Build what
matters.
We build and back ventures for the future of work, wealth and wellbeing. Each one has to answer to empathy and to innovation.
Portfolio
Minipack
Back office and AI automation for small businesses
A small operator's back office, run by subject-matter experts and AI automation. The owner gets the admin days back and returns to the work the business was built on.
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Caravan
Ethical private equity marketplace
Community investors put money into operating businesses and real estate near them, on terms published before anyone commits. Offerings run through Caravan Funds Portal, LLC, a funding portal registered with the SEC and a member of FINRA, under Regulation Crowdfunding.
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SEPATRA
Sellers · Packers · Transporters
Independent sellers, packers and transporters share leads and capacity in a commons they are meant to own. The aim is for the margin on each load to stay with the people who move it.
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4-Week-Dojo
Innovation-as-a-Service · Venture-Studio-as-a-Service
A team brings a thesis and leaves four weeks later with something shipped, or a clear reason to stop. One engagement at a time, on a monthly subscription.
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Freedom Fund
Pay off the loan. Keep the business.
The fund buys part of a U.S. small business or a family's home, and that money pays off the bank loan or the mortgage. The interest stops. A Rule 506(c) fund run by Caravan Capital, for verified accredited investors.
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E.I.
From A.I. to E.I.
An open framework of nine questions for anything that gets built: an A.I. system, a team, a business. Free to use, change and build on under the MIT License.
Open the frameworkEmpathy &
Innovation
Empathy without innovation is a sentiment. Innovation without empathy scales harm. One without the other fails.
Empathy asks whose day a venture changes. Innovation asks whether it can be built. We ask both, in the same room, before anything gets built.
With empathy alone, the right people are at the table and nothing ships. With innovation alone, the product ships and its cost lands on someone who was never asked.
Purpose, Playbook,
Patient Capital
Should it exist?
Before anything gets built, we write down who is better off, by how much, and how we will know. Then we write the line this venture will not cross, while refusing still costs nothing.
Can it be built?
Short cycles, each ending in a decision to pivot or persevere, with the people it affects in the room. Zero to one is where ventures burn their money, so the method exists to burn less of it.
On whose clock?
Equity with no interest, no leverage and no exit date. It suits a venture that will never return a hundred times over, and will still be standing, still locally owned, in twenty years.
Chapters
Headquarters in the United States. The first chapter abroad is in Dhaka.
United States
Headquarters in the Washington, D.C. region
Federal program offices, national labs and research universities sit close enough together that the people a problem touches can be in one room on a Tuesday.
Bangladesh
Dhaka, and the first campus outside the United States
Operators, financiers, clinicians, regulators and suppliers all work within a short radius of Dhaka, so building with people in the room is a matter of scheduling.
One experiment in the field for a year, measured from the first day. The result goes public, whether it says build or stop.
Three lessons from 81:26
What five years of research and building taught us, before CEI.
ReadPurpose, Playbook, Patient Capital
The three things every venture we build stands on.
ReadE.I. is now open source
The framework is public under the MIT License, for anyone to use and build on.
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