BUILD FRONTIERS: MANIFESTO

Students, like me, enter universities hoping to change the world. We are led to believe that universities are catalysts that will propel us to necessary frontiers. But what I've come to realize is the opposite.

You do not learn how to think. You do not learn how to dream.

You learn what to think. You learn about the dreams of others.

But you do not learn how to build it for yourself.

For too long, we've been led astray. Once the convergence of the greatest minds, universities are now assembly lines of conformity. In its quest for standardization, the modern education system now pushes individuals towards a societal 'normal' path, inadvertently stifling the very spark of genius it claims to nurture; unintentionally crushing the geniuses and contrarians who sought otherwise.

Everyone at universities started out hoping to make a difference.

Only single digits try at the end.

And the reality is that there are very few places where difference can be made at scale. If you want to change the trajectory of future generations, choose entrepreneurship.

For the past 20 years, entrepreneurship has revolved around software – dominated by the narrative that software will eat the world. And for the past 20 years, this was true.

There was nowhere else to be but in the digital world.

Back then, if you were smart or ambitious or driven, you grew up hearing about Google's Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, or Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg. You were propelled by the waves of software, and it pushed you to work on software.

It's where people have been winning your entire life.

But 20 years is a long time for technology. Since then, most people I know now carry pocket-computers more powerful than the ones that landed Armstrong and Aldrin on the moon. Frontier technologies that were impossible before are now just barely possible.

But there is a world of difference between the impossible and the near-impossible.

And know this: the future from here on out will be built by solving problems in the physical world. In deeptech. In atoms with bits.

Already, this is being played out by a small subset of founders in the 2010s era. Almost suddenly, there is an influx of founders starting deeptech companies, tackling near-impossible challenges in areas such as nuclear energy, space, and biotech – all unthinkable just 30 years prior, when anything non-software sent investors running in the other direction.

I'm growing up hearing about SpaceX's Elon Musk. With Anduril's Palmer Luckey. With Terraform Industries, Relativity Space, Hadrian, Varda, AstroForge, Fuse Energy, Cruise, Boom Supersonic, Figure, Solugen, and so, so much more.

It is these companies that will inspire the next generation.

You – the brightest minds, the boldest dreamers, the relentless builders of the new generation – must build frontiers.

To reject the consensus.

To fight against the natural regression to the mean.

To pursue dreams!

To pursue near-impossibles!

To imagine a future beyond the constraints of our present.

And do so not because they are easy, but because they are hard.

To that end, the goal of Build Frontiers is to:

1) Consolidate talent who believe that building things that matter matter to them.

2) To push towards human progressivism and a new age of scientific renaissance.

3) To redirect capital flow and talent toward ventures that build things that matter.

Build Frontiers will bring together talent. We aim to accelerate the collisions of two highly ambitious people. We aim to accelerate history. As Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak have. Or Orville Wright and Wilbur Wright. Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Jeff Bezos and Andy Jassy. The list goes on and on.

Deeptech is difficult.

So yes, you will lose and you will fail.

But if you win, you will win big. Bigger than ever. A single breakthrough will define an entire era of human progress. SpaceX has.

Will you be next?

The only mistake now is to play it safe and build things that don't matter.