La Sociedad
How the money works at Mosaic –
where it comes from, where it goes, and who it belongs to.
We are not raising money yet.
Mosaic Accelerator Co-operative is not incorporated, and nothing on this page is an offer to sell securities or an invitation to invest. When the co-operative is set up and its documents have been through counsel, we will say so here first. Until then, the ways to help are real and open today: sponsor a founder, or be counted as a future member.
Most businesses were never built for venture capital.
Venture capital is designed for about one business in a hundred. The other ninety-nine – the ones our founders build – need something else, and the usual alternatives ask for things many of them do not have: collateral, a personal guarantee, a credit history that looks like someone else’s.
The problem is rarely the size of the cheque. It is what a lender asks for before writing it.
What a VC round would cost you →A circle of ten women, and a piano.
In the Bronx in the early 1950s, my great-grandmother Ezequiela belonged to a lending circle of about ten Puerto Rican women who knew each other well. They called it La Sociedad. Each put in about ten dollars a week, and each week the pot – around five hundred dollars – went to whoever needed it, or whose turn it was. Nobody paid interest. Whoever took the pot kept paying in until it was repaid, and the women chose among themselves who would hold the money.
When Ezequiela’s turn came, she was about sixty-nine and raising five grandchildren. She spent it on a piano. My mother was eight when she came home from school and found it standing in the living room, brand new. It carried her to Juilliard and a life in music.
I never met Ezequiela; she died the year before I was born. I am four generations downstream of that circle. Mosaic’s model is that circle, grown up.
– Rochelle Grayson, founder
Open to everyone at the start, earned as you go.
This is how the co-operative’s circles will work once it exists. Nobody needs a network to start, because the circles build one – a newcomer climbs on behaviour, which is the barrier venture capital never removes.
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The open communityStart here
No gate. Anyone can belong – the content, the events, the people. Everything starts here.
Whose money: none changes hands.
- Apply to join
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Trust circles
You apply to join. Small weekly contributions, the way La Sociedad worked, among people who share something. A first network, and a first track record.
Whose money: the circle’s own.
- Nominated from within
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Funding circles
Larger pots, with a Madrina in every one. You are nominated from within, and the nomination is earned through your standing in a trust circle – so a founder who arrives knowing nobody can still climb.
Whose money: the circle’s own.
- Established standing
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Investor circles and the revolving fund
Community investors in direct relationship with founders who have climbed the ladder. The amounts are deliberately small, so a neighbour can sit beside an angel.
Whose money: Investor Members’ capital, and La Vuelta.
Alongside every rung
A Madrina in every funding circle
A community supporter whose seat is there to witness, and to advocate for the founder. Not a judge – the founder’s person in the room.
A standing record the founder owns
Payment history, a Madrina’s notes, peer testimony – and the founder can always read what is written about them. It is portable: they can take it to a credit union, a landlord, a partner. It is theirs, not ours.
Six steps, and the last one points back to the first.
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The circle pays in.
Members of a circle put money into a shared pot, the way Ezequiela’s circle did.
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A founder is funded.
In stages, on milestones, with a Madrina witnessing. The circle is the due diligence: not a pitch or a data room, but behaviour, watched over time, by people who know the founder.
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Revenue repays it.
A share of revenue, capped. A slow month means a smaller payment. No equity, no collateral, no personal guarantee.
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The pot refills.
Every dollar that comes back goes out to the next founder.
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Philanthropy takes the first loss.
That is what makes lending without collateral survivable for a community investor.
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Investor returns are capped.
By the co-operative’s own rules, so capital can never become the point. How the returns work
La Sociedad is who we are.
La Vuelta is what the money does.
Once the co-operative exists, La Vuelta will be its community-capital fund: money that can only ever do one thing. What comes back from founders, what members choose to waive, and what donors give all go into it, and none of it can ever be paid out to members. It exists to lend to the next founder, and the next.
Investor Members’ capital sits beside it, as shares in the co-operative, on the terms set out on the co-op page.
Could a small circle of neighbours use it to buy the next child’s piano?
Every way we move money has to pass that one test. If it does not, it has drifted toward extraction, and we do not do it.
Today, Mosaic Accelerator does not lend or invest.
Mosaic Accelerator is a fee-based program, operated by Lustrio Media Inc. It does not lend, invest, or look after money on anyone’s behalf. Once the co-operative is incorporated and counsel has approved its documents, the circles, member shares and La Vuelta can begin. We are not taking money, pledges or commitments: being counted records that you are interested, and nothing more.
Three things you can do today
Sponsor a founder
Eleven ways, from a community-supported place to travel to Our Gathering. Every gift gets a receipt; Mosaic is not a charity, so never a charitable tax receipt.
The eleven ways →Be counted
As a future member of the co-operative. It commits you to nothing, and everyone counted by December 31, 2026 is a Founding Member.
Be counted →Hear it first
When there is something to join, The Village Post says so first, to everyone at once.
Join The Village Post →We did not invent this.
Lending circles are older than banks, and they still work. Coralus has reported that roughly 95% of its interest-free, unsecured, five-year loans – chosen by peers rather than secured by collateral – were repaid. Relationship-led lending works.
Mosaic Accelerator is operated by Lustrio Media Inc. and is becoming Mosaic Accelerator Co-operative, a British Columbia co-operative association. Nothing on this page is an offer to sell securities or an invitation to invest, and nothing here is financial or legal advice. The founding documents are drafts under review by counsel and will change.