Cohere

Cohere is addressing three primary challenges:

1) inequitable home-ownership access,

2) the pandemic-induced mental health crisis, and

3) environmental degradation.

1) In Guatemala (where we are launching our first location), 260 Guatemalans own 56% of the wealth - this means that 0.001% of the population owns more than half of the country’s wealth. The largest 2.5% of landholders in our country occupy nearly two-thirds of the agricultural land. This leaves the youth of Guatemala and Latin America in a bleak situation when it comes to being able to purchase land and homes.

2) 63% of young people experience substantial symptoms of anxiety and depression as an onset of loneliness which is exacerbated by pandemic-linked social isolation caused by the lack of community.

3) With the Earth’s ecosystem rapidly worsening and no viable, scalable, community-led solutions emerging, it is no surprise that over 55% of young adults are now distressed by the climate crisis.

Cohere is a global network of community coliving and coworking locations - defined by decentralized ownership of real estate assets, powered by blockchain technology.

Function: Cohere incentivizes members to garner shares of an ever-increasing pool of goods through equitable access to real assets. We grow a diverse membership-base by accounting for social, financial, creative, and environmental contributions.

Cohere is therefore constantly evolving via the members who co-live in the innovation hubs we co-create. All members share the benefits of the whole, steward the regenerative nature of the project, and seek to empower the public good.

Components: As a community-first entity, a focus of Cohere is to empower all involved to steer the direction of the network through strong connection. This is built on:

1. Regulatory infrastructure offering our token (representing ownership of assets) in compliance with the SEC.

2. Community events driven by thought-leaders allowing members to explore individual strengths that empower the whole.

3. An impact platform to incubate and support solutions designed to tackle systemic issues (including low-income housing, farming for refugee communities, etc.).

4. A DAO enabling each member to navigate and play a role in the future of Cohere.

Users: Cohere aims to enable anyone, regardless of socioeconomic status, to partake in the Cohere community through energy exchanges that stand outside the standard capital allocation. Doing so allows us to reach those in the most marginalized communities, while empowering them to own property in a rapidly growing asset class.

One of our focuses at Cohere is growth through diversity. As mentioned above, our ideal member set is one that comes from all walks of life - from the economic outcasts to the well established. We believe that communities are one of the most effective tools to cut through generational, socioeconomic, educational, religious, political, gender and racial divides. Through co-working, co-living, co-creating and co-owning, our values are aligned and the focus becomes about mutual understanding, compassion and collaboration rather than competition and separation.

Below is a list of underserved archetypes that our model can serve to elevate and include:

Economic Outcasts - This can be described as the group of people that have been left behind and unable to participate in the modern economy because of lack of access to education, fair government and basic banking services. Through our shared ownership model, anyone can become a part owner of the commons and benefit from the use and appreciation of our pool of real estate assets. 

Climate Refugees - These are people that due to globalization, resource extraction and severe climate change have lost access to basic needs such as food, land and water. Cohere’s use of innovative building techniques/materials paired with our ethos of ecological restoration and self-sustainability through water collection and native food production, will offer resilient living spaces to those most in need. 

Indigenous Populations - These are the groups of cultural creators that have stewarded the land for generations but have found themselves on the fringes of society due to rapid development, exploitation and unacknowledged values. As part of Cohere’s mission, we would like to connect with the local populations in order to learn about the local environment, integrate where we can and exchange value, where desired. Our intention is to listen and amplify the voices of the unheard, not to impose our beliefs or ways of being on them by any means. 

Youth - With the increase in global inflation rates, cost of living and wage stagnation, basic housing has become inaccessible for the Millennial generation and onwards. This means that many young people, if given the opportunity, are forced into lifelong debt cycles just to cover one of our most intrinsic human needs - shelter. Cohere is offering unique, cross-functional spaces for all socioeconomic backgrounds, offering the flexibility of renting with the value of ownership. In addition, our native educational program will allow people from all backgrounds and skill sets to cross-pollinate and learn from each other according to their respective passions.

We are digital nomads and impact entrepreneurs that have lived the lifestyle for several years now. We chose to address this particular market segment because the world has changed dramatically over the past two years due to the pandemic. The lines between work, life and travel are becoming increasingly blurred. With over 35M digital nomads across the globe; working from anywhere has become increasingly accessible. With this surgence in market demand many people are looking for sustainable ways to support this type of lifestyle, but no real comprehensive solutions exist. The unification of robust, purposefully designed infrastructure, innovation hubs created for collaboration, health/wellness, authentic connection, and a culture based on regenerative principles, all powered by web3 technology is truly a unique offering in this space. 

At present, we are engaging with our Discord and social media communities on a regular basis to try to understand better where their passions, needs and skill sets align. We truly believe in a co-creative process of development where the community has direct say into how things are designed and what they look like, on an ongoing basis.

The main market barriers that we are trying to address with our solution are housing accessibility, technological gaps between demographics, moving the legal peg forward on shared ownership models and creating a culture of regeneration. 

As mentioned above, we are lowering the cost to entry for homeowners by offering non-discriminatory, shared ownership in low-income housing. With this, we hope to give people a platform to stand on so that they can continue to build their own lives in a stable way and eventually contribute to the collective commons. On this front, we are looking to establish partnerships with industry leaders that are using innovative building techniques or those that are willing to invest land into the business for purposes of ecological restoration.

One of our ambitions on the Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) front of our business is to build out our own white-label community platform (Cohere OS). The purpose of this would be to integrate investment, DAO governance, and community engagement all into one easy to use solution. This would also present a substantial opportunity in the DAO space to scale the operating system across wider web3 projects with a seamless user experience and reach those in the most marginalized communities. We could use support on the technology development side through funding or strategic partnerships with DAO tooling companies to help bring this product to market.

Within our legal framework, we are trying to stay as compliant as possible (exemplified by our security token), while still pushing the frontiers of decentralized ownership, governance and collaboration. Therefore, we could use support and resources to better navigate the regulatory landscape in different regions of the world and with mapping different entity structures that best apply to our model. 

We can clearly see that this form of extractive capitalism existing today is not sustainable and only serves a select minority of the world’s population. At Cohere, we’re working to rethink how we measure and create value in an economic system. When our values and incentives are aligned, mutual benefit is created and a toroidal effect of positive input can exist within a system. We are looking for partners that are cultural creatives and know how to build systems with regeneration as a core principle.

Fractional ownership and legally-compliant tokenized securities put us leagues ahead of our competitors. Moreover, other projects in the space do not understand the pain points of digital nomads nor the blue ocean opportunities available in the world of the ‘new normal’.

Co-working and co-living is all about community and collaboration. Since the pandemic, people are craving connection and building community together. It is this core concept that made it obvious to us that fractional co-ownership should be an intrinsic part of this product. In the web3/crypto space, other companies are trying to create similar pathways to fractional ownership in real estate. However, they do not take care and consideration for the regulatory environment. Our product is specifically built to be squarely in regulated territory using our fully SEC-complaint tokenized securities. By tokenizing securities of a company holding a growing pool of real estate assets, we provide an easy means of liquidity in a traditionally illiquid market, without investors needing to wait until a liquidity event.

Next Year:

• Acquire and build our first sites in Guatemala and Ecuador - offering local employment to those working on the land/construction development as well as affordable housing to roughly 100 members

• Host a master-mind event in May in one of our leased properties in Guatemala - bringing together 30 leaders in web3, legal, permaculture/environmental regeneration, development, financing, and wellness

• Host an additional three events in the US, Ecuador, and Brazil

• Build out our own white-label community platform (Cohere OS), making web3 technologies more accessible for all

• Launch Membership NFTs, partnering with leading web3 artists and local designers

• Establish partnerships with land trust partners and other key partners in the intersection of real assets and web3

• Integrate impact funds to scale and launch values-aligned initiatives

Next Five Years:

• Launch our education platform that enables us to provide en-masse education for all those involved in the Cohere ecosystem. This will ultimately give us the opportunity to provide large-scale education on environmental regeneration, sustainable design, technological development, among other modules in the courses. 

• Scale out our operations to set up 15 Cohere locations across Latin America - enabling us to bring more nodes and onboard more members into the network.

• Continue to iterate and develop our construction methods in order to create more climate resilient buildings that integrate the best designs in permaculture, architecture, and local community-driven impact.

• Raise significant amounts of funds in order to support local communities in which Cohere is operating. This will provide systemic solutions to address social and environmental challenges in these communities.

• Launch our in-house incubator and accelerator that creates enabling environments for our members to create and build initiatives that are driving positive change in the world. 

How we will achieve these goals:

• We will be raising $27m over the course of the next five years to build out our facilities

• Onboarding 20,000+ members into our community

• Leverage the cutting-edge innovations emerging from web3/crypto in order to drive more efficient capital allocation 

• Enhance our coordination capacities through the use of a DAO

• Building out 20 locations across Latin America, bringing together entrepreneurs and impact leaders to create and nurture solutions

• Continue to onboard more leading architects and designers in order to further improve our construction methods and improve environmental regeneration. 

Although our project is still in the prototyping phase of development, these are a number of specific and measurable indicators we are looking to use to calibrate our impact on the greater environment:

• Carbon offsets - measuring how much carbon has been omitted from the innovative construction methods we are using, the food we are growing, and the reduced emissions from the community.

• Energy production/usage - as we are relying on regenerative energy use, we will be drastically shifting away from the use of fossil fuels.

• Food production - we are planning on growing our own integrated food systems which will enable us to create communities that are not reliant on long food chains, but rather mostly sourced from the Cohere locations.

• Soil health - as we continue to regenerate the land, we will be taking active measurements of the land that we are cultivating our food across the Cohere locations.

• Water retention/testing - we are committed to ensuring that the buildings that we are designing have a positive impact on the water tables and local water systems. We will be measuring the water quality across our locations and the wider communities and beyond. 

• Waste production - we are going to be establishing zero-waste closed-loop waste management systems whereby we will be able to control the amount of waste that is produced in our locations

• Health/wellbeing assessments - as we want to optimize the wellbeing of our members, we are going to conduct pre and post surveys on the health of those who are entering into the Cohere ecosystem. This will enable us to effectively understand how many people are harnessing the wellbeing of our locations.

• Gender equality within the team and member pool - we aim to provide a space where we have a representative approach of the wider population.

• Velocity/volume of internal currency - we are leveraging our own internal currency and will therefore be able to measure the movement of our currency across the ecosystem. This will enable us to move towards internally measuring the success of our native economy.

• Profit/impact of affiliated projects - as we are incubating businesses within the Cohere ecosystem, we will be able to measure the success of the impact of the projects that are built within the Cohere ecosystem.

• Number of impact partnerships - we are aligning ourselves with impact partners who will help us drive effective change - therefore we will be ensuring to bring in as many people as possible into the Cohere ecosystem.

• Funds raised for impact solutions - by leveraging the community, we are going to be able to measure the amount of capital that we raise for impact-led projects across the community.

Problem:

Affordable housing

Solution:

Cohere is providing shared ownership to a pool of real estate assets which includes access to low income housing. With our model, we can provide the flexibility of renting, with the value of ownership and freedom to travel with this equity throughout our various locations around the world.

Problem:

Climate change

Solution:

Cohere is creating resilient spaces with a focus on renewable energy, local food production, water retention, waste mitigation, reforestation, soil regeneration and using cutting-edge building materials/construction techniques.

Problem:

Competition

Solution:

When our values and incentives are aligned, the focus is no longer about survival and scarcity but rather collaboration and abundance. Because our members all share equity in Cohere, we are financially incentivized to help each other in our individual pursuits to support a common goal. This creates a positive feedback loop  where what benefits me, benefits you, benefits the whole. Furthermore, through our incubator and accelerator programs, we can learn and amplify each other's gifts, which is proven to be an effective mechanism for innovation.

Problem:

Loneliness

Solution:

In creating communities of like-minded individuals with a focus on diversity, authentic relationships and connection, this can help heal the collective wound of hyper-individualization that is all too prevalent in modern society. By coming together in a shared vision, this can fulfill two of our primary needs as human beings - a sense of purpose and belonging.

Problem:

Mental health/wellness

Solution:

We plan on making health and wellness a core component of our model. These principles will be integrated and applied through on-site amenities such as connection to nature, healthy meals, clean water, peaceful living spaces, movement practices, conscious communication as well as other forms of therapy.

We believe that real systemic change needs to come at the level of the individual first. By creating communities and a culture that revolves around personal growth, stability, maturity and service, these qualities can reverberate to the greater collective.

We are utilizing ERC-20 tokens on the Ethereum blockchain (with plans to migrate to Optimism) to issue fungible security tokens that represent shared ownership in our C-Corp. This company is the holder and medium of the assets, through which the members of Cohere become owners. Security token offerings are on the cutting-edge of web3 as they are bringing the long sought integration of physical assets and cryptography - unlocking infinite potentials with their use cases.

Further, we are natively integrating Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) to offer our members with uniquely identifiable membership cards. This will be done by working with artists from around the world to fuse the latest developments of AI art and raise their exposure through our far-reaching platform. We aim to integrate other membership-NFT communities into our physical Cohere locations, therefore increasing the value-add for community members of mission-aligned projects (such as Patchwork Kingdom NFT holders).

With NEAR Holdings, we are leveraging economies of scale to provide our members with the opportunity to purchase assets through the NEAR protocol. Once the purchase of the homes are made, the holders are issued with NEP-141 tokens - which are tied to the value of the asset. The funds of the collective purchasers are transferred to a NEAR Sputnik2 DAO and the members can then decide on how capital is allocated. This can include putting the asset holdings to work via leverage, using them as collateral, earning interest or rent as passive income. By doing so, we are not only opening up our community to purchase homes through Cohere and also increase access to financial instruments in an unbanked world.

Lastly, we are relying on decentralized on-chain governance and treasury management through our DAO to direct the future of the project, manage our decision-making, award contributors, and track the impact of the project.

Our ethos at Cohere is that every member should have access to gaining equity and ownership in the value they help create  - irrespective of socioeconomic status. Therefore, we are offering other avenues of participation for those members that don’t necessarily have the initial capital to invest. Members can work and be rewarded according to their passions and garner equity and access to the network through their work-related contributions. Furthermore, we plan to integrate the voices and needs of the local indigienous communities throughout the construction development process in a way that is not offered through traditional channels.

As we build out our team at Cohere, we are keeping in mind that a diverse set of voices and perspectives will contribute to a more complete solution and inclusive world. In this way, we are continuously looking to rebalance our demographics according to skills, experience, age, race and gender. This has been particularly difficult to do in the web3 space, as the user base is predominantly young, white males of privilege. For this reason, we feel our DAO OS is an important innovation to bring to the web3 space. In offering an all in one platform with various points of interaction, this will lower the barrier to entry and appease a wider audience as a whole.

Cohere is building a global network of member-owned co-living, co-working spaces designed for changemakers, impact entrepreneurs, and cultural creatives. We have tokenized the securities of our C-corp, allowing for fractional ownership of future shares of equity in the company. Cohere onboards existing properties as well as develops new properties and creates a growing pool of real estate assets of which security token holders have a fractional share of ownership. The security tokens are tied to a bonded curve based on the equity allocation for this instrument. These security tokens are measured in a real time USD value, which provides ease of liquidity on secondary markets so investors do not have to wait for a liquidity event to know the value of their investment and realize their gains.

Cohere will distribute tokens based on investment, either in the form of capital or in exchange for bona fide services rendered. As more tokens are distributed, the value invested becomes oversubscribed and the token value increases in response. Our members will pay an annual subscription for membership dues that will go towards investment into the company allowing members to increase ownership over time. Members will also be offered opportunities to work for Cohere specific projects and get paid in security tokens for their work. As more tokens are distributed the value of the token increases, so when one member completes a project the net worth of all token holders increases. This mechanism allows us to realign economic incentives towards collaboration.

We are in the process of launching an equity crowdfunding campaign on April 5th, 2022 to generate brand awareness, build out our membership pool, provide members ownership through Reg CF and a SAFE agreement, and raise seed capital for development of our first location. This is a critical component to us because a core ethos of our business is access to ownership no matter the socio-economic background. The goal of this campaign will be to raise at least $500k with the funding to be used to support the development of the first Cohere location.

We plan to launch a genesis NFT series to engage the web3 community, prototype our next NFT launch and raise capital to cover our operating expenses. 

We also continue to apply for grants and accelerator programs, reach out to venture capitalist firms/potential partners and engage with future members as a way to funnel in energy into our network.

In the future, we plan to achieve financial sustainability through three main revenue streams: recurring membership dues, rentals, and network transaction fees

We are projected to make ~$75M in revenue, $35M EBITA, and $25M Net Income by 2027 (5 years)

Thus far, we have issued 17700 security tokens under Reg D to US accredited investors, using the Rolling SAFE agreement, for a total of $172,000 to close friends and family as a pre-seed raise. In addition, the co-founders have injected approximately $150k of their own money to continue to expand and cover operating costs.

The co-working/co-living experiences we have been hosting have allowed us to continue expanding our brand awareness, grow our network and attract industry-leading talent - all while operating on a break-even basis.