By Kenzie Love
Dream Bike Co-op originated from a group of friends in Toronto who were involved in the cycling and game development communities. Cofounder Brendan Lehman was inspired by the cooperative model of other businesses in the cycling community, including as a member of Send It Courier, and saw an opportunity to engage their passions for cycling and gaming.
“Just through working there and being interested in bikes and getting involved in the cycling community I thought “Why not try to see what we can do to combine them all together?” they say.
Lehman was drawn to the worker co-op model because of their negative experiences with traditional power dynamics in the game industry. They appreciated the non-hierarchical structure and the sense of community that a worker co-op provides.
“Coming from some jobs in the game industry where the power dynamics are all out of whack, company priorities are not transparent and the workers just don’t have a say in what happens or how they’re treated, I always thought that if I started my own game company I would make every effort to not recreate those bad dynamics,” they say. “And all the signs pointed to a co-operative.”
Lehman and the Co-op’s two other members have appreciated the chance to realize this vision as they’ve brought Dream Bike to life, drafting bylaws and holding their annual general meeting. The challenges they’ve encountered in the process, they say, stem less from being a worker co-op than from the nature of the video game industry today. Membership in CWCF has provided support and resources, including a technical assistance grant, but Dream Bike still has to grapple with a competitive landscape within which it can be difficult to gain funding and traction.
“There’s all the work you have to do upfront to get things ready, to look nice so you can push your snowball around and try to get things to grow,” they say.
To that end, Dream Bike is currently polishing their prototype of a bike racing game, and exploring the possibility of a crowdfunding campaign. In the meantime, Lehman advises others looking to start a worker co-op to connect with the co-op community and utilize available resources, emphasizing that “the cooperative community supports each other.”