how destroysaas itself works

what it is today

destroysaas is a personal project. it was started by ara t. howard — a software engineer who has spent 30 years building tools for other people and wants to see small businesses stop renting software they should own.

there is no corporation behind this. no venture capital. no board of directors. no investors to pay back. right now it's one person with a domain name, a codebase, and a thesis.

we think that's worth being honest about.

becoming an LCA

destroysaas is in the process of formalizing as a Colorado Limited Cooperative Association under the Uniform Limited Cooperative Association Act (C.R.S. Title 7, Article 58). we're eating our own cooking — the platform that tells every cell to organize as a cooperative is becoming one itself.

the structure is a multi-stakeholder cooperative with two primary member classes: business members (companies that fund and use the software) and cell members (small product teams that design, build, and operate it). structural decisions require approval from both classes independently — neither can outvote the other. day-to-day operations are delegated to an elected board composed of members from both classes. no investor class. no platform class. no middleman.

our formation documents are public and open for review. this is how we do things — in the open, with trust as the foundation.

how it's funded

right now, destroysaas is funded by sweat equity. one person's time, paid for by one person's savings. there are no investors, no grants, and no revenue.

the long-term model: dues from all members fund operations, the reserve fund, and the core platform (shared infrastructure). project pledges from businesses fund cell budgets. access fees from new members amortize build costs and are credited back to original pledgers. the cooperative takes zero on project pledges. dues and access fees fund operations. pledges fund projects. that's it.

if destroysaas ever takes outside money, it will be disclosed publicly. if it ever changes structure, that will be disclosed too. the thesis is that transparency scales better than control.

the code

the destroysaas platform codebase is publicly available. the source code for software built by cells under cooperative contracts is collectively owned by the cooperative — not open-source in the permissive sense. members can read, run, modify, and fork it. non-members cannot. the legal mechanism builds on established source-available frameworks (BSL/FSL), adapted for cooperative ownership.

this isn't just ideology — it's insurance. if destroysaas as a project disappears tomorrow, every member can fork the code, export their data, and hire any developer to run it. the platform practices the same fork freedom it preaches.

destroysaas is a personal project today. the first wave of projects will be seeded by the founding team. founding members shape the initial project roadmap, get the best access-fee terms, and have a permanent seat at the table. what destroysaas won't become is a company that extracts from the people it claims to serve. that's the one thing we've decided.