittle.<p>> The Company should budget for at least 3 traveling meetings for every employee to ensure that people can work efficiently and get to know each other. One of the meetings should be an all company meeting.<p>It's possible that all employees don't require travel budgets. It's possible that no employees require travel budgets.
I might be drinking crazy juice, but I see everything EXCEPT a business model. How does this company make money? How do you attract customers? How do you reach scale? What you've written down is a bunch of ways to spend money - not a business. Most businesses do spend money, and some may even benefit from some of the ideas presented, but please don't call it a business model.