Our Motivation

Over the past fifty years, an Information Technology revolution has occurred, with profits from productivity gains accruing to the top 1%. Since the early 1970s, their wealth has steadily increased relative to that of everyone else. For the most part, the rest of us are still getting along, albeit with somewhat lower expectations than our parents and grandparents.

Traditionally, tech breakthroughs have been funded by the military. We need an alternative way to fund great ideas, especially those on the other side of those super-wide “Valleys of Death” that venture capitalists deem unbridgeable. On the far side lie the metaphorical Himalayas with much higher price-to-performance ratios, better quality of life, and hopes for the youth: a promising future for increasingly beautiful, complex, and sustainably evolving life on Earth.

While the rich have the means to innovate, not everyone has a good appreciation of what the people truly need. The 1% may want supersonic private jets and beds in first class; we need bunk beds in economy class. Billionaires get press, but they do not have a monopoly on the best ideas. Nobody is above suspicion, especially not those who have amassed the most enormous fortunes. Instead of aiming to make himself enormously wealthy, JFC’s creator plans to raise the bar for the creation of public benefits, concurrently creating the most valuable foundation in the world.

Plan

JFC hires domain-specific experts to create competitions that foster first-to-market start-up teams and fast followers.

Since the JFC is a non-profit foundation, the funds are quasi-public. Each prize payout will put the winning work in the public domain.

Investing

Pledge now to donate and invest in first-in-class and first-to-market teams funded by ME.

A donation of X dollars will qualify as an investment of X dollars in a fund run by ME, the venture firm that runs JFC’s endowment.