co-op
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INFRA (Independent Natural Food Retailers Association)
How a Saint Paul cooperative quietly stitched 400 independent grocers into a buying bloc big enough to bargain with the giants - without asking any of them to give up their name.
Goodcover
Goodcover is a San Francisco insurtech offering cooperative renters insurance built around a member-first model. Founded in 2017 and launched out of Y Combinator, it operates as a Managing General Agent that pools members' premiums, takes a fixed fee, pays claims, and returns leftover premium to members as an Annual Member Dividend. The pitch: renters insurance for roughly half the price of legacy carriers, with a fully digital sign-up, human support, and a structure that aligns the company's incentives with its members rather than with retaining unclaimed premium as profit.
Tertulia
Tertulia is a New York-based book discovery and commerce startup that turns the internet's endless chatter about books into personalized reading recommendations, then lets you buy the book in a couple of taps. Named after the informal literary salons of Spanish cafes, it scans social media, podcasts, critics and the wider web to surface the titles people are actually talking about, pairs that with human curation, and wraps the whole thing in a community co-op that lets avid readers become part-owners of the store. In 2025 it expanded beyond readers to authors with Tertulia for Authors, an all-in-one website builder and marketing platform.