7. On formally trying an idea in our journey: REAL VALUE

Dear Co-creator;

After having some one-on-ones (mini focus groups) with some of our members, I’d like to formally try to flesh out the Community Membership / Ownership idea.

Community: We focus on people like you and I: digital nomads, global tech entrepreneurs, global tech CxOs.

Pain: we would like more value, much more real value for our hard-earned money. Firstly, for our own selves and families, then for our companies. We also want to make a real difference in the world.

Cooperative Principal Ownership: Creating real value is more enjoyable and effective when we do it together. Centralized operations when somebody else (an agent) is doing the work for us and take commissions is the norm, but we are smart enough to rely on software to get us organized and we can be pricipals and utilize software as he only agent assisting us tirelessly. So we do things ourselves, and keep the agent commissions.

The most basic iteration of the idea:

Spend $100 on annual membership fees. Invest $1,000 into the cooperative. Cooperative doubles that investment for you in that year giving you $2,000. It finds real deals (not marketing gimmicky discounts) for REAL VALUE. If you don’t like the deals for any reason, then you get your $1,000 money back with interest at the end of the year. Numbers are only directionally right, and I am only utilizing them for simple calculations - we will come up with truly sophisticated stuff later on.

What kind of deals?

Simply put, whatever kind that you know you doubled your money.

As I like to eat my own dog food, here are some deals that I would find REALLY VALUEABLE personally. I would most definitely invest in these where I double my money, than to put that money in some other investment. In order of operational complexity:

1. I pay Microsoft $99.99 annually for Family Suite. Can the cooperative become a Microsoft reseller and drop that to $60?

2. I am eyeing the new Samsung Fold or the Pixel Fold these days. Each are around $1,800 in the US. I would love one for $950. Maybe it is time I go back to the iPhone. Can we buy 1,000 of these at a steep discount?

3. Pay $1,000 and utilize $2,000 worth of airline tickets. A roundtrip economy ticket from the US to Turkey is about $1,500 and I would love to pay $750 for it. Can I, as a member of the community, call up my friend the CFO of Turkish airlines and get a 50% discount on 1,000 use-anytime-anywhere coupons? Does anyone in the community call Lufthansa for this? Can we incent our community members with making such calls?

4. Fractional ownership in choice real estate in hot markets where our purchasing power enables us to lever up our investment with bank debt? Can we strike a deal with the best real estate developer in such a location and get in at the development stage for even more discounts?

5. 25% discount on Silicon Valley investments? Can we get allocation on discounted SAFEs? Can you incent me with 5% of such discount to make it happen for the community?

6. Sustainable social investments in community member companies or social good initiatives that gives us “use rights” in addition to shares? Heck, someone in our community could create the AI Doctor (especially if we help) and give us 1,000,000 licenses; 100,000 for us to use, and 900,000 to distribute freely in least developed countries?

If the community is made up of people like me to an extent, and if we can enable the community to source and vote on each possible deal and the wisdom of the crowd becomes the “investment” intelligence that we need for REAL VALUE.

We utilize a) membership fees to employ a skeleton crew, b) the incented community members, and c) AI software to look for deals. We also utilize software to govern our community.

How does failure look like on our hard-earned $1,100?

Let’s say I and the rest of the community failed during the entire year to come up with things to buy during the year. In other words, we failed in our primary mission.

Imagine we have 10,000 digital nomads, tech CEOs and founders in our community on January 1, 2024. They paid $1,000 into the cooperative and we have $10,000,000 in cash. We also have $1,000,000 in membership fees. Let’s assume our AI software and other operational costs are $200,000 so we spend 1.8% in expenses, and we have $10.8 million to buy deals, invest in deals, etc.

For sake of argument and simplicity, let’s say our $11 million was sitting equally in a riskless asset (US Government bonds) and a risky asset (Apple stock) because we couldn’t use it. Apple returned 87%, and 20Y Government Note returned 4%.

So failure to us is that our $1,000 is now $1,890, almost 90% value. (For accuracy, Apple seems to always win but the most Apple lost each year was %26.5 so honest failure would have been 25% on the $1,000 = you lost $250).

In essence we have become an investment cooperative that considers 100% returns successful on an annual basis. The only way to achieve such outsized returns is to focus on REAL VALUE and REAL DISCOUNTS on things we care about, and trust in our ability to find them together.

This iteration as being personal to me might be too US centric. I get it. A Costco membership in the US is $130, and $26 in Mexico. We have to necessarily focus on globalizable real value since we are not Costco selling local goods but can localize community contributions. So perhaps the public value of the community is fractional ownership.

I will get your formal input in this idea via preferences surveys, etc. in the coming days. Meanwhile love your input in our Slack community. There are two very important questions: What is REAL VALUE to you, your family and your company? Do you have access to REAL VALUE that can be leveraged if you had smart folks and capital behind you?

As you mull these two questions, I will be busy at work preparing the surveys and adding the AI Software piece 😉 to the discussion.

Be well, Oltac

Cooperative Robots by Bing

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