Joey DeBruin

On the other end of specificity, idea machines are less broad than paradigm shifts, which are widespread, headless, decentralized shifts in cultural norms and attitudes due to changes in systemic conditions. For example, web3 is a paradigm shift, but it’s too big and distributed to be an idea machine.

Everyday, we land on the internet without a map. Instead, search is the dominant wayfinding paradigm. It is the information equivalent of exploring the local area at ground level. A search is a hypothesis, an instance of trial and error. With enough searches, we can usually get where we're going. However, we lack the overall context of how... See more

One of our theories is to seek out opportunities where there’s a major change. Major dislocation in the way things are. Wherever there’s turmoil, there's indecision. And wherever there’s indecision, there’s opportunity. So we look for the confusion when the big companies are confused. When the other venture groups are confused. That’s the time to... See more

If philanthropy is pluralistic – and, like any idea marketplace, that is one of its virtues – then there is no single school of thought that can “solve” complex social questions, because everyone has a different vision for the world. If you’re pro-pluralism in startups, you should also be pro-pluralism in philanthropy.

An Idea Machine is a self-sustaining organism that contains all the parts needed to turn ideas into outcomes:- It starts with a distinct ideology, which becomes a memetic engine that drives the formation of a community- The community’s members start generating ideas amongst themselvesEventually, they form an agenda, which articulates how the... See more

Why would any company pay when they could get software for free? And yet we saw the opposite: open source software enabled an explosion in software products that yes, people paid for.