Ken Lewis moved from Grenada to New York City in 1989 at a time when he says employment options for immigrants were limited. "You either got into construction or drove a taxi," he says. Alongside grad school study, he drove a cab and remembers being alarmed at drivers footing the bill for all their expenses, from gas to vehicle repairs. "Then in 2011, Uber came along and everything got worse, as drivers ran from the yellow taxi industry in the hope of finally making more money for themselves and their families," he says. "We invested our life savings into buying cars, but actually, we were just buying the tools to exploit us further."

In the following years, Lewis was among the rideshare drivers who found they were losing more money than they were making. According to studies from March 2018, once Uber and Lyft drivers had factored in insurance, maintenance, repairs, fuel, and other driving costs, 54 percent of them made profits that fell below the minimum wage, and 8 percent lost money doing the job. Lewis recalls how, in 2018, several drivers with Uber and other for-hire companies died by suicide after experiencing increasing debt and financial worries.

At the start of the pandemic conditions worsened, and self-employed gig workers around the world were left with no safety net as they saw their work drying up and became afraid to continue working. Uber and Lyft eventually offered drivers sick pay benefits, but they did not qualify for them unless they had a positive result from a Covid-19 test or an order from a medical professional asking them to self-isolate, which were very difficult to obtain at that time. This meant that, in that period, many drivers were forced to pick between avoiding the virus and making a living. In California, unemployment support for gig economy workers was eventually funded by federal taxpayers instead of state employment funds and the companies themselves.

Collective bargaining for better working conditions was a regular discussion among Lewis' network, but ultimately, they decided they had to create alternative. "We had to try to own our own company. It felt like just an app between us and choosing our own destiny," says Lewis. So, he mapped out a potential ownership structure with other rideshare drivers and labor organizers. They launched the Drivers Cooperative in December 2020, which aimed to give drivers a greater portion of their earnings, have profits redistributed back to them with an annual dividend, and give them assistance with auto loan refinancing. They developed the Co-Op Ride app soon after, and within a few months, had been downloaded 40,000 times. Its drivers earn approximately 8 to 10 percent more than those working for Uber or Lyft, and with 6,000 members it is the largest worker-owned cooperative in the US.

In order to expand, venture capital isn't an option, because that buys equity ownership. The team behind the Drivers Cooperative had to bootstrap by taking out loans, and it took a year to raise the $300,000 needed to launch. But the organization did go on to raise $2.8 million through crowdfunding in 2022, which will be used to scale and to focus on trips for overlooked passenger groups, such as people with disabilities. The Drivers Cooperative is appealing for volunteers in the coming months, especially Big Tech employees who can donate their time and knowledge to help them grow. It plans to roll out a three-month fellowship, hoping to attract highly skilled tech workers who are in between highly paid jobs. They would earn a monthly stipend to learn about the platform cooperative model in exchange for enhancing the Co-Op Ride app and imparting wisdom about the inner workings of a larger, traditional tech firm.

Given the situation above, what would possibly be the best technique to upgrade or rebuild the worker-owned app? Explain the reasons it was chosen and describe steps required.