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Fri 22 Apr 2022 11:57AM

MyCoolClass Co-op challenges online learning sector, announces community share offer

JH John Hayes Public Seen by 153

MyCoolClass just launched our community share offer and wanted to share the news here.

Please share if you would :) We need as much help as we can get. Thanks!

LONDON – April 22, 2022 – MyCoolClass, a start-up cooperative of independent teachers and tutors, as well as workers and investor members, has announced its new funding endeavor called community shares. MyCoolClass is a democratized learning platform that helps teachers with fair payment for their teaching and tutoring services. MyCoolClass is dedicated to fairness and equity for teachers and educators previously exposed to inequitable, traditional employment parameters. The community shares offer is available beginning April 20, 2022, with share opportunities ending on June 10, 2022.

“MyCoolClass is an online learning platform cooperative owned by independent teachers and tutors, workers and investor members,” said the creator and founder of MyCoolClass, John Hayes. “The education sector has been defined by rampant profiteering in which both teachers and students are subject to platform capitalism. We are building an alternative to venture capital-owned giants that are trying to dominate the online learning sector. Since we founded MyCoolClass in 2020, thousands of teachers have expressed support by signing up for our mailing list. They really want to see MyCoolClass succeed.”

Hayes explained, “Platforms live or die by the teachers who teach on them. After years of poor pay and job insecurity, we believe that teachers are ready for something new, better, and different. MyCoolClass is undertaking a share issue to raise the funds needed to make the cooperative successful and challenge industry giants. Community shares is a common fundraising practice in the UK among cooperative societies.”

MyCoolClass features individualized tutoring and group courses for any age group on almost any subject and attracts high-quality global teachers and students. Teachers are especially engaged and dedicated to the learning platform that offers fair compensation. Fair pay for teachers is not easily available when educators sign employment contracts with corporations.

MyCoolClass has an objective of raising a maximum target of £500,000, with a minimum share subscription per person of £100. Interest of 5 percent will be paid annually after one year of membership. The withdrawal of capital is targeted after three years, and UK investors may be entitled to tax relief of up to 50% on their investments.

Community shares is a user-friendly name for withdrawable, non-transferable share capital: a form of equity uniquely available to cooperative and community benefit societies. Since 2012, over £155m has been raised by over 104,203 people in community shares across the UK.

For more information, watch the MyCoolClass video at https://youtu.be/X-G2ROYPoGQ and website https://mycoolclass.com. To invest, visit https://www.mycoolclass.com/community-shares. 

Contact: John Hayes - [email protected] John Hayes is available for interview and can be a source for stories about online education and the dominance of venture capitalists taking over online teaching and learning. 

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BS

Billy Smith Fri 22 Apr 2022 1:22PM

Have you come across Ethex?

https://www.ethex.org.uk/

They have been used by a number of Co-op's as a way of organising similar community-share offers?

Might be worth a chat with them. :D

JH

John Hayes Fri 22 Apr 2022 3:27PM

Thanks Billy. Yes, we have been in contact with them although they seem to be hesitant to list us because we are international and seen as higher risk. Still talking with them but we can't rely on them.

BS

Billy Smith Sat 23 Apr 2022 4:17PM

One way around this would be to create a set of country-specific co-operatives that are federated.

That way each co-op would be based under the financial regulators in each country, so would have less risk from the pov of Ethex in the UK, as well as Ethex's equivalents in other legal jurisdictions.

It's the same method used by international corporates. Local branches of companies incorporated in each country that are owned by the company incorporated where their HQ is.

JH

John Hayes Sat 23 Apr 2022 6:58PM

Absolutely and we plan to do that once we get to the point we can fund the set up for it.

BS

Billy Smith Sat 23 Apr 2022 10:44PM

🙂

In that case, my best suggestion would be for yourselves to assess which of the various countries you are operating in, will have the most-quickly-realisable-profit-margins, so you can get that running up to break-even, and then use that surplus energy to finance the rest of the set up. 🙂

Yes, it's kind of obvious, but it's the best idea i can currently come up with.

Though, another approach occurred to me as i was writing this.

You've probably heard of the E-Citizenship programme that runs in Estonia.

https://e-estonia.com/solutions/e-identity/e-residency/ :D

One of the legal structures that can be used for E-Citizenship, is called a Commercial Association or "Uhistu".

https://investinestonia.com/business-in-estonia/establishing-company/legal-forms/

Provided that the Articles and Memorandum fullfill the Co-operative Principles, this means that anyone can start a co-op that is based in Estonia using the Uhistu legal structure.

So, if one of your quick-to-break-even target-markets is in the Schengen Area, it would be possible to use that legal structure to cover ALL of the EU. 🙂

JH

John Hayes Mon 25 Apr 2022 8:53AM

I have explored Estonia a bit but the reality is that our team is running on fumes, and we just can't invest any time or money to set up shop elsewhere at this time.

G

Graham Sun 24 Apr 2022 10:52AM

I've been following progress for a while with this project. I've promoted the share offer on social via Platform6 and Crowdfundcoops. Good luck with the raise.

G

Graham Mon 25 Apr 2022 8:31AM

I'm interested in the work on how to structure what will effectively be a multi-national cooperative. We (Platform 6 Development Cooperative) started looking at this a while back with respect to the https://meet.coop collaboration (which by the way is a really good provider (and potentially a valuable partner for MyCoolClass?) in terms of incorporation options, tax implications, etc. It's an increasingly big issue for platform cooperatives - makes sense to collaborate on finding low-cost tax-fair solutions rather than have lots of orgs spending money on research/legal advice/consultants.

Also, @John Hayes - you should ensure that your people are hooked into https://zebrasunite.mn.co - lots of aligned people there who might be potential investors.

JH

John Hayes Mon 25 Apr 2022 8:50AM

Thanks Graham, I have already talked to Meet.coop about collaborating with them and its definitely something we plan on in the future. The two issues why we can't go with them now is because many of our students are in China and Zoom is the only stable solution due to China's firewall. Also, because we don't have much money, Zoom is free.

I never heard of Zebras Unite but I just sent a request to join. Looks like this could be of help.

Until we can raise capital, there isn't going to be much else we can do besides doing what we have been. Our team is exhausted and we just don't have the resources to start exploring other avenues.

Thanks!

BS

Billy Smith Mon 25 Apr 2022 3:22PM

Remember that Zoom will only be free (as in money ) when operating on a small scale.

As you start to scale larger, the bandwidth you use will be more of an issue for them, and you'll be encouraged to move onto a paying tier.

( Source is anecdata from a colleague who uses Zoom. )

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