Venturing, for me, is primarily PHILANTHROPIC. Growthy NEW technology-intensive start-up ventures that achieve multi-million-dollar valuations through bootstrapping and then with additional outside capital achieve multi-billion-dollar valuations are the most efficient way to expand the pie for everyone, so that it’s possible do REAL philanthropy.

Greater economic value does not come from a stagnant asset and not much value comes from producing something that is not needed by a free market … the economics of zero-sum, ultra-conservative, idea-averse technologies are ultimately not just depressive, but ultimately lead to wars and destruction … rather, philanthropic value comes from the techology that expands the pie, from increasing levels of overall value by taking away problems, removing constraints and adding technologies that make humans more productive than they could contemplate being before.

Since we are technologists, of course, we do things that are purely philanthropic in a technological sense, like contributing to different free and open source software/hardware projects … projects are excellent ways to learn about techologies BY ACTUALLY those technologies in collaboration with others, but MOSTLY WE LEARN BY INTERACTING WITH OTHERS WHO ARE ALSO CREATING THOSE TECHNOLOGIES … free and open source is probably the best educational institution ever invented … being a technological open sourcist is fundamentally philanthropic.

But open source projects themselves are not actual PRODUCTS or SERVICES … building monetizeable PRODUCTS and SERVICES is what building ventures is about … building products and services that are good enough that people actually part with their money to PAY for using them is HARD … but creating self-sustaining going concerns based upon a monetizable product/services that is better any product/service it competes against is the most efficient way to do GENUINE, REAL, SUSTAINABLE philanthropy.

In other words, the money-making part of venturing is about PROVIDING JOBS and PRODUCTS THAT BETTER THAN COMPETITORS to YIELD INVESTMENT RETURNS THAT OFFER THOSE A WAY WITH SAVED INCOME TO STAY AHEAD OF INFLATION is inherently philanthropic … because of the incomes and value that is created … a rising tide lifts all boats … and ultimately that rising time makes charity, although the best form of charity is always going to be DIRECT.

The ventures that we contemplate building are the kind of bootstrapped startups that can become unicorns. We are primarily interested in higher, rapid growth and much less concerned about throwing off substantial streams of continual income … in the way that developing apartments would produce continual streams of income, although we certain recognize the immense value created by producing better housing alternatives and providing maintenance/upkeep services for appartment tenants.

Accordingly, the ventures we are interest are SELF-SUSTAINING rapidly-growing ventures that continously invest in research to develop MORE innovative and MORE useful new products/services [which cannibalize or remove the need for old product/services].

Growthy enterprises also tend to throw off huge amounts of informational externalities … in a nutshell, they make other new ventures more productive, more innovative.

Pur IDEAL venture would be one that sustained itself infinitely because it provided such awesome value that it paid employees well, rewarded investors sufficiently through capital appreciation of a growth stock but never reported much of an annual profit, although its annual revenues were increasing significantly, because the venture was continually re-investing its current income into better future growth opportunities than any other investment provided … so that the venture would be a more philanthropically profitable venture [in terms of more jobs and better paying jobs and radically-increased value per $ in its products/services] long into the future.

Our process of ACTIVE LEARNING is about WIN-WIN endeavors that expand the pie and advance human productivity … we have practically no interest in crop farming, for example, because it is a zero-sum game … it does not expand the pie, it just divides it up differently.

We can and do look at better intelligence gathering systems so we can better study the common factors driving the 1200 or so billion-dollar startup unicorns that have come into existence in the last ten to twenty years … but MOSTLY we are interested in the kinds of ventures that can grow into being million-dollar startups that will grow into ten-million and hundred-million dollar startups on their way to being unicorns.

Active intelligence gathering and learning means getting our hands dirty and finding the areas of frustration and pain … by actually DOING THINGS and BUILDING THINGS [at zero or very low cost] … with the **ultimate intention of making serious investments in things that actually make human beings better off. **

We do ventures in order PRIMARILY to research investment themes

EXCEPT that … but VENTURES must create value for their users; so the best ventures of the next decade will necessarily be about SUSTAINABLE philanthropy.

There is no form of sustainable philanthropy that is better than something that can be built that will serve customers by improving customer productivity WITHOUT causing any negative externalities or pollutants and will do this EFFICIENTLY without burning up ANY [or very many] resources … quite often, the very best thing that any human endeavor could possibly do is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, ie to just sit back and watch as we let our Creators process work in the Universe.

We efficiently develop near-zero-cost proto-ventures in order understand an industry and understand which are the best long-term competitors in an industry and to invest in superior organizations … if we cannot find a superior organization, we MIGHT attempt to create one from scratch, but PRIMARILY we are doing ventures to research an investment theme or thesis.

Venturing is our process of ACTIVE LEARNING … getting dirty by actually DOING THINGS and BUILDING THINGS [at zero or very low cost] … the point is to understand the issues that impede productivity growth for masses of human beings … thus reserching, learing, building things that might work [or finding out why the ideas don’t work] is about engaging the world economically, culturally, thematically … rather than simply being drunken tourist sunning ourselves on a beach.

We try to do VENTURES in an intensely practical, near-zero-cost-to-launch manner … by exploring possible business enterprise ideas (ie, self-sustaining ventures with products that offer customers something they need and will pay for or what is generally referred to as the MVP with a compelling value proposition) … but we also look at creative or scientific research or different open source venture philantropies that could really move the needle. We strongly favor open source.

Listing of ventures

Our aim is to read and use curated lists and AI to read faster, more broadly, more deeply, to discern patterns better … we dogfood our reading in order to assist us in gathering intelligence … our goal is to have roughly 100-200 brainstormed in the hopper, that’s what our annotified curating reading lists are for … we actually only focus on about 10-20 venture themes each a month … but, in practice, we try to only one FOCUS on damned thing at a time.

0) MZB.me … the strictly personal overhead, necessary for balance and direction, mostly about enjoying life while getting older

MarkBruns.com
MarkBruns.github.io
AncientGuy.Fitness / ancientguy.com/org … why we read the classics and listen to history/biography audio books for entertainment and balance for the AI and engineering work we do in our ventures

1) Annotify.APP

Listify.wtf
Rrssistant.com/org
SheepDewg.py
annotify.net
annotify.org
annotifyapp.com
TWFTR.org

2) azyn.ch … time mgmt and productivity improvement

asynch.work
azynch.app
azynch.com
reviewable parametric design … sktch.org/us (see ENGR.co)
86400.guru
86400.co
86400.work
plyp.us
kweex.cc … making others into 10X-ers
kweex.cloud
kweex.org

3) ENGR.co … parametric engineering validation/verification and code review

sktch.org
sktch.us
QualityFellow
Mr.RootCause
PWR.fm
Join FREECad dev community
Nanotoolworks.com
startupcookbook.us … productify your skills, beyond open source dev, work at developing a product
crnc.work … branding your professional skills, vs becoming a w2-slave
GYG.be

4) Salebarn LLC … free markets and competition

Bidm.AT
auct.us
crowdliness.com/net/org
salebarn.org
salebarn.us

5) SQL.ag … resource recovery and optimization

soilrXiv.org
soilqualitylab.com
soilqualitylaboratory.com
AdvancedPyrolytics.com … resource recovery
WhoresRadish
CoffeeRxiv.org/wtf/com

6) Funnier.Be … there’s just too much stupid shit; when life gives you lemons

BabylonMurderHornet.org
Doynk.me
clichesaur.us
clichesaurus.com
clichesaurus.net
clichesaurus.org

7) CloudKernel.org … practical exploitation of IT and scalable compute resources

OS … CoreOS riff … decentralized, but not really for massive hubs cloudkernel.com cloudkernel.net cloudkernel.org Moby Buildah MySQL … LAMP stack, but more layer-ey as in containers … tighter, more observable … more htop-ey or bpf-ey without the stackiness using VAST.ai, Lambda cloud, Paperspace, et al

8) BRUNO.science … pre-print machine learning and Git distributed VCS

Git, Git, Git and more Git … eg co-pilot e-xiv.org exiv.org exiv.xyz gitdeep.com gitdeep.net gitdeep.org gitrxiv.com gitrxiv.net gitrxiv.org Ollam.ai HuggingFace

9) creVass.org …

DRAIN.tips
IowaBreeze.org
Stinxjet.com … reproducing samples for smell, taste, carbon monoxide, hydrogen sulfide, soil quality, water quality, air quality, etc.
TRIZ.tips
accidentalinvention.com
frgl.be … resource recovery … fxrz …optimizing resource recovery
nanotoolworks … makering … scientists blow their own glass
NOSE.life … nanofabricated omni sensing electrochemistry (NOSE) is about nanobiochemical sensing and the metrology of nanobiochemical sensing …

10) BRUNO.solutions

LuckSurface.com/org/net
LyonCountyRepublicans.com/org/net … what’s so Lyon about them?
SustainFund.org/net
violenceinterrupt.us
tougher.be
Greenspace.GROUP
PrairieNative.com
Diff.wtf
diffgraph.org
diffversity.com/net/org/wtf