Must knows

Impact enterprise – Helsinki - 2011 - Scale-up - 24 Employees (2023)
Golden share model

By making online marketplace technology accessible and affordable to anyone, Sharetribe actively helps democratize the sharing economy. The steward-ownership structure we helped them develop ensures that Sharetribe’s mission remains protected, while enabling the company to bring in the capital necessary to grow and expand its team.

Powering the collaborative economy

The sharing economy can bring about many benefits: the things we own are used more efficiently, we can connect with others in our community, and we get extra income while doing so. Unfortunately, in the recent years, we have also seen problems arise from the sharing economy dominated by global platform giants.

Steward-ownership enables Sharetribe to guarantee its mission as a purpose-driven business.

Creating alternative online marketplaces used to be an expensive and time-consuming task.Thanks to Sharetribe, this is no longer the case. Sharetribe makes it easy for anyone to create their own marketplace website without any programming knowledge. Its technology makes the power of sharing marketplaces accessible, while ensuring that the value created is distributed fairly, people have control over the conditions of their work, and resources are utilized efficiently.

"To me, steward-ownership is a way for our society to get all the benefits of capitalism and free markets while remedying their negative effects"

Juho Makkonen, CEO and Co-founder

Sharetribe aims to create a better sharing economy, one in which society benefits and value is more fairly distributed. The team is working to create a future of thousands of thriving local sharing economy platforms, owned by small and medium-size businesses, social enterprises, co-operatives, non-profits, and cities. For Sharetribe, running a profitable business is the means of driving this purpose. It’s not the end goal. means towards achieving this purpose.

Mission-aligned ownership and financing

To protect this mission and ensure they would never be forced to exit or IPO, the founders Juho and Antti transitioned Sharetribe to steward-ownership in 2018. Their Golden Share structure ensures the steering wheel of the company will always remain in the hands of the people directly involved in its operation and mission. It also enables the company to take on new investments, and allows founders and early employees to share in the upside of the company’s success.

Sharetribe’s Golden Share structure includes four share classes, separating economic from voting rights while enabling the company to take on growth capital.

"From now on, it’s in the best interest of our management to put our social mission first. After this change, we can finally—confidently—say that our company will always be a force for good in society."

Juho Makkonen, CEO and Co-founder

Sharetribe

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