Future Modern cooperative

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About Future Modern

The world's first Venture Labor Cooperative.

Future Modern is a cooperative talent agency operating at the intersection of art, tech and culture to deliver creative strategy, managed services, and labor solutions through a nexus of 1,000+ members and partners, many with Unicorn startup, FAANG, and Fortune 500 experience.

We're not trying to be special. We are special. We don't care if anyone sees it.

Turning workers into owners

Built by the people doing the work, structured to return value to those who create it.

People-powered, exclusively

No institutional capital. No outside ownership. The cooperative is the structure. The people are the proof.

Access is earned, not sold

Through invitation, application, or contribution — never a transaction.

Background

Why we built this

Every worker knows the deal worth staying for.

Real equity for the effort.

Pay tied to what you deliver.

Hours structured around the work, not the office.

Recognition for what you shipped, not how you performed.

Companies

1 & 2

Equity + pay. Not the rest.

✓ Equity & Pay
✕ Flexible Hours & Results

Gig Platforms

3 & 4

Flexibility + results. Not the rest.

✕ Equity & Pay
✓ Flexible Hours & Results

Future Modern

All Four

The whole deal, structurally.

✓ Equity & Pay
✓ Flexible Hours & Results

"We looked. We couldn't find it. So we built it."

Purpose

The wave others ride.

We exist to acknowledge and compensate the expression of original ideas and labor that move culture forward. Provenance first, then everything else.

Vision

Capital, redistributed.

To redistribute human and financial capital from concentrated powers to dynamic grassroots communities. To construct a world where community integrates with life, art, appreciation, and passion.

Driven and debonair. Strong, aggressive, absurd, weird — self-assured and dynamic, creative and perceptive. We tackle missions with diligence, grit, and daring.

Tagline

Rare∞

For savvy seekers and independent creators who share a deep value for cultural contribution. We provide content, services, and resources counter to those currently found in legacy media and traditional industry, which fail to cater to their appetites.

$BUILD with the best.

How Future
Modern works

The biggest issue with most platforms is a race to the bottom which is why we vet our members and clients. We're proving there's a better way to organize talent.

01

Tell us about your project

Give us a description of your company, the goals you're working toward, and a timeline for execution. We'll work with you to find the right hire from our team to realize your vision.

02

Choose from 3–5 options

Not a flood of resumes. A curated set of qualified member teams, skill-filtered to your project.

03

Pick your lead, stay in the loop

Once awarded, the team runs delivery alongside your organization while you stay aligned through milestones and updates.

04

Closeout and distribution

Once work is delivered and payment is collected, revenue is distributed automatically to the contributors who shipped it. Attribution and contribution records remain with the cooperative.

People-powered, exclusively

The resumes speak for themselves.

The people who built this are already reputed in their fields. Top performers at the companies they passed through. Founding hires at platforms that went on to IPO. Engineers at Caltech, Berkeley, and the Smithsonian. Designers and Writers at Columbia Records, Bad Boy, Mad Decent, Complex. Operators at Microsoft, Amazon, Lenovo, Bird, WebMD, and the LADWP.

$BUILD.Store is the platform we built so the next generation of that talent doesn't have to leave a half-dozen companies to be paid what their work is worth. The cooperative is the structure. The people are the proof. Full public launch is this fall, but we're already running projects on $BUILD.Store. Apply for the whitelist here.

Contributor affiliations are listed for context only and do not imply endorsement of Future Modern Builderberg LLC or $BUILD.Store.

How we're organized

The Three Pillars

Every member sits in at least one pillar. Many sit across two. A handful move freely through all three. The pillar framing is how opportunities are routed and how teams are built for serious briefs.

STEM

Full-stack engineering, AI/ML, blockchain, security, data, research, and more.

Creative Media

Music, film, editorial, design, direction, post-production, and more.

Professional Services

Strategy, legal, finance, operations, management consulting, and more.

The contract

Venture Labor.

Venture Capital pools money and goes looking for labor to multiply it. Venture Labor is the inversion. Skilled labor pools its time and effort, and the upside on what gets shipped belongs to the people who shipped it.

The phrase is honest about where we came from. Patrons used to buy into an artist's work to keep it moving until it sold. The tradition is old, and the controls around it were historically lazy: no point-of-sale discipline, contracts that read like favors, profit conversations that did not happen until the money was already gone. We kept the underlying idea and fixed the controls. We understand that workers are creating the value and deserve the upside of their contributions.

The cooperative is the structure. The people are the proof.

Venture Capital

Capital seeks labor.

Venture Labor

Labor creates ownership.

The vetting bar

Ideological as much as technical.

The failure of pooled labor is not lack of talent, but talented people who disregard the agreement the moment a check clears. We vet for that first. The craft we can teach. The values we cannot, and we have stopped trying.

"Anyone who can't handle money, in the sense that they throw out all ideals for it, is not one of us. We don't care how good they are."

What "people-powered" means

Four commitments that define the model.

Future Modern is a worker-owned cooperative. We combine managed services with technology, running on a lean 15% operations fee that sends 85% of revenue straight to the people doing the work.

Earned, not bought

Access is earned through invitation, application and vetting, or contribution to the cooperative's infrastructure. The whitelist is not for sale.

Admin-authored framing

Members submit objective fields: price, timeline, work samples. The cooperative authors positioning so the work speaks for itself.

85% to the people who shipped

Eighty-five percent of all client revenue goes directly to the member teams who delivered the work.

Attribution is permanent

The ledger compounds across years. Contributions do not reset to zero when a contract closes.

“Workers built it. Capital kept it.”

The Revenue Waterfall

85%Direct to Labor (You)

No stacked platform taxes. No hidden cuts. Paid directly to the contributors who ship the code, design, and services.

15%Cooperative Operations
12% Active Administration3% Treasury & Liquidity
Platform comparison:
✕Upwork5%–10% client service fee + $0.99–$14.99 initiation. Freelancers pay ~10% variable fee + $0.60–$2.40/application in Connects. Double-sided extraction.
✕Fiverr20% seller transaction fee + 5.5% buyer service surcharge
✕ToptalTypical 40% to 50% client margin / markups with zero builder equity
✓$BUILD.Store15% flat operations fee · 85% to direct labor · Permanent equity

The discipline

What we say no to.

Every refusal below is a discipline. The refusals produce the outcomes. Take one away and the model breaks.

No pay for access.
Membership is earned by contribution, not cash.
No paid tiers.
Every member owns their own rate.
No sponsored listings.
Curation isn't an auction.
No boosted profiles.
Merit isn't a line item.
No selling user's personal data.
Trust is not a revenue stream.
No Sales theater.
Honest pricing, honest tracking, honest scope, every time.
No exit strategy.
Ownership is permanent by design.
No discounts.
Value is set by the creator, not haggled by the buyer.
No confusion about compensation.
The split is published before the work starts.

Structural Shift

What we changed

Concrete differences between the conventional freelance economy and the cooperative we built.

BeforePlatform takes ~10–20%, agency takes a margin, contributor gets the residual.
NowContributors keep 85% of contract revenue. The 15% house cut funds shared infrastructure, not outside shareholders.
BeforeDirect contact info is a leak vector. Clients and contributors both hide it to keep the door open for off-platform deals.
NowInformation is gated until engagement begins. Contributors get attribution without becoming a circumvention target.
BeforeEach contributor pitches themselves cold. Quality of self-presentation drowns out quality of work.
NowMembers submit objective fields: price, timeline, work samples. Executive Strategists author the positioning narrative consistently and honestly.
BeforeBidding platforms extract from both sides. Workers pay to be seen. Clients wade through 50+ proposals to find 3-5 matches.
NowNo bidding. No pay for access. The cooperative curates 3-5 qualified matches per skillset. Workers stay in delivery mode.
BeforeWhen the contract closes, the relationship resets to zero. No equity, no compounding ownership.
NowContributors accrue $BUILD tokens on every shipped contract. Real attribution, real co-ownership, and real governance.

Provenance · Discernment · Equity

Core values

Provenance

Resources and acknowledgement flow back to original ideas and the labor that moves culture forward. Attribution is permanent.

Discernment

Future Modern curates contributors, vets incoming RFPs, and assembles cross-pillar teams the way a strong agency partner would.

Equity

Eighty-five percent of contract revenue flows to the people who shipped. $BUILD tokens accrue with contribution. The platform is owned by the people building it.

Truth and inquiry

Where we are unsure, we say so. Where we are certain, we ship.

Tried and true × cutting edge

Future Modern combines proven operations with new technology and strategy. The engineering follows the operations, not the other way around.

Cooperative Standing

Members shipping the work

Each contributor holds a standing tier within the cooperative's player-card system: Champion's Court gold, Future Modernist magenta, promotion-eligible blue, good standing green, and probation grey.

Jamar — Cooperative Builder • Strategist — Future Modern cooperative member
Future Modern
Jamar
Cooperative Builder • Strategist
Big Baby Gandhi — Musician • Producer • PharmD • Marketer — Future Modern cooperative member
Future Modern
Big Baby Gandhi
Musician • Producer • PharmD • Marketer
Chibu — Data Analyst • Economist — Future Modern cooperative member
Future Modern
Chibu
Data Analyst • Economist
Sunny — Brand Designer • UI/UX Designer • Product Designer — Future Modern cooperative member
Future Modern
Sunny
Brand Designer • UI/UX Designer • Product Designer
Sahtyre — Musician • VFX Artist • Video Editor • 3D Designer — Future Modern cooperative member
Future Modern
Sahtyre
Musician • VFX Artist • Video Editor • 3D Designer
Bayu — UI/UX Designer • Growth Marketer • Lead Generation Specialist — Future Modern cooperative member
Future Modern
Bayu
UI/UX Designer • Growth Marketer • Lead Generation Specialist

Selected Works

Work that moves culture.

A look at projects shipped by our member teams across STEM, Creative Media, and Professional Services.

STEM

Dossiers

The first NFT auction platform built on the ERC-6551 Tokenbound wallet standard.

Strategy

2050 Vision

Interactive web experience bringing The Rising Majority's 2050 manifesto to life.

Nonprofit

Southern Power Fund

Modern organizational website for the Southern Power Fund, built for clarity and impact.

Creative Media

URL Collective

Full website redesign for the nonprofit arm of URL Media, a network of top Black and Brown media organizations.

Editorial

Catalog

Editorial contributions to the Catalog Writer Program covering music, culture, and the creative economy.

Media

Immigrantly

Website redesign and rebuild for Immigrantly, a podcast redefining the multicultural narrative.

STEM

U.S. Capitol Visitor Center

Multilingual audio playback system for on-site visitors at the U.S. Capitol.

Strategy

Laser Reach

Sales, product management, and customer experience consulting.

STEM

Dossiers

The first NFT auction platform built on the ERC-6551 Tokenbound wallet standard.

Strategy

2050 Vision

Interactive web experience bringing The Rising Majority's 2050 manifesto to life.

Nonprofit

Southern Power Fund

Modern organizational website for the Southern Power Fund, built for clarity and impact.

Creative Media

URL Collective

Full website redesign for the nonprofit arm of URL Media, a network of top Black and Brown media organizations.

Editorial

Catalog

Editorial contributions to the Catalog Writer Program covering music, culture, and the creative economy.

Media

Immigrantly

Website redesign and rebuild for Immigrantly, a podcast redefining the multicultural narrative.

STEM

U.S. Capitol Visitor Center

Multilingual audio playback system for on-site visitors at the U.S. Capitol.

Strategy

Laser Reach

Sales, product management, and customer experience consulting.

Design

Advanced Welding Solutions

Graphic design and presentation formatting for an industrial services company.

Web Dev

URL Media

Homepage redesign and development for a network of top Black and Brown media organizations.

Staffing

Thinksys

QA Test Engineer staffing for an enterprise software consultancy.

Data

MusicNerd

Data entry and platform operations for a music discovery platform.

Blockchain

Giver Marketing

Token creation and tokenomics strategy for a marketing ecosystem.

Marketing

U.S. Weed Channel

Event management and marketing for a cannabis industry media platform.

Consulting

Bearpaw

Revenue operations consulting for a footwear and outdoor gear brand.

Branding

The Utilize Project

Brand kit and design system for a community-focused initiative.

Design

Advanced Welding Solutions

Graphic design and presentation formatting for an industrial services company.

Web Dev

URL Media

Homepage redesign and development for a network of top Black and Brown media organizations.

Staffing

Thinksys

QA Test Engineer staffing for an enterprise software consultancy.

Data

MusicNerd

Data entry and platform operations for a music discovery platform.

Blockchain

Giver Marketing

Token creation and tokenomics strategy for a marketing ecosystem.

Marketing

U.S. Weed Channel

Event management and marketing for a cannabis industry media platform.

Consulting

Bearpaw

Revenue operations consulting for a footwear and outdoor gear brand.

Branding

The Utilize Project

Brand kit and design system for a community-focused initiative.

The Future Modernist

A creator at heart —
artist, engineer, builder.

We have specialists, plenty of them. But the people who shape this cooperative are renaissance figures: comfortable directing a shoot in the morning, shipping a smart contract in the afternoon, sitting in a policy room that night.