The Pudding
Liana Banyan is built for individual members. Five dollars a year. One person. One Helm. Twelve doors. That is the foundation, and it is where the cooperative’s soul lives.
But companies have souls too. Small ones, anyway. The bakery on the corner that employs nine people. The roofing crew with twelve trucks. The tutoring center with twenty instructors. The machine shop that makes custom parts for local contractors. These are not faceless corporations. They are businesses run by people who could use a cooperative platform just as much as any individual — maybe more.
When a company joins Liana Banyan, it does not get a bigger version of a personal Helm. It gets a Kingdom.
A Kingdom is a dedicated business presence on the platform with tools designed for how companies actually operate. It starts with the same twelve doors every member gets, and then it adds the things companies need: team management, volume ordering, batch scheduling, branded storefronts, and B2B-specific project tools.
The first thing a company gets is a branded Storefront. Not a profile page — a shop. The bakery can display its full menu, pricing, ordering schedule, and delivery radius. The roofing crew can list its services, certifications, coverage area, and seasonal availability. The machine shop can publish its capabilities, materials, tolerances, and lead times. The Storefront is a fully functional business presence, searchable by other members and other companies.
The second thing is team management. A company with twelve employees can bring all twelve onto the platform under the company’s Kingdom. Each employee gets their own Cue Card — their personal reputation — but their work done under the Kingdom banner is also visible on the company’s collective profile. When the roofing crew completes a job, both the individual crew members and the company earn reputation. The company’s ADAPT Score is an aggregate of its team’s performance. Strong team, strong score.
The third thing is volume pricing. The Cost+20% floor applies to all transactions on the platform, but companies that purchase in volume — raw materials, supplies, wholesale goods — access cooperative bulk rates. Ten bakeries ordering flour through the platform pay less per pound than one bakery ordering alone, because the cooperative aggregates demand and negotiates with suppliers on behalf of all ten. The savings flow to the companies. The cooperative takes its Cost+20% margin. Everyone wins.
The fourth thing is the 20% dedication. This is the mechanism that makes the Kingdom relationship reciprocal. When a company joins, it dedicates 20% of its platform activity to cooperative projects. That does not mean 20% of revenue. It means 20% of the work the company does through the platform contributes to shared cooperative goals. The roofing crew might spend 20% of its platform hours on a cooperative housing project. The bakery might supply 20% of its platform orders to a community meal program. The machine shop might dedicate 20% of its platform jobs to making parts for cooperative infrastructure.
The 20% is not charity. It is participation. The company earns Credits and Marks for its dedicated work the same way it earns for its commercial work. The difference is that the dedicated work serves cooperative priorities rather than individual customers. It is the company’s way of saying: “We are part of this. Not just selling to it.”
The fifth thing is custom presence across the nine portal surfaces. A company can appear on lianabanyan.com (the marketplace), on .biz (the business captain surface), and on whichever other surfaces match its operations. A company that does charitable work can have a presence on .org. A company with a network coordination role can appear on .net. The Kingdom spans surfaces. One company. Many doors.
The sixth thing is the Bridge system adapted for business operations. A personal member might have three Bridges for three projects. A company might have thirty — one for each active contract, each internal initiative, each cooperative dedication project. The Kingdom dashboard shows all of them, with roll-up views for the company owner or operations manager. Revenue, Credits, Marks, ADAPT trends, team utilization — all in one view.
What companies do NOT get is extraction rights. A company on Liana Banyan cannot take more than it contributes. The 83.3% creator-keeps ratio applies to every transaction. The Cost+20% floor prevents price dumping. The cooperative structure means no company — regardless of size — can use the platform to undercut, monopolize, or exploit individual members. The Kingdom is a guest in the cooperative, not a lord over it.
This is the critical design choice. Liana Banyan could have built a platform where companies are first-class citizens and individuals are users. That is what every other marketplace does. Instead, individuals are first-class citizens and companies are participants. Companies get powerful tools. Companies get real value. But companies operate within the same rules as everyone else. Cost+20%. One-way valve. Cooperative governance. No exceptions for size.
The proof is in the pudding: a local machine shop with eight employees joins Liana Banyan and builds its Kingdom. Within a month, its Storefront is receiving orders from three other member businesses. Its team’s Cue Cards are building reputation from completed jobs. Its 20% dedication goes toward manufacturing parts for a cooperative tool library (a Diamond project in the Neighborhood Tribe). The shop’s volume flour orders — wait, wrong business. The shop’s volume steel orders come through the cooperative’s aggregated purchasing, saving 12% over its previous supplier. The owner checks the Kingdom dashboard: thirty active Bridges, eight employees with rising ADAPT scores, Credits flowing in from commercial work and dedication work alike. She did not join a vendor marketplace. She joined a cooperative. And her Kingdom is part of it.
This is NOT Pudding
The B2B architecture connects to the Storefront system, the team management module, the cooperative bulk purchasing mechanism, and the 20% dedication model. The relationship between individual members and company Kingdoms is governed by the same Star Chamber rules that govern all platform activity. The full design — including Kingdom onboarding, team ADAPT aggregation, and the multi-surface presence system — is documented in the Business Captain architecture papers accessible through the .biz portal.
Read the full paper on Cephas → [Business Captain Architecture]
Depth Layers
| Layer | Name | What You Get |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Skipping Stone | This article title + one-sentence hook |
| 2 | The Proof is in the Pudding | You are here — the accessible version |
| 3 | This is NOT Pudding | Full B2B architecture paper |
| 4 | Reading Beacon | Your position saved, shareable on your Cue Card |
By the Numbers
- 20% dedication to cooperative projects — the reciprocity mechanism
- 83.3% creator keeps on every transaction — companies included
- Cost+20% floor — no price dumping, no race to the bottom
- 9 portal surfaces a Kingdom can appear on
- $5/year per member — company employees are members too
- 0 extraction rights — companies play by the same rules as individuals
The Spoonful
Companies get a Kingdom: branded Storefront, team management, volume pricing, multi-surface presence, and thirty Bridges worth of project tools. In exchange, they dedicate 20% to cooperative work. Same rules as individuals. Same Cost+20% floor. Same one-way valve. The Kingdom is powerful — but it bows to the cooperative, not the other way around.
Canonical numbers: 2,161 innovations | 195 Crown Jewels | $5/year | 83.3% creator keeps | Cost+20%