Our thesis is two-part — one, that we know how to find the most ambitious young people before anyone else can, and two, that the world desperately needs a lot of them, brought together with the right resources to solve humanity's most pressing problems.
Ambitious, agentic people are not always obvious to find at the early stages. They are not always loud, they are not always deliberate in their outwardness, maybe they don't want to be found. There is no formula, unlike what Silicon Valley would like for you to believe. Seeing their lives up close (at places like SF Parc) has shown us that there is a lot more to execution than what can be codified; it is always a unique, surprising combination of traits in each person we meet.
Our intuition is simple: We fund those young people that strike us, those whose lives and minds have shaped and colored ours. We back founders on a mission to impact humanity, those who envelop us with their ambition, and who have left the world around them all the more vibrant.
Historically, the most critical innovations have occurred within networks of talented engineers and inventors. And the world needs this kind of innovation now more than ever; the next Bell Labs or Xerox PARC will be started in the next five years. In fact, the ingredients to such collectives are being started in the basements, garages, and universities of the most future-thinking minds of our generation. We think we can accelerate this vision by bringing together the right minds to solve the problems of the future.
Oftentimes, these people need a first believer to get them on their feet. We've seen what such support can catalyze at places like The Residency; we've helped build it and several similar communities. We can enable exceptional individuals, creating a catalyst for the kinds of moments for gestalt such institutions of the past provided. These are futurists, strong builders with a stronger vision, and curiously intense (or intensely curious) inventors.
We fund people with deep convictions about the world and what it will look like. There is a future better than what we can imagine, and we will accelerate it.