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@small circle in calmness Grass roots will get things started, but at some point, you need organization. Luckily there are a variety of ways of organizing things that does not involve venture capital.

For example, associations, cooperatives, public benefit corporations, etc. Even LLCs are a good option, since they allow alternative management structures, including ones that are more democratic or collaborative. And for any venture, limited liability protection is important to have.

But there are also other things we can do, such as build tools that make it easier for individuals and small organizations to interact and collaborate.

@small circle in calmness We're trying an interesting experiment over at Hubzilla. Since we believe in decentralization, we are practicing it. Instead of building a centralized organization that controls everything, we decentralized the organizations.

We have the Hubzilla project itself, which is basically the lead developer and contributors. They primarily deal with the development of the core code and people can volunteer to contribute.

Then we have the Hubzilla Association, which is technically independent of the project, and handles things like support, documentation, collaboration, and outreach.

And then we have Federated Works, which is my baby, and that deals with addons, widgets, and themes, especially those that do not belong in the core. It also runs a variety of informational and community websites.

Since Hubzilla is extendable without having to fork it, this makes a great structure. People don't have to get approval to create addons, and the core team does not have to make changes they don't want to make. We don't have to argue over whether something should be included or not. If the core does not want it, anyone can make an addon themselves. And ultimately, users decide whether they want the addons or not.

I am thinking about creating a fourth one, a users association, to deal with community rules and moderation issues, on public servers that I run (i.e. that people can sign up on). Possibly one for each site, but I have not decided yet.

We are using legal structures like associations and public benefit corporations and LLCs to organize things.

And then there are also organizations that provide technical services, like Hubzilla Hosting and Hubzilla Website Design, which are completely independent from the other organizations.

By splitting up the organizations and creating a structure where people can act independently of one another, yet still collaborate, we reduce conflicts of interest within an organization. Each organization can stay pure to its mission, yet we still work as a team.

The general philosophy behind this is "you can do what you want as long as it does not prevent me from doing what I want" and "live and let live."  Or put another way, the concept of choice is prominent. We give people options. We give them control. We allow people to customize their experience. And we realize that not everyone is going to want the same thing.