At Village Labs, we help America's businesses become employee owned by helping them set up and manage an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP). 

ESOPs are a federal retirement plan that enable businesses to give their employees a stake in the company in exchange for significant tax benefits. 

With 2.9M Baby Boomer business owners set to retire in the coming years, there's a growing "Silver Tsunami" of businesses across the country in search of new ownership. For many of these owners, selling to their employees is a socially-minded yet financially pragmatic solution.

By selling ownership of their business to an ESOP, owners get a fair price, tax benefits, and the satisfaction of knowing their employees and legacy will be taken care of — things not guaranteed with traditional buyers like private equity. In turn, employees retain their jobs and get shares in the business that can help them create life changing wealth by the time they retire — imagine an office secretary retiring as a millionaire. 

Thousands of businesses across America like Bob's Red Mill, Harpoon Brewery, and Recology already have an ESOP, benefiting over 14 million workers and creating 2.1 trillion in employee wealth. We're excited about the opportunity to massively grow these numbers by making it simple for every business to become employee owned. 

Helping America's businesses become employee owned
Title: Village Labs: Helping America's businesses become employee owned | Y Combinator

URL Source: 

Markdown Content:


### Helping America's businesses become employee owned

At Village Labs, we help America's businesses become employee owned by helping them set up and manage an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP). ESOPs are a federal retirement plan that enable businesses to give their employees a stake in the company in exchange for significant tax benefits. With 2.9M Baby Boomer business owners set to retire in the coming years, there's a growing "Silver Tsunami" of businesses across the country in search of new ownership. For many of these owners, selling to their employees is a socially-minded yet financially pragmatic solution. By selling ownership of their business to an ESOP, owners get a fair price, tax benefits, and the satisfaction of knowing their employees and legacy will be taken care of — things not guaranteed with traditional buyers like private equity. In turn, employees retain their jobs and get shares in the business that can help them create life changing wealth by the time they retire — imagine an office secretary retiring as a millionaire. Thousands of businesses across America like Bob's Red Mill, Harpoon Brewery, and Recology already have an ESOP, benefiting over 14 million workers and creating 2.1 trillion in employee wealth. We're excited about the opportunity to massively grow these numbers by making it simple for every business to become employee owned.



Village Labs

Founded:2023

Team Size:2

Location:New York

### Active Founders

### Roger Cawdette, Co-Founder & CEO

These days, I'm working towards expanding employee ownership which I view as the greatest wealth creation opportunity for middle class Americans today. Before this, I co-founded Finary (YC W21) where we were building a social network for the stock market (before WallStreetBets went viral!). I studied Technological & Social Innovation at Harvard and left after my sophomore year to do YC.



### Turja Chowdhury, Co-Founder & CTO

Co-founder and CTO @ Village Labs



### Company Launches

[### Village Labs - We help America’s businesses become employee owned](



Hello YC community & world,

It’s an exciting time! Turja and I are building [Village Labs]( a new firm that helps businesses become employee-owned by helping them set up and manage an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP).

ESOPs are federal retirement plans that enable companies to give their employees shares in the business in exchange for major tax benefits. They are NOT stock option plans, and no, we are NOT doing cap table management!

**EMPLOYEE OWNERSHIP WILL BE BIG**  
There are currently about 6,000 companies with an ESOP across the country — the popular names include Publix Supermarkets, Harpoon Brewery, and Recology (the maker of those black, blue, and green trash bins you see on every street in SF).

Employee ownership has been around for decades in America, but there’s going to be an explosion in the number of employee-owned businesses that are created in the next few years. There are a couple of reasons for this:

1.  **The Silver Tsunami:** 2.9M Baby Boomer business owners are going to sell their businesses in the next few years. Many of them will sell to their employees because they get a fair price, tax benefits, and the comfort of knowing their employees will be taken care of - things not guaranteed by traditional buyers like private equity.
2.  **Government support**: Congress and state legislatures are passing more legislation to encourage the creation of ESOPs. This largely looks like more tax benefits for ESOP businesses and owners who sell to an ESOP.
3.  **Mainstream awareness**: There’s been a surge in awareness of employee ownership in the last few years because of new press coverage. See: [Pete Stavros on 60 Minutes]( [Blackstone announcing its employee ownership initiative]( [major businesses announcing becoming employee owned.](

**WHAT IS VILLAGE LABS DOING?**  
At Village Labs, we’re setting out to help create as many employee-owned businesses as possible. In terms of what we do, we help owners sell to their employees via an ESOP and then provide them with the tools they need to manage their plans.

**HOW YOU CAN HELP**  
Most business owners don’t know that selling to their employees is an option (and one that commonly comes with the most financial benefits). We’re working to change that by building a nationwide network of partners with close connections to the many Boomer business owners who will retire soon. We work with these partners to educate owners on selling to their employees.

If you’d like to help, you could introduce us to…

*   Owners and executives at mid-sized businesses with 20+ employees and stable cash flows
*   Business brokerage firms (e.g. Transworld, Sunbelt Brokers, etc.)
*   Exit/estate planning firms + wealth managers

And if you happen to be one of these, we’d love to talk to you.

**WHY WE’RE EXCITED ABOUT EMPLOYEE OWNERSHIP**  
The short answer is that being employee-owned is just a better way of doing business.

Here’s the story of CHI Overhead Doors, a garage door manufacturer in rural Illinois. They’re not an ESOP, but their story highlights what makes employee ownership so awesome.

This isn’t an isolated, one-off thing. There are many stories out there of businesses that benefited from becoming employee-owned - and we’ve seen them personally. Turja and I have been on the road for a lot of YC this summer, visiting employee-owned businesses in places like Portland, Tuscon, and other cities across the country. One of the main things you notice is that the employees are noticeably happier, and the quality of service is excellent - likely because the employees have ownership in the business and, therefore, an incentive to see it succeed. It’s the same reason we, as founders, give shares to our employees.

Considering 70% of Americans [don’t like their jobs,]( and ~50% [have no retirement savings]( we think widespread employee ownership would bring those numbers down. That’s why our goal is to create as many employee-owned businesses as possible. That means more people who enjoy their jobs, more retirement savings, and a more productive economy.

Again, most people don’t know that employee ownership is a thing, but wouldn’t we all be better off if they did? If you’d like to help us with this or are just curious to learn more, please do reach out!

Thanks for reading!

\-Roger & Turja

#### Company Photo


