A solidarity-based business model.
The fact that monamu is affordable while offering high quality and rich functionality is partly based on the idea that the accessibility of digital solutions is also a question of funding. With monamu, we wanted to make multimedia guides possible for institutions that were previously unable to access such solutions due to the usually high initial and maintenance costs. The subscription model is relatively close to ideas such as community-supported agriculture (CSA). Here, many members contribute a small monthly amount to make a business, that is dependent, for example, on the weather and the market, independent of these influences, in order to provide a mostly small but stable income for the farmer (predictability) and to receive products quality of which they can influence. This is exactly what we wanted.
A different economy and what we mean by profit brake.
In traditional economics, the production of any product involves investment: production resources and materials, energy and labor cost money, as does developing and ultimately marketing a product. In the software-based digital economy, a significant proportion of these costs are eliminated. The highest investment factor here is labor, innovation, distribution and marketing, while only further instances of the product are created to duplicate the individual product. The costs for materials are eliminated, and those for production facilities are comparatively low. Global marketing platforms such as app stores offer easy access to an international market. This is one of the reasons why even small software companies can often realize massive profits. WhatsApp, for example, has become so valuable in a relatively short time with 50 employees that a sales price of 19 billion USD could be achieved. This shift in the value chain is one of the reasons for the unequal distribution of wealth. The Gini index, a measure that expresses how unequally wealth is distributed in a society, is particularly high in San Francisco (due to its proximity to Silicon Valley) and Seattle (headquarters of Microsoft and Amazon, among others) in the USA, for example.
To counteract this development, we want to distribute 15% of profits above a certain margin to our employees, invest 5% in a foundation to support cultural institutions, and return 30% to our subscribers, similar to cooperative models. The remaining 50% will stay with the company for financial security. This applies as long as it does not fall below 33% of the annual operating costs. The result would be that points has a secure income for the further development of monamu and employees who who contribute to its success. With the foundation, we could create direct social benefits and make monamu affordable for even more institutions.
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