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.
Read on to see how we work with clients, and how members earn theirs.
Explore the storyWe're not trying to be special. We are special. We don't care if anyone sees it.
- Turning workers into owners
- People-powered, exclusively
- Access is earned, not sold
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 & 2Equity + pay. Not the rest.
- Equity & Pay included
- Flexible Hours & Results not included
Gig Platforms
3 & 4Flexibility + results. Not the rest.
- Equity & Pay not included
- Flexible Hours & Results included
Future Modern
All FourThe whole deal, structurally.
- Equity & Pay included
- Flexible Hours & Results included
“We looked. We couldn't find it. So we built it.”
If it's the deal you've been waiting for, the door is open.
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, the LADWP.
We didn't stay long inside any of them. Top performance wasn't the issue. Fit was. The pattern was the same every time: vindication afterwards. The people who built Future Modern are the ones who keep moving when the room they're in stops being big enough for what they actually do.
None of our clients came from freelance platforms. Anything visible there is a testament to who we are, not a credential we're trading on. Our work has always come through relationships. Through the people who've seen us deliver and stayed in the room.
$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.
What "people-powered" means
Earned, not bought
- 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.
We don't curate around credentials. We curate around people who've done the work and care about doing it right.
We call this 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 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.
Venture Labor OS
How the system connects
The contributors, platform, client, treasury, and liquidity pool connected through Venture Labor.
Contributor
Skills · Relationships · Domain expertise
Platform
Infrastructure · Brand · Distribution · Leverage
Client / deal
Revenue generated · 85% to direct labor
Treasury
Cooperative operations · Shared infrastructure
Liquidity pool / $BUILD token
Passive equity accrual · OTC mobilization
Connections and flows
- Contributor → Venture Labor OSDeal flow
- Venture Labor OS → ContributorCash / equity
- Contributor → PlatformPlatform leverage
- Venture Labor OS → PlatformPlatform leverage
- Platform ↔ Client / dealPlatform relationship
- Venture Labor OS ↔ Client / dealDeal flow and cash
- Client / deal → TreasuryCash payment
- Treasury → Liquidity poolTreasury flow
- Liquidity pool → ContributorCash / equity
- Venture Labor OS ↔ TreasuryReinvestment feedback
- Venture Labor OS ↔ Liquidity poolFeedback loop
Owners ship better work than renters.
The upside on the work belongs to the people who shipped it. Provenance, Discernment, 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.
We cold pitch to get in the door. We don't cold close. That's the whole difference.
Structural shift
What we changed
Concrete differences between the conventional freelance economy and the cooperative we built.
- Before
Platform takes ~10–20%, agency takes a margin, contributor gets the residual.
NowContributors receive 85% of contract revenue. The remaining share supports the people who run the deal and cooperative operations.
- Before
Direct 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.
- Before
Each 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.
- Before
Bidding 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.
- Before
When 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
The non-negotiables. They're encoded in the product, not just the About page. Every engineering decision and every operations ritual gets measured against these.
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.
Community as the operating system.
Our community originally came together at the cutting edge of music and online culture. We aim to create a world where community integrates with life, art, appreciation, and passion. The platform’s economics are tilted accordingly.
Three pillars, one cooperative
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 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. We're bringing back the apprenticeship-to-mastery arc the modern career path quietly killed. Where a person isn't reduced to one job title, and depth in one craft sharpens the others.
Politics
The initial driver to connection. Shared conviction about who deserves access, who builds the rooms, who owns the upside.
Art
What led us, and what created our foundation. The cooperative formed around creative work before it ever formed around contracts.
Technology
Cutting-edge tooling (blockchain, AI, on-chain attribution) is what grew the brand from a circle of practitioners into a platform.
This isn't a marketplace listing of disconnected skills. It's a cooperative that staffs cross-pillar teams the way a high-end agency would, with the economics owed to the people doing the work.
Core competencies
We leverage a one-of-a-kind interdisciplinary network to deliver best-in-class service to a small list of select clients. These are the surfaces we've actually shipped for.
- Web Design
- Web Development
- Blockchain Development
- Data Science & Machine Learning
- Mechanical Engineering
- Robotics
- Electrical Engineering
- Network Administration & Cybersecurity
- Scientific Liaison
- Technical Writing
- Content Marketing
- Advertising
- Music
- Product Design
- Graphic Design
- Game Design
- Fashion Design
- Film Direction
- Event Planning
- Managed Services
- Product Management
- Consulting
- Strategy
- Psychiatry & Psychology
- Family Medicine
- Health Law
- Employment Law
- Pharmaceuticals
- Medical Writing
Where we're going
Access has opened in phases, from the initial whitelist through open beta to the $BUILD.Store rollout.
We're now in the rollout phase, building on what we learned during beta.
The landing page and whitelist introduced the cooperative model and opened the first invite pool.
Open beta tested the platform end-to-end, with feedback helping shape the rollout.
The $BUILD.Store rollout is underway, bringing the cooperative platform beyond open beta.
Questions the cooperative gets asked
Every Member has one voice in governance. Cash flow follows the work. The people doing the shipping keep the largest share of every engagement. Standing is earned through peer-reviewed contribution, not bought, gamed, or inherited.
The LLC is the legal wrapper. The cooperative is the operating agreement inside it. Both are documented. The Cooperative Covenant is the plain-English version. The operating agreement is the legal one.
Ready to be part of it?
Apply to join or build a team, learn about membership, or talk with us to find out more.
Join or build a team
Apply to contribute your skills or find the right team for your project.
Apply to joinFuture Modern · A cooperative talent platform.