The 'start-ups' that do not want to be unicorns

In Catalonia, platform cooperativism has been seeking to consolidate its space for years. With the aim of questioning a digital model increasingly concentrated in the hands of large technology corporations, initiatives such as Jambo, FemProcomuns, or Coopdevs emerge as alternatives that place people and the community at the center. Faced with an internet marked by monopolies, data extraction, and economic dependence, these projects advocate for a different way of understanding technology and a different success metric, based on social impact, democratic governance, and collective return.

This approach translates into technological projects oriented towards the needs of the social economy and the third sector: ERP business management tools, back office solutions, software development, more sustainable web pages, in some cases, and digital services for organizations and clients of smaller dimensions. An activity far removed from large valuations and the race to attract investment, but connected with the desire to generate a real impact.

A privileged sector

Jambo was founded in 2011 with the ambition of building a fairer, more accessible, horizontal, and free technology, but, above all, because those who founded it were looking for an alternative after their time in multinationals. “They came back rejected from a sector where they felt like a number and where the worker is not taken into account for anything,” explains Marta Gómez, who has been part of the cooperative for ten years as head of communication and project management.

“At Jambo, all of us who work here earn the same. Our salaries are egalitarian, and we don't want to grow at all costs. We are a maximum of twelve people, and we don't want to be more because what we want is for all of us to sit at the same table.” With this assertiveness, Marta Gómez claims a way of understanding the company that challenges a good part of the dogmas of the digital economy.

With a commitment that prioritizes participation, proximity, and shared decision-making over size or profitability at any cost, intercooperation “allows us to have more flexibility” when facing challenges that involve greater effort. “What we will never do is hire seven new programmers for a project and then let them go,” assures Gómez. “We don't want to earn more, but to have a dignified life. In fact, ours is a privileged sector in continuous growth and with great demand for work, so we are well paid, and what we don't want is to make a get-rich-quick scheme to get rich at the expense of others. We promote our own ideas, but with a view to the world,” she emphasizes.

For real technology

Coopdevs is another example of these self-limitations that many cooperatives adopt out of conviction. “Our idea is not to grow, but to grow free software,” summarizes Eugeni Chafer, the cooperative’s functional consultant. Founded in 2018, Coopdevs is made up of nine people who work entirely remotely and only meet in person a couple of times a year, and they intercooperate with other cooperatives, such as Jambo itself, with whom, together with Codec (an insertion company), they have formed another cooperative called Mosaic to join forces and tackle larger projects.

"Do we want to create a better world? Of course. The other part of the technological ecosystem is like unreal, with start-ups and investors participating in rounds to raise funds for unviable projects. Some fail, but in fact, the model often consists of turning people into a product and generating needs that didn’t exist before,” reflects Chafer, who cites home delivery platforms as an example of how they have modified consumption habits and the relationship with services. “Technology should be used to solve real problems,” he defends.

However, for Eugeni Chafer, it is necessary to break with the myth that open source or free software is not of quality because, in addition, it “allows for more social control of data. It makes no sense for the administration to work with private companies, as happens now, where you don’t know what use they make of your data, instead of investing in open source,” he emphasizes.

New tools for combat

David Gómez Fontanills, a working partner of FemProcomuns, talks about the need for the development of free software to "respond to people and associations that are looking for other options and do not accept being monitored in exchange for their own work".

FemProcomuns was born eight years ago and for the last two years has noted an increase in new users conscious of internet surveillance. “Until now, many people said: ‘I have nothing to hide.’ Now we are more aware of the power grab by these multinationals, which have ended up having a direct influence on the American administration and the defense sector. What seemed to only serve to sell us things has proven to be a tool for concentrating power and social control,” he states.

For Gómez Fontanills, the emergence of artificial intelligence is the confirmation of this drift. “We have become raw material. We are no longer just the product from which data was segmented to send us advertising. Now they analyze us to understand how society behaves and to be able to model it. The good news is that it is very easy to look for alternatives,” he assures.

Among these alternatives are services promoted by the cooperative itself, such as SomNúvol – in addition to Xoic, a network for the internet of things. “We are, to put it simply, an alternative to Google Drive, OneDrive, or iCloud,” explains Gómez Fontanills. However, he admits that they play in a different league: “Obviously, we do not have the same infrastructure, nor perhaps do we need to have it. The water and energy consumption of these large corporations is enormous. In the coming years, we will have to learn to manage resources like water and energy much better, and this will also force us to rethink the current technological model,” he indicates.

Through coordinated local solutions, FemProcomuns establishes links with other cooperatives and bets on a system “more sustainable and slow-growing. In no case do we seek to sell, nor do we have a profit motive.” Ultimately, “statistics say that 80% of "start-ups fail, those that remain enter the gamble of funding rounds, and some become unicorns. The reality is that what is called Google's graveyard is full of many others that it ends up buying just to shut them down,” warns David Gómez Fontanills.