👋 Welcome back, from Colin:
Podium Entertainment, a publisher for independent authors, was acquired in PE deal that layers in employee incentives via Ownership Works (paywalled). Podium’s claim to fame is audio-first publishing—i.e., skip the silly print stuff and go straight to audiobooks and creator-driven content.
This one caught my eye because the audio-first publishing industry is somewhere between its infancy and adolescence. Decades ago, sociologist Arthur Stinchcombe noticed that companies in new industries set the example for later entrants to follow.
Mark and I found out that’s exactly what happens with ESOPs: when more companies in an industry (or a place) are employee-owned, new entrants are more likely to use the same blueprint and adopt employee ownership themselves.
So, the question is, will this transaction make other audio-first publishers more likely to adopt a form of employee ownership? For proponents of private equity’s version of employee ownership, Podium’s acquisition is good news because it makes similar deals more likely. For opponents of the PE form of employee ownership, it’s bad news for the same reason, unless they can persuade potential imitators to consider other forms of employee ownership.
👉 In This Issue
If you’re new here, friend, welcome! You may want to start with Stories & Dealflow.
Events and Opportunities
News
Stories & Dealflow
Research and Insights
🏙️ Events and Opportunities
Events This Week
Sep 26 | Center for Community Wealth’s satellite USFWC conference in Denver
Sep 28 | The EO Capital Roadmap Roadshow hits Seattle // Platform Coops’ Worker Co-ops & The Long History of Labour // Lafayette Square Institute’s Working Class Insights Forum in Middleburg, VA
Sep 29 | The ESOP Association’s Great Lakes Regional Conference in Indianapolis
Sep 30 | Employee Ownership Canada’s Life After the Sale // ICA Group’s LevelUp Conversations in NYC // Centre for Climate Psychology’s An Economy of Right Relationship // Cooperatives Europe’s From Aid to Ownership
Oct 1 | The Ownership Economy Summit in NYC and Barcelona // Iowa Center for Employee Ownership’s Annual Conference // B Corp Postlethwaite’s Ownership Matters webinar
Oct 2 | People’s Economy Lab’s Making Our Economy Work for Us webinar
For even more events, see our main Events page.
Opportunities
Prairie Capital Advisors | Associate - ESOP Consulting
For more jobs, including at employee-owned companies, visit our Jobs page.
🗞️ Ownership News
Employee Ownership
A Las Vegas casino gave ~10,000 $70 million in company stock (ht Conscious Capitalism’s The Briefing)
ESCA honors Senator Steve Daines as their 2026 ESOP Champion
Ownership Works receives Citi Foundation’s 2026 Community Finance Initiative
A task force launches in Vermont to expand employee ownership
Project Equity welcomes Alison Boess as Capital Deployment Manager of their EO Catalyst Fund. Congrats!
🇬🇧 Oct 12 Deadline: Wellington HR calls for news stories of 200 words or less for their first-ever EO Annual, celebrating the year’s employee ownership milestones
Ownership on Purpose
🇳🇱 Dutch Parliament is pursuing a new steward ownership structure to reduce administrative and legal costs for mission-driven companies
Laurie Lane-Zucker contends that mission and values must go beyond legal contracts and be built into the company structure itself (ht Jenny Everett)
ICYMI: After passing 47% of customer service calls to AI, IKEA upskills their workforce to build new revenue streams instead of laying off employees
The Ownership Economy
Agricultural co-op Ocean Spray expands its executive suite
Ownership Stories & Dealflow
Employee Ownership | 6D Health and Wellness Cooperative (🇨🇦) offers ownership to care providers and mental health services to clients (ht GEO) // Jolly CEO Dean Zimberg spotlights the employee retention at QuikTrip, a convenience store whose employees own 20% via ESOP and where Mark drinks 20% more slushies than he should // Neilcott Construction (🇬🇧) pays off its buyout loan 5 years ahead of schedule
Dealflow | Philadelphia’s Celsius Companies combines ETA with ESOPs // New Hampshire publisher Earth Sky + Water transitions to worker co-op // New Jersey manufacturer James Alexander, Wisconsin’s Ellis Construction, Minnesota’s Cafe Imports, and Michigan construction firm Rockford all become 100% ESOP-owned
For more, check out our Dealflow page.
Ownership Economy | Members of Park Slope Food Co-op in NYC provide 75% of labor to keep prices low // @Robert Geline contrasts fan engagement with community-owned Green Bay Packers vs. other NFL teams (paywalled, ht Peter Dorman) // 📺 Linday Harris shares how Propolis Housing Co-op raised $1.1 million in community bonds (ht GEO)
Ownership on Purpose | ICYMI: This week’s Conscious Capitalism The Briefing newsletter recapped a January podcast with Dusan Vujovic, CEO of Tony’s Chocolonely:
🌲🌲 Trivia | Have you noticed a preponderance of pines in co-op branding?
Research & Insights
The latest arguments, analysis, and academic research (📚). Go deeper with our other topic-specific, spillover newsletters.
Employee Ownership | Project Equity’s Zarin Kresge calls for advisors to include employee ownership as an exit option // In Newsweek, CCA’s Howard Brodsky asserts employee ownership builds economic participation in ways that government assistance cannot // ICMYI: Jon LeSage’s LinkedIn newsletter Employee Ownership launched around this time last year
ESOPs | The CLEI proposes a new financial vehicle to fund employee ownership, drawing inspiration from the mortgage market // 🎙️ The Ownership Effect’s new episode exploring what sets ESOPs apart from other employee ownership structures // BDO Advisors analyzes legal and cultural dynamics when unions meet ESOPs
Worker Cooperatives | 📚 Fordham’s Gowri Krishna examines how the franchise model could be adapted to scale worker ownership
Ownership on Purpose | 🎙️ On Purpose 360, Carol Cone interviews Benevity CEO Sona Khosla about their recent State of Corporate Purpose report // In HBR, Nick Hobson and Margie Warrell, PhD ask Will Your Organization Stand By Its Values—Even When It’s Hard? (paywalled) Our guess? Only if you have already locked those values into your structure or culture (ht Conscious Capitalism)
The Ownership Economy | 🇨🇦 MP Ryan Turnbull advocates for collective ownership in Canadian Parliament // Sustainable Economies Law Center ponders Cooperatives as Incubators of Democracy (ht GEO) // ICA positions co-ops as tool for international development and peace
Community Ownership | Katie Deal confronts the tension of communities depending on workers who can no longer afford to rent there // Ground Works Consulting shares its latest insights on campaigning for community ownership policy change // Della Rucker argues that community ownership structures are tools for economic development // Lyn Jardine of the Scottish National Party connects ownership to community wealth
Digital Ownership | 📚 Landemore and Tang consider democratic ownership of AI through game theory’s stag hunt framework
Workplace Democracy | The ICA Group reacts to HBS findings on building ownership culture // Aspen EOP helpfully collated the ownership culture conversations from their June event