The Ownership Economy

Hosted by The Ownership Economy

Business

Website RSS feed

Episodes

Latest episode

Aug 2026

Language

About the show

Welcome to the Ownership Economy podcast, the podcast that explores the people and ideas that are utilizing technology, economics, and the law to reimagine how the economy can work for everyone. Here we connect with the entrepreneurs, investors, thought-leaders, academics, and politicians that are constructing a better economy, one based on broad-based ownership and democratic governance. Hosted by Martin Smith and Jahed Momand, two investors and operators that aim to use this platform to showcase the people and ideas that will shape more inclusive economies.

Listen to episodes

60 recent

September 11, 2026Episode 558 min

Austin Robey of Subvert, on How to Own Bandcamp with 30,000 People

When Bandcamp was sold to Epic Games and then, less than a year later, to the licensing company Songtradr, the independent music world learned what it actually owned: nothing. Bandcamp was the good actor, with artist-friendly terms, Bandcamp Fridays through COVID, sixteen years of community trust, and it still changed hands twice over its users' heads. Austin Robey's answer is Subvert, a multi-stakeholder cooperative that now has roughly 30,000 co-owners across four membership classes and a nine-seat elected board: three artists, two labels, two workers, two supporters. One member, one vote, whether you are Taylor Swift or you released your first record last year. Berlin, where we caught him, has around 1,050 members — by his math, one in every 3,000 people in the city. This is his second attempt. Ampled, the artist-owned Patreon-for-music he co-founded, was culturally successful but financially difficult, and it wound down in 2023. He did a formal post-mortem, turned it into a thesis about which incumbents are vulnerable to collectively owned challengers, and when Bandcamp sold he decided the window was open. We get into the economics, which are the surprising part. Subvert charges artists a 0% platform fee against an industry norm of 10–15%, and replaces it with an optional contribution at checkout — a tip window, like GoFundMe or ActBlue. Across the first 4,000 transactions the average contribution has been 27.7%. We also cover the dual-entity structure that lets the co-op raise real capital while keeping governance intact, why investors get no board seats and no governance rights, what he learned about directing lawyers rather than asking them, and why he thinks the win-win mantras of tech culture are wrong — that power is zero-sum, and for users to have more, founders and investors must have less. Austin speaks on "Ownership and Investment Innovation as a Solve for Market Failure" at the 4th Ownership Economy Summit, October 1 in New York: summit2026.ownershipeconomy.com Austin speaks on "Ownership and Investment Innovation as a Solve for Market Failure" at the Ownership Economy Summit, October 1, 140 Broadway NYC.Tickets: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/4th-annual-ownership-economy-summit-registration-1991957749250 — code PODCAST30 for 30% offAgenda: https://summit2026.ownershipeconomy.com/2026agenda Everything mentioned in this episode: Subvert — join the co-op, or just browse — https://www.subvert.fm Who runs Subvert, and how it's structured — https://www.subvert.fm/blog/who-we-are Subvert's Wikipedia entry, for the short version — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subvert_(music_marketplace) Music Ally's launch piece, "a collectively owned Bandcamp successor" — https://musically.com/2024/08/09/subvert-wants-to-be-a-collectively-owned-bandcamp-successor/ The FADER's interview on building the alternative — https://www.thefader.com/2025/10/14/subvert-fm-bandcamp-interview Billboard on Ampled's closure, the co-op he ran first — https://ca.billboard.com/ampled-music-platform Austin's own thread on what he was proud of when Ampled wound down — https://x.com/austinrobey_/status/1716801345619923394 "Lessons from Failed Platform Co-ops" — the post-mortem he describes giving at The New School — https://platform.coop/blog/lessons-from-failed-platform-co-ops/ Austin's site — https://austinrobey.xyz Ours to Hack and to Own , the essay collection that started him off, edited by Trebor Scholz and Nathan Schneider — https://www.orbooks.com/catalog/ours-to-hack-and-to-own/ Mondragón, the Basque cooperative federation — https://www.mondragon-corporation.com/en/ Resonate, the earlier music co-op — https://resonate.coop Kevin Kelly's "1,000 True Fans," the idea behind selling the business plan as a $100 zine — https://kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-fans/ Bandcamp United, the union that formed before the sale — https://bandcampunited.org Find Austin: https://www.subvert.fm · https://austinrobey.xyz · Bluesky

September 3, 2026Episode 41 hr 9 min

Bill Castellano, PhD on How Giving People Ownership Isn't the Same as Treating Them Like Owners

Bill Castellano has spent forty-five years in human resources — much of it on Wall Street, at Merrill Lynch and Manufacturers Hanover — and the last stretch of it at Rutgers, where he is a professor of strategic HR at the School of Management and Labor Relations. He returns a year after Episode 085, and the thing that changed in that year is that his two research streams collapsed into one. For two decades he studied the future of work and employee ownership separately. Now he argues they are the same problem. Everything a company must do to survive AI and robotics — redesign work, share information, push decisions down, upskill relentlessly, engage the people who remain — is the same list of practices that researchers have spent decades calling an ownership culture. We get into what the evidence actually supports and where the field over-claims; the new US Census study he co-authored that finds ESOP adoption raises workplace labour productivity by 5.6 to 6.7 percent; why the honest answer to "does more equity mean better outcomes" is no, not on its own; what a state employee-ownership centre does all day and why the real bottleneck is the adviser who steers an owner to a strategic sale; the two policy levers he says would actually move the needle; the forty-year decoupling of pay from productivity and where that value went; and the uncomfortable question underneath all of it — if AI shrinks headcount, what happens to a claim that only employees can hold. He also does something few forecasters will: he says plainly that he can no longer make a five-year forecast. Bill moderates State of the Field and presents Managing the Future of Work at the 4th Ownership Economy Summit, October 1 in New York: summit2026.ownershipeconomy.com Show Notes Come join the summit. Bill presents "Managing the Future of Work" (11:35, Room B) and moderates "State of the Field: What the Latest Research Tells Us About Employee Ownership" (3:40, Room B) at the 4th Annual Ownership Economy Summit, October 1 at 140 Broadway, NYC.🎟️ Tickets: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/4th-annual-ownership-economy-summit-registration-1991957749250 — code PODCAST30 for 30% off Full agenda: https://summit2026.ownershipeconomy.com/2026agenda The Census productivity study — "Employee Share Ownership, Management Practices, and Labor Productivity: An Analysis Using Establishment-Level Micro-Data from the U.S. Census" (March 2026). Kurtulus, Hoyt, Ouimet, Blasi, Kruse, Freeman and Castellano — Bill is a co-author, which he was too modest to mention on tape. Headline finding: ESOP adoption increases workplace labour productivity by 5.6–6.7% , controlling for management practices, headcount, capital and materials inputs, union status and geography. Built on the Census Management and Organizational Practices Survey (MOPS). Managing the Future of Work — his new book, published August 2026, and the title of his summit session: https://drwilliamgcastellano.com ownership.rutgers.edu — the NJ/NY Center for Employee Ownership and the Rutgers Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing, both reachable from there. This is the link he gives on air. California Executive Order N-6-26 , signed 21 May 2026 — the AI workforce order Jahed reads from. It directs GO-Biz and CalOSBA to "evaluate and, where appropriate, support opportunities to expand and enhance worker ownership models to support broad-based capital growth and build wealth from productivity gain among workers." It also covers severance standards and universal basic capital. Full signed text (PDF): https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/5.21.26-AI-Workforce-EO-FINAL-SIGNED.pdf

August 27, 2026Episode 359 min

Delilah Rothenberg on The Predistribution Initiative: You Can't Diversify Away From Inequality

Delilah Rothenberg went into finance to fight inequality and came out the other side with a sharper claim: the way capital is structured produces it. She spent nearly two decades across sell-side equities (Bear Stearns, through the crisis) and private equity infrastructure in Africa and the US, and this showed her the pattern nobody named at conferences: returns leaving the communities that host the projects, SDG 10 on the wall and in the deck but never actually in the world, and pay ratios between mega-fund executives and portfolio-company workers that can pass a thousand to one, even in deals with employee ownership attached. So she co-founded the Predistribution Initiative, which works with pension funds, insurers, sovereign wealth funds and asset managers on economic inequality as a macrofinancial risk. We unpack predistribution versus redistribution, why a pension fund that effectively owns the whole economy cannot diversify away from inequality, ESG 2.0 (turning the ESG lens on investors themselves), the limits of employee ownership and what context-specific solutions look like, communities taking equity in the infrastructure built next to them, the AI buildout, data centers, consumer demand, and the fiduciary-duty counterargument. She closes with what makes her optimistic: worker voice arriving in corporate governance, backed by some of the largest pension capital in the world. Delilah speaks at the 4th Ownership Economy Summit, October 1 in New York, get 30% with the code PODCAST30 right here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/4th-annual-ownership-economy-summit-registration-1991957749250 Full agenda: https://summit2026.ownershipeconomy.com/2026agenda Everything mentioned in this episode: - The Predistribution Initiative — https://www.predistributioninitiative.org - PDI's research library, including the ESG 2.0 paper and the AI discussion paper series (the Predistribution AI Lab) — https://www.predistributioninitiative.org/research - Perspectives on Workforce Directors (PDI) — the worker-voice-on-boards work she cites, now carried by the Workforce Engagement Coalition backed by Railpen with Federated Hermes as a member — https://www.predistributioninitiative.org/research/perspectives-on-workforce-directors-opportunities-challenges/ - Apis & Heritage Capital Partners — the employee-ownership fund manager pairing EO with living wages — https://apisandheritage.com - IFC Performance Standards — https://www.ifc.org/en/insights-reports/2012/ifc-performance-standards — and the Equator Principles — https://equator-principles.com - Columbus, Ohio's "Our Voice, Our Choice" participatory budget https://common.oneproject.org/en/columbus - Bill Easterly's trade-versus-aid argument, where her road began — The White Man's Burden - UN Sustainable Development Goal 10: Reduced Inequalities — https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal10 Find Delilah: https://www.linkedin.com/in/delilah-rothenberg · https://www.predistributioninitiative.org

August 20, 202647 min

Howard Brodsky of CCA Global on Capitalism with a Conscience: The $14 Billion Co-op Whose Founder Owns No Shares

Howard Brodsky's father was a Ukrainian refugee with a two-person flooring store in New Hampshire. Forty years later, the company Howard co-founded to save businesses like his father's, CCA Global Partners, gives scale to thousands of family businesses across fourteen sectors, from flooring to childcare, with roughly $14 billion a year in combined volume and more than $1 billion in profit returned to members. Howard ran it for 38 years, chairs it still, and owns no shares in it. We talk about why he chose a cooperative over the rollup that would have made him a billionaire, how a member-owned conglomerate actually governs itself (regional "Congress," advisory "Senate," and members who forced term limits), how the mills that wanted his business dead ultimately became partners, why his member stores have outpaced the public chains in growth, the Aspen Institute call that took CCA into childcare and now 32,000 centers, and the case he takes to governments: the missing link for shared ownership is the allocation of capital. Howard delivers the closing plenary at the 4th Ownership Economy Summit, October 1 in New York, on how AI plus shared ownership can change how wealth is created. Come be in the room. Howard delivers the closing plenary at the 4th Annual Ownership Economy Summit, October 1 at 140 Broadway, NYC. 🎟️ Tickets — use code PODCAST30 for 30% off Full agenda Everything Howard and Jahed mention in this episode: CCA Global Partners , the $14B cooperative of cooperatives Carpet One , CCA's largest member cooperative True Value , the hardware co-op whose CEO talked Howard and Alan Greenberg into the model in 1984 Mondragon Corporation , which Howard visited this spring Aspen Institute Economic Opportunities Program — Kirsten Moy's call that took CCA into nonprofits Early Learning Ventures , the childcare platform born from that call, 32,000+ centers by Howard's count The Drivers Cooperative , where drivers keep ~95% of the fare Bharat Taxi , India's driver-owned answer to Uber and Ola, launched February 2026 — verified, his "opened in February" is right start.coop , where Howard tells beginners to start The Principle 6 Cooperative , his newest venture International Cooperative Alliance , whose G20 group he chairs The research behind "10% of the global economy, a billion members": ICA facts and figures and the World Cooperative Monitor — this covers the "we'll put some of this research in the notes" promise you made on tape at the outpacing-the-publics moment Find Howard: howard-brodsky.com · LinkedIn ·

August 12, 202658 min

Adriana Abizadeh-Barbour on Building the Neighborhood Commons: What Happens When the Neighborhood Owns the Block

In the season five premiere of The Ownership Economy , we sit down with Adriana Abizadeh-Barbour, the Executive Director of the Kensington Corridor Trust (KCT) . Operating in Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood—an area heavily impacted by systemic disinvestment, concentrated poverty, and speculative real estate pressure—KCT is pioneering a legally distinct model known as a neighborhood trust . Rather than a traditional community land trust, KCT utilizes a unique dual-structure combining a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and a Perpetual Purpose Trust to decommodify commercial real estate, guaranteeing intergenerational affordability and local community control. Andrea breaks down the practical, ground-level mechanics of the model, including the 100% tenant retention secret driven by their 3-to-6-month community engagement process, and their landmark decision to compensate local resident board members at double the living wage (over $46 per hour) because as she says, "time is a social justice issue". Finally, we discuss KCT's massive new milestone: a $20 million acquisition that scales their footprint by 300% and forces them to navigate the strategic trade-offs of secured capital and government funding for the first time to win a speed test against private speculators. Adriana speaks on the housing commons session at the Ownership Economy Summit, October 1 in New York — full agenda . Podcast listeners get a discount with code PODCAST30 at registration . Show notes Kensington Corridor Trust (KCT) Website: https://kctphilly.org KCT Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kctphilly SSIR Article - "Communities Need Neighborhood Trusts" by Joseph Margulies: https://ssir.org/articles/entry/communities_need_neighborhood_trusts SSIR Article - "In Defense of Neighborhood Trusts" by Joseph Margulies: https://ssir.org/articles/entry/in_defense_of_neighborhood_trusts Yale IEDL Case Study on KCT: https://iedl.yale.edu/neighborhood-trust/kensington Shelterforce Feature - "Who Holds the Power?": https://shelterforce.org/2025/10/03/who-holds-the-power-how-one-corridor-flipped-the-script-on-development/ The Purpose Foundation (Steward Ownership): https://www.purpose-us.com/ Purpose Foundation KCT Deep-Dive: https://www.purpose-us.com/writing/kct-episode1 Launch Partner - Shift Capital: https://shiftcapital.us Launch Partner - IF Lab Profile: https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/if-lab-philadelphia/ April De Simone's Sister Initiative in Trenton (Vesi): https://nonprofitquarterly.org/how-can-a-perpetual-purpose-trust-build-community/ Trenton Journal Profile on De Simone: https://trentonjournal.com/de-simone-pioneers-shared-equity-housing-in-trenton-with-innovative-land-trust/ MIT Living Wage Calculator (Philadelphia County): https://livingwage.mit.edu/counties/42101

September 16, 2025Episode 8940 min

Episode 089 — Beyond the First of the Month: Atticus LeBlanc of PadSplit on Revolutionizing Rental Risk with Tech

This week, Jahed Momand has an insightful conversation with Atticus LeBlanc, founder and CEO of PadSplit , a public benefit corporation that’s flipping the script on affordable housing. Atticus shares his personal journey from renting a room in Atlanta and navigating early entrepreneurial challenges to his "aha moment"—realizing the profound need for respectable, affordable housing for those often overlooked by traditional landlords . Discover how PadSplit challenges long-held assumptions in the rental market, such as arbitrary monthly rent payments, high deposits, and reliance on credit scores that often don't include rental history. Learn about PadSplit's innovative approach: offering all-inclusive, furnished private rooms with flexible, weekly payments aligned with residents' paydays. This model not only makes housing significantly more affordable and accessible for individuals earning below $50,000 , including service workers and those on Social Security income, but also proves more profitable for property owners by fractionalizing space and reducing vacancy costs. Atticus explains how PadSplit focuses on resident management , handling payments and fostering community, thereby providing crucial stability and peace of mind for its members—many of whom are transitioning from homelessness or unstable living situations. Tune in to explore how reimagining basic housing assumptions can create immense opportunities for both renters seeking a new start and landlords looking to make a greater impact while achieving better returns. See Cliff Johnson from PadSplit speak to their model's viability and growth at the Ownership Economy Summit this year in NYC on October 7th. Grab your ticket here: https://www.ownershipeconomy.com/registration use the discount code OE2025VIP! for 40% off

September 9, 2025Episode 8850 min

Episode 088 — Scaling Capital Markets for Shared Ownership: Alison Lingane's Blueprint for Capital Growth

This week we sit down with Allison Lingane, founder of Ownership Capital Lab , a nonprofit singularly focused on growing investment capital for employee ownership. Allison, with nearly 15 years in the employee ownership space, including co-founding Project Equity, shares her journey from creating scalable paths to opportunity through education to realizing the critical need for a robust capital market for shared ownership. This episode dives into how employee ownership, often considered the "best kept secret," can move beyond its current silos and into the mainstream. Allison discusses the core thesis of Project Equity —making employee ownership normal and self-generating—and how this led her to establish Ownership Capital Lab to specifically address the challenge of attracting capital . With a goal to inject an additional billion dollars of capital into the space, Allison explains the current landscape where dedicated employee ownership funds, totaling around 27-30 with $500 million in assets under management, are still largely "emerging managers". Listeners will gain insight into: The innovative approach of newer funds that attract mainstream business owners with acquisition offers rather than solely employee ownership proposals, making employee ownership competitive with private equity buyouts. The impressive 12-15% IRR return profiles of private credit employee ownership funds, which are designed to outperform mainstream private credit with lower default rates. The critical need for senior debt that can match the speed of private credit to ensure employee ownership funds can compete effectively. The importance of the proposed American Ownership and Resilience Act , which aims to provide specialized employee ownership funds with access to matching low-cost government capital, positioning employee ownership as a vital tool for retaining American commerce. Ownership Capital Lab's work in developing the first-ever roadmap for employee ownership capital growth and fostering connections and education among investors and funds. The pervasive misconception among institutional investors, like some foundation endowment committees, that companies opting for employee ownership are "duds," highlighting the ongoing need for broad education. Allison will be elaborating on these crucial topics for scaling employee ownership at a summit in New York on October 7th . Don't miss this insightful conversation on how to unlock the full potential of employee ownership through strategic capital investment and education. You can learn more about Allison's work at ownershipcapital.capital. Get your ticket to the summit to see Alison speak here: https://www.ownershipeconomy.com/registration

September 2, 2025Episode 871 hr 4 min

Episode 087 — Identity, Governance, and AI: A Conversation with Celo & Self Founder Rene Reinsberg

This week, Rene Reinsberg, co-founder and CEO of Celo and Self joins us. Rene's early journey was shaped by his small business owner parents, helping him establish an early entrepreneurial drive consistently focused on empowering individuals and "the small guy" . This led to founding an early machine learning/AI company sold to GoDaddy that helped small businesses compete online. Rene's pivotal move into crypto in 2016-2017 stemmed from realizing Ethereum would enable programmable money and user-driven ownership. This vision inspired Celo, a protocol aiming to rewire economic systems using stablecoins, micropayments, and verifiable identity to foster positive-sum wealth for users , particularly in economies with high inflation. A key learning is Celo's unique approach to wealth creation and its strategic evolution through a governance-led decision to transition to an Ethereum Layer 2 , enhancing economic efficiency, user adoption, and integrating with Ethereum's robust ecosystem. Finally, Rene introduces Self, his latest venture, empowering individuals with control over their data and privacy, breaking "walled gardens". Self addresses privacy-preserving identity by leveraging biometric passport chips and zero-knowledge proofs to verify unique humanness without revealing personal data. The transformative potential of privacy-preserving digital identity with Self is a crucial takeaway, offering solutions for civil resistance in airdrops, enhanced decentralized governance, and verifying real humans for AI search tools, including a recent integration with Google. This technology also offers a path toward universal basic access to compute by distinguishing humans from bots in the AI era.

August 26, 2025Episode 8652 min

Episode 086 — Full Spectrum Ownership: Jason Wiener's Guide to Starting, Growing, and Exiting in the Ownership Economy

This week, we welcome back Jason Wiener, founder of Jason Wiener PC, for an insightful episode on alternative ownership structures. Jason’s boutique law firm specializes in alternative ownership design , including co-ops, various forms of employee ownership, and non-extractive financing. He guides shared ownership-minded founders through the entire lifecycle: Starting: Jason champions "full spectrum ownership design," advising founders to prioritize their "why" and "what" (goals and desired outcomes) over a specific legal vehicle. He notes that starting as a traditional C-corp or LLC is not irreversible, but founders must understand trade-offs with venture funding. His firm offers a free, self-guided "Community Enterprise Legal Design Course" online for those committed to community-centric models and eschewing upfront venture capital. Growing: Jason emphasizes that success depends on human conduct, communication, and decision-making , not just legal documents, which serve as guardrails. Successful enterprises balance core values with clear business strategy and client focus. Financing: Given that alternative ownership models typically do not have traditional liquidity events, revenue-based financing (e.g., demand dividends, revenue sharing notes, self-redeeming preferred equity) has emerged as a popular mechanism, aligning investor repayment with the co-op's financial health. Resources like the Transform Finance directory and leveraging Program Related Investments (PRIs) and Mission Related Investments (MRIs) from foundations can provide capital. Exiting/Succession: This constitutes a significant portion of his firm's work, especially amidst the "silver tsunami" of retiring business owners. Jason stresses "succession readiness" —organizing books, tax returns, and creating a data room—as 97% of the work. The choice of conversion pathway is a technical assessment, not an ideological one. Jason will lead a hands-on workshop at the Ownership Economy Summit 2025 in New York on October 7th , offering a deeper dive into making these critical assessments for business succession. You can find more resources, including his blog and the free course, at jrwiener.com . And you can get your ticket to see him speak right here: https://www.ownershipeconomy.com/registration

August 20, 2025Episode 8552 min

Episode 085 — Employee Ownership: From Wall Street to Academia with Dr. Bill Castellano

In this episode of The Ownership Economy podcast, a discussion is held with Dr. Bill Castellano, Director of the Rutgers Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing . Dr. Castellano's extensive background, including over two decades on Wall Street in strategic HR management and his academic role, is explored, noting his early exposure to employee ownership through an ESOP and equity compensation. The empirical and scientific evidence supporting the value of employee ownership is a central theme. Benefits such as enhanced employee engagement, increased productivity, higher customer satisfaction, and improved business survivability , even during economic downturns, are discussed. The role of employee ownership in addressing wealth inequality and increasing retirement savings for a broad range of employees, including low-to-moderate income workers and people of color, is emphasized, often provided as an additional benefit. Various forms of employee ownership, including equity compensation, worker cooperatives, ESOPs, and Employee Ownership Trusts (EOTs) , are differentiated. Significant tax incentives associated with ESOPs (e.g., 1042 capital gains relief for C-corps, federal tax exemption for S-corps) and EOTs are detailed. Despite these compelling benefits, barriers to widespread adoption are examined. These include a lack of awareness among business owners regarding employee ownership as a succession strategy, the perceived complexity of regulated programs, and difficulties in securing financing for these transactions. Policy initiatives, such as proposed bills for guaranteed loans, are presented as potential solutions. While significant growth has been observed in EOTs, it is noted that the overall percentage of the workforce participating in employee ownership programs has remained largely stagnant over 15 years. Finally, the intersection of employee ownership with the future of work and artificial intelligence is explored. Employee ownership is presented as a crucial model for navigating the transformation brought by AI and automation, fostering employee engagement and ensuring successful business adaptation rather than widespread job elimination. The institute's mission, including its research, conferences, and policy analysis, is highlighted, with resources available at ownership.edu. Get your ticket to this year's summit here: www.ownershipeconomy.com/registration