I work at a worker-owned IT company that has offices in three states and has been in existence for 20 years. We do not provide any kind of SaaS service but I can assure you it is possible! My suggestion is to reach out to the Tech Worker Coop Peer Network for the USFWC:
I'm also a huge fan of games that use a standard deck. I absolutely love Regicide for example, which can be purchased with an original deck (the art is nice) but plays with any 52-card deck.
I have founded two worker co-ops; both in the tech sector.
Whenever one of these posts hits reddit or this website, there is a surge of interest - and then nothing. Our rate of growth (400 or so worker co-ops in the US) is abysmally slow; if anything I've seen more co-ops fold than start anew! Our conferences seem to bring more and more each year, though - just not workers; instead we get specialists, folks from social justice and non-profits... Just very few workers. At the East coast conference two years ago, 75% of the speakers were non-owners, just co-op specialists; do-gooders and SJWs.
The only new co-ops I seem to see are those that get created by top-down institutions; non-profits and the like. I'm talking Evergreen, WAGES, etc. Once in a while we get web co-ops (like the one liked here); more often than not, they too have a political bent (beyond worker-ownership).
Not sure why I'm saying all this here; I suppose I just wanted to offer a different perspective on all this. I love worker co-ops, and think they should be everywhere. But I'm not sure culture in the US is yet compatible!
I seriously considered it for my organization a little over a year ago, and while ultimately it wasn't the right fit I think a clear document and explanation of how someone else would do it would have been very useful to think about.
I think part of the reason that they haven't succeeded is the necessary capital and scale of technology organizations these days. It seems there's a hollowing out of the mid-tier of bootstrapped organizations where a co-op would be feasible, and if you're a founder who is going to put in years of unpaid or low paid work and funding, giving up ownership is a tough sell.
Does it offer distinct advantages compared to a regular job (aka employees get paid more)? I've been around a lot of communitarian stuff in my life, like cohousing and hackerspaces, and a lot of it seems to be driven by people who enjoy meetings.
It really depends. In IT (where VC is king) it is really hard to compete on a monetary level. On the other hand, benefits are pretty good - healthcare, time off, sick days etc. Also, having a direct say into how your business functions is a pretty huge benefit, in my eyes.
In other industries (repair, baking, house-cleaning) I'd say it pays a lot more than average.
So sick of hearing this - what actual evidence do you have?
People's reviews get filtered because the user doesn't have human-identifiable data - multiple reviews, friends who use yelp, a picture, recent logins, etc.
Find me any business that complains about this extortion, their filtered reviews are 99% from people who've used yelp once and never logged in again.
On the other hand, here's a Harvard Business School study debunking this myth:
Thanks. But as skeptical as I am of the extortion claims, I don't see how this study debunks anything. All it does is show that there's no evidence of a systematic bias in the filter, but it doesn't disprove at all that Yelp manually tweaked results in isolated cases, which is what they were accused of.
https://www.usworker.coop/programs/peer-networks/
They will probably have ideas. Good luck!
PS an LLC is definitely a good way to go, but some states (e.g. NY, MA, CA, MN, etc) have dedicated worker coop company types you can create.