> How would a business like this get started? Usually the owner is the one who invests a lot of their own time and/or money into the business to get it off the ground in the first place. Would we be asking workers to pony up in those early years when failure is likely?

In Canada, there are 'Labour Sponsored Venture Capital Corporations' with union overseers to do this and special tax deductions for investing money through these.

They are, of course, a giant failure that neither provides easier access to capital for entrepreneurs nor generates any notable return for investors.