Francistogram.
A Moonshot: Building our City
July 10, 2020 • 14 min read
Apollo - Our Moonshot Application
I’m applying to Apollo’s Moonshot Program
In an effort to be fully transparent with my intentions, below is the application that I will send in on 7/11
If you have any edits to suggest I’d appreciate hearing them
This community is as much yours as it is mine
Living Document
This post will continue to be updated as I make more progress and refine the idea
I’ve open sourced my blog and every change can be viewed here if you’d like to see how the idea has evolved
What We’re Building
We’re in the process of building a community in the cloud
Find like minded people across the world who hold similar values
Work together remotely to build trust in each other and the community
A foundation of trust results in the best chance of success
Eventually, we materialize into the real world as a charter city
What We’ve Built
We’re following the strategy @balajis has laid out
Create an Instagram Community
Step one and two have mostly been done through my Instagram stories
Instagram stories are the ideal place to cultivate a safe and social environment
1. Number of Followers
I have ~1500 followers built up over the years between friends I’ve made and, for a year, thinking I wanted to be a photographer with a following
I believe around 1500 to be the sweet spot
Too many followers and others will follow because of the social validation
Too few followers and others will quickly assume you provide no value
Having somewhere between 1000 and 2000 forces those on my profile to come to their own conclusion
They have to ask themselves if I provide enough value to justify a follow
2. Degrees of Separation
Everyone is one degree of separation away from me and at most two degrees away from each other
The most trusting communities will have the fewest degrees of separation between any two people
3. Initial Follow Filter
For the most part, I’ve added value to the life of those who follow me in one way or another
4. Story Filter
Stories, unlike a feed, more closely represent an explicit decision to consume
Those who want to follow the content I post will continue to watch
Those who don’t will eventually block, mute, unfollow, or Instagram’s algorithm will eventually stop recommending my stories
5. Content Filter
The stories I tend to post are mostly text
They consist of my honest thoughts on both myself and the state of the world
They are not easy to consume passively
You will either give up and eventually block/unfollow or continue to be intrigued by my thoughts and join in my journey of self-discovery
5. Content Creation as a Conversation
As I receive DMs I will often post the conversation publicly in my story with permission
I’ll share both those in support and against my ideas. I’ll defend my opinion if I still believe it to be true and I’ll admit when I’ve changed my mind due to new information
The transparency shows that I’m open to constructive feedback while also standing up for what I believe in
It also builds social validation that others enjoy my thoughts and engage with me
6. Referrals are the Only Growth Method
I’ve stopped posting as much in my feed and when I do I don’t use hashtags
The content I post only exists as an ephemeral story
You missed it? Too bad
Those who enjoy the content will share with a friend who they believe will also enjoy it
Someone who ends up on my profile will mostly judge my value based on the stories of that day as opposed to a curated grid
It’s for them to decide if they believe I can provide them with more value in the future
A follow would be a bet on my slope, not my Y-intercept - what I can do, not what I’ve done
Communal Living
I rented a large house outside of Las Vegas with some close friends for two weeks
We wanted to explore the idea of having a self-sufficient communal living arrangement
Everything, including costs, were shared
Everyone would help the group however they felt best suited
We started with only two rules
- Don’t be an asshole
- Buffet rule for justifying purchases. If you’d pay for it yourself then you should buy it
The living arrangement was based on this theory
Optimize for the community, not the self
On a long enough time scale they are the same
This only works with relationships built on trust
The two weeks gave me enough of a starting point to know what worked well and what didn’t and pain points to improve in the future
What’s Next?
Humans of the Moon
I’m starting a podcast called Humans of the Moon July 16th, 2020
Edit July 17th: First episode is live on Spotify
The name is a cross between Humans of New York x Moonshot
Every episode will be an unedited conversation with members of the community, anonymously if they wish
A safe place for us to speak our mind
To play devil’s advocate
To question the assumptions of others
To admit when we don’t know or lack an opinion
A place for both of us, and the community, to learn from each other about our values, philosophies on life, and our own personal Moonshots
Talk about what we’re passionate about
The work we’re doing as we follow our passions
The positive effects we believe our work will have on the world
Ultimately, we will help the listeners see the future of our dreams
Continued Communal Living
My housemates and I are moving out of San Francisco in the next few weeks down to the South Bay
That’s where we’ll have a “home base” and, on some frequency, we’ll setup more communal style “vacations” in different locations across the world with different people
Through these experiments, both as a group and individually, we’re able to gather more information on the types of living situations, locations, and people we personally enjoy best
Then we can head back the home base to better understand what worked and what didn’t
We can then refine our preferences for our next search
Consult Friends on their Moonshots
I’ve always enjoyed, and am good at, building something out of nothing
Zero to one, not one to N
I’m working with anyone in my community willing to accept my help and bringing their ideas to life
I play the role of advisor, friend, and investor
I offer them access to all the forms of leverage I have access to: my connections, my skill set, and my resources
These are leaders of tomorrow who have not yet come in to their own
I want to cultivate and encourage them
Provide them with a platform to actually become the leaders they are destined to be
All while being transparent with the strategy so they know it’s not diabolical
Community Forum (added July 17th)
As with any self-sufficient business you want to satisfy different ends of the spectrum in terms of time commitment and impact
Consulting friends 1:1 has the highest highest return, but requires the largest time commitment
I’m working with my friend Arman Hezarkhani the CEO of Parthean to build this community forum on his platform
Parthean is built with similar values in mind
Harness the power of community and use it to help each other and ultimately transfer knowledge
Their platform is built around a paid curated community in a forum based platform for knowledge transfer
A paid and curated community aligns incentives and allows for a high barrier to entry and greater trust in the skills provided by each individual in the community
Forums, being low latency forms of conversation, as the main form of communication incentivizes members to spend more time upfront doing their own research and stating their assumptions to reduce the amount of back and forth
From a forum, if needed, you can easily move conversations to a direct message and then select messages to migrate back in to the forum for searching in the future
The pricing model I envision will scale with the size and quality of the community
Those who join earlier see the potential and a smaller one-time price tag exists to filter out those who aren’t actually committed
Once the community reaches a certain size the price tag will increase, not in an effort to make money, but to increase the barrier to entry. We want people to join because of the future potential, not existing value
Once the community has proved it’s value the pricing model will shift to a recurring model to continually filter out anyone who is not getting or providing value
Containerized Modular Living (added July 17th)
Containers are a global standard for logistics and have allowed for true efficiency in the industry
Trucks, cranes, planes, ships, and docking stations all revolve around the standard sizes, remove the need for adapters, and, most importantly, remove the cognitive overhead of having to worry about it
Similarly, containers in the technical space allow for a similar standardization
Given an image and it’s dependencies you can spin up an application in minutes with the ability to scale it up and down as you need
Applying the same pattern to the future of living
Everyone lives in a “container”
It’s a standard dimension, with standard plugs (electric, water, garbage), and, like legos, is modular to be connected with any other person’s container
The structure and connections are standard giving economies of scale while the inside and outside of the containers are open to customization
It’s akin to being human
We all have the same basic structure and require the same inputs to varying degrees, but the way we think, feel, and look is what makes each of us unique
To test this idea my housemates and I are going to buy a container, set it up in the backyard, and convert it in to something liveable or an extra room as an extension of our home
The rough strategy goes as follows
- Convert a container in to a piece of housing
- Test moving using existing trucking infrastructure
- Begin producing container homes in a factory
- Setup Container Parks like Trailer Parks, but for container homes
- Rethink standard sizes, connectors, and materials
- Continue to build infrastructure to allow for easier mobility
The future I envision allows for anyone to move when they want where they want to while having the comfort of their home traveling with them
Nomad x Comfort, the best of both worlds
The flexibility and modularity of the physical world built atop of a community defined on trust
Why it’s Valuable
The US, while admittedly imperfect, has brought a lot of good into the world
She’s created opportunities for many
The values she was founded on have allowed those with motivation, self-confidence, and a unique taste for risk to uproot their lives and join her for the chance of lifting themselves, their families, and their community back home out of the system keeping them down
In 2020 we seem to have lost sight of our founding goal of Freedom
It’s become a conflict between “good” and “bad” instead of, through civil discourse, figuring out what is optimal for the entire community
If you look at the data, besides this year, the world has never been safer
Crime, on aggregate, is significantly down yet the media portrays this narrative that everyone is at each other’s throats
It seems to stem from a misguided lack of understanding that these two facts can be simultaneously true
- Horrific injustices continue to exist in our world
- As a society, we have been continuously chipping away at those horrific injustices and have never been better
This data is from the US Bureau of Justice Statistics on the Crime in the United States Wikipedia Page
My intention for displaying the data is to reframe the way we fight
Instead of having the delta between the “Haves” and the “Have Nots” trigger emotions of jealousy and anger, we should let our continued progress inspire the world to work even harder together
Together.
That’s how we solve this
The current divide has allowed so many of us to forget what we have in our life that makes us happy
Our family, friends, and, particularly, the community in which we live all of whom will love us unconditionally and be there to catch us if we fall
This city will be a safe haven for anyone with aligned values who wants to join
Have enough infrastructure built so that our community has somewhere to escape to when this house of cards collapses
A landing pad for safe entry and a launch pad for future success
Colonizer (noun): a plant or animal that establishes itself in an area
We want to be the colonizers that leave the world they know today and start the one of tomorrow
The difference from previous colonizers?
Peace (noun): freedom from disturbance
We come in peace
We don’t want to take over the world
We just want our fair share and to coexist peacefully
Safety is the short term goal
Equity (noun): the quality of being fair and impartial
Equity - for everyone - is the long term goal
Why Work on This
My entire life I’ve always been the center of my friend groups
This has been true throughout high school, college, and work, but most evidently in the “real” world - the life I’m living now that I’ve quit my job on July 3rd, 2020
Freedom (noun): The ability to choose ones commitments
My first day of “real” Freedom was July 4th, 2020. Just a coincidence, I’m sure
Having finally tasted it I want to share it with the rest of the world - anyone who is willing to try it
Within the confines of the structure defined by these institutions I was able to influence culture and build a semblance of a community
Success (noun): The accomplishment of an aim or purpose
It was not a success
Goal: To create the community all of those in it want, not just those in power
This goal, in today’s society, is not possible
The bottleneck, I believe to be the existing norms for deciding process
When structure is decided top down, on a long enough time frame, it will crumble
Without openly considering feedback, both positive and negative, from those a policy affects the result will always not only be imperfect, but those who have to adhere to it will only know the what and never understand the why
We want to build a culture, a community, a company, a city, a country, whatever you want to call it, from the bottom up
The grassroots approach
Trust (noun): Consistency over time
A community based on trust
An environment in which it’s safe to fail
It has to, by definition, take time to build
It cannot be done overnight
There are no build trust quick schemes as there are no get rich quick schemes
Luckily, my skill has always been connecting people together and I’m finally letting myself own it
Whether I realized it or not, I’ve been working towards this my entire life
Building relationships while expecting nothing in return
It’s now time I spend that social capital
I’ve spent my time on them and it remains to be seem if they will spend their time on me
Final Chapter
Would you like to join our community?
I ask the world
The decision?
That’s theirs - not mine.
commencer, pas fin.
Written by
Fran
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