Andrew Yang’s campaign for president in 2020 had four memorable slogans, conceived in this order: 1) Humanity First, 2) Google Andrew Yang, 3) MATH, 4) A New Way Forward.

The slogan evolution tells a story. We begin with a wholesome platitude. We become desperate. We start flexing unconventional ideologies. Then we finish with a meaningless platitude. The developments represent four distinct phases of building a brand that is common when launching a new venture. We’ll cover all of this here today, so put your thinking hat on!

HUMANITY FIRST: The Clueless Beginnings

Humanity First was the campaign’s first slogan and the slogan used at launch. In these days, it was me, Yang, first-employee Muhan Zhang, and a contractor. We worked on the couch in Yang’s mother’s apartment in our socks. We often ate Peruvian hot dogs out of tin trays for lunch. We had no idea how to run for president.

When we first began drafting our slogan, we struggled. Like most people, we looked at what the organization (Yang) represented and said, “gee, golly, how do we boil this down into just a few words?” Slogan making is tough. That’s no lie. Let’s break down why that is.

There are three core design challenges when making a slogan:

1. bringing a complex message to an uninformed audience without losing the original message (referred to as message Fidelity)
2. paradoxically achieving this in just a few words
3. also making the slogan structurally catchy or at least original

It should go without saying that the complexity of this task causes there to only be a small number of acceptable choices when condensing a message. This is why platitudes exist and litter the world. How many ways can the millions of writers, activists, organizations, and politicians talk about the same causes?

(Caveat: this is why I listen closely to platitudes! They are actually onto something!)

Our initial slogans ideas sought to emphasize different dimensions of what UBI meant with expressions like “You’ve Earned It,” “End Poverty Now,” “Plenty for Many,” “Today Can be Better,” and “How Will You Spend It?” We were trying to be original, but none of them felt right. We eventually tested our ideas with an online survey, and pretty much no one cared about any of them except for one — Humanity First.

We chose Humanity First because 1) it fit the central ethos of Yang (Yang often said, well, what else would come first?) 2) it did well on the surveys, 3) we had nothing better. Besides that, we were mostly ambivalent towards it. And that is not a winning equation!

When I look back on this slogan three years later, I’d rate its success somewhere between acceptable and failure. At no point on the campaign did I ever want to wear Humanity First merchandise (and neither did anyone else — HF sales were poor), and that’s a red flag.

It may not seem holistic, but that was always my benchmark in branding: Would someone (lots of someones) ACTUALLY wear this for a reason beyond being an excessively motivated activist?

Catchiness is essential for the outsider company. In my view, outsiders and insurgents have to associate with an ideology bigger than themselves because they’re losers and irrelevant on their own. They need an ideology they can champion that they can become associated with — and that ideology is what you sell and ride into relevancy. Far too many nobodies run for office on generic platforms and their name. Excuse me, but all those consultants telling you to copy the strategies of the well-known candidates are horrendously wrong.

My negative evaluation of Humanity First isn’t wrong. The slogan empirically failed to excite and organize people around our campaign. If we refer to the three design challenges, we failed on a few marks. 1) We lost the message. Yang’s ethos might have been people, but that wasn’t actually his message (more on what was, later). 2) The slogan wasn’t really that original.

A third issue is that the slogan wasn’t very good at motivating. Humanity First is not exciting because it’s too wholesome and benevolent. There’s a reason the news doesn’t cover the news; it covers doom. Here’s a list of what sentiments are actually proven in marketing to sell, for better or for worse.

Sensationalism, Extremism, Sex, Scandal, Hatred, Conflict, Triviality, Titillation, Dogmatism, Anger, Fear, Outrage, Laughter, Excitement, Controversy, Strange, Weird, Hilarious, Polarizing.

It may sound dark, but I actively campaigned internally against benevolent marketing campaigns. They almost always fail. For example, at the end of 2019, the campaign did these things called Humanity First weekends to generate press by sending our volunteers in mass to help charities. Despite nearly thousands of people helping out, we generated zero press. I swear to you. Not one media hit!

For these reasons, our marginally original, far too benevolent, mostly a platitude slogan was a flop in my eyes. We can categorize this failure as a struggle to define our product and find our audience.

GOOGLE ANDREW YANG: The Desperate Trough of Sorrow

In August of 2018, I was sitting on a bench in Washington Square Park, New York City. I was with my then-girlfriend, spacing out on our date, as my mind obsessed over the central problem of slogans: maintaining message fidelity. Or, how do you take a complex message and bring it to less informed people on a massive scale?

This problem in marketing can be further conceptualized by acknowledging the frequent inversion we see between audience size and message size. Often, as you reach more people, you have less space to say what you want. This is because the farther away from your core audience you go, the deeper you end up in audiences who don’t care that much about you. A slogan is the end of the road manifestation of this task — How can we begin raising awareness and associations with people who will only give us three words?

This was a particularly difficult problem for Andrew Yang, Zach Graumann, our Campaign Manager, and myself, our marketing guy. Andrew Yang was a guy arguing for free money based on an impending software takeover of the labor market (this was his actual message). Not only did he have to convince you that the takeover was happening and that free money, a fundamentally unamerican idea, was a good one, but he also had to explain to you who he was AND prove how not crazy he was.

This is an outrageous task by every marketing standard because you have crazy ideas coming from a dude with low public credibility. In other words, the crazy ideas will put people off, but so will his lack of notoriety. For a marketer, you effectively have nothing to work with.

Take into consideration these messaging angles we tried and the common reactions we received. The scenario is someone is walking by a poster board, and the flyer says this to create interest:

Hey, this no-name guy is running for president on free money.

• Yeah, right.

Hey, robots are coming. Watch out. This random Asian guy will let you know.

• What? I have work.

Hey, this Obama guy is running for president and is a new type of leader.

• Whatever.

Hey, this smart guy is running for president and has good ideas.

• *so boring they don’t even notice*

These examples are obviously watered down, but the point is illustrated. Yang was either a nobody loser you ignored, or he sounded crazy.

What frustrated our team most was that, after one hour of Yang explaining himself, you suddenly realized he was experienced and totally brilliant.

This is exactly what I was thinking about when I had a lightbulb moment that day in Washington Square Park.

“If only,” I thought, “if only there was a way to get people to Google him. Then they would discover all of his content, and we would convert everyone.”

Then it hit me — “Google Andrew Yang.”

I looked at my then-girlfriend and said, “Oh my god. I just figured it out.” The moment was euphoric. A light bulb moment I’d never felt before.

I monologued to my girlfriend my idea and concluded astutely, despite Yang being completely irrelevant, “This slogan will be all over the country one day. This is going to be on billboards.”

I am most grateful because I was right. That fall 2018, we printed all of our marketing graphics with this slogan during the campaign’s Humanity First Tour. The slogan caught on, and over the entirety of the campaign, our grassroots supporters plastered the slogan all over the country.

My favorite part about this slogan (and yes, I categorize it as a slogan) is that it well-delivers on the challenges of slogan building I’ve outlined. 1) It’s aligned with the message (Yang being tech-knowledgeable), 2) it’s three words, 3) it’s completely original, 4) a huge bonus, it’s a call to action, 5) 66% of the slogan is literally the name of the product we’re selling. Finding three words in any language that are so dynamic is rare.

The success of Google Andrew Yang was only the beginning, representing the second phase of a startup phase — scrappy, creative thinking.

MATH: Finding Your Breakout Niche

One afternoon in late 2018, the team was in the office filming some Facebook advertisements with Yang. In one of the advertisements, we were having Yang end with his famous line, “And the opposite of Donald Trump is an Asian man who likes MATH.”

After a few takes, Yang, ever playful, ended by chanting MATH.

Like this, “And the opposite of Donald Trump is an Asian man who likes MATH …, and I like MATH … MATH MATH MATH … USA USA USA … MATH all day.”

The moment Yang said MATH three times in a row, under no direction of my conscious mind, my brain began imagining a world where Yang was riding around the country, rallying millions around the idea of mathematics.

I stopped immediately and said, “DUDE … if we really get troll and populist … we should create shirts that just say MATH.”

Without hesitation, Zach jumped in, “It’s really the perfect phrase.”

“It’s so fucking funny; imagine people holding signs that say MATH at a rally,” I said.

“We should get some MATH signs! People will hold them up,” Zach said.

“Do it. Do it. Do it!” I chanted.

By the incredibly good fortune of the moment, the conversation is caught on video. You can watch it here.

The incredible part about MATH that Zach Graumann and I frequently talk about is that there was no focus group. There was no testing. Within 30 seconds of thinking of the idea, our team was sold with absolute conviction that the slogan would be a hit. And we were right. Compare this to our ambivalence with Humanity First and the relative success between the slogans.

Not everyone was sold on MATH as the beginning, which is typical for anything exciting or unorthodox in life. In early 2019, a friend of mine texted me asking me why we had just launched hats that said MATH. He said it was confusing, it wasn’t a slogan, and that it was “such a simple word that it won’t link it to a campaign.”

What I explained to my friend that day over text was that MATH represented an entire ideology.

“It’s part of the brand of being fact-driven, honest by the data, and motivated to end the partisan politics. Americans feel that our current leaders are spiteful performers who vote against good ideas because it will give the other team a point. This has led to the disenfranchisement of millions who feel that politicians should support what is proven to work. MATH is a symbol of what is missing from the government.”

“Yeah,” he replied, “but it’s still not a slogan. People aren’t going to get excited about mathematics.”

“We are transforming what MATH means. It’s not just a STEM field; it’s a rallying cry that symbolizes the ideology I mentioned. It’s going to blow up because it’s absurd, which is great for marketing. The absurdity of it prompts media coverage. The absurdity of it prompts people to stop and ask why you are wearing MATH. It’s so unorthodox to wear a hat that says a stem field that you can’t help but be curious. I can promise you, by 2020, MATH will be an Andrew Yang word. It will be in fashion magazines.”

If we map the slogan MATH to the three slogan challenges mentioned, we find this:

1. We captured Yang’s true message and essence entirely
2. It’s one word
3. It’s extremely original

MATH boiled down Yang’s entire message (keeping message fidelity high) into one word while remaining original. I will dream of creating such a perfect slogan again.

It should go without saying that MATH was a dramatic success. What I always find most emblematic of what we pulled off with MATH is that many folks in the #YangGang often confessed to me they didn’t even like mathematics. Instead, they wore and chanted MATH because of what it represented, the ideology behind it.

MATH was the manifestation of our campaign finding our breakout niche audience. Referring to the product adoption curve, this was the slogan apt for our Early-Adopters: tech people and the politically disenchanted. With Humanity First, we learned that everyone in politics postures as benevolent, so the do-gooder market was saturated. We were undifferentiated. By leaning into the MATH ideology, we differentiated ourselves amongst a hungry constituency that gave us the audience to exert collective influence on the election.

A few caveats here.

First, MATH was not originally meant to an acronym. When we launched the hat, it meant mathematics. Soon, because the letters were in all caps, people thought it was an acronym. They came up with ideas, and Yang, for some reason, latched onto Make America Think Harder. I couldn’t have hated this deviation any more than I did. I fought Make America Think Harder to the death. There is a reason you never saw MATH spelled out in our campaign’s marketing materials or merchandise. MATH was original, Make America Think Harder is letting Trump set the tone, and being reactive, both of which mean you’re a loser in politics. Also, who the hell wants to wear Make America Think Harder? Don’t get me started on this!

Second, the MATH hat was never about Yang being Asian, not consciously at least. Though the slogan was catalyzed by Yang’s Asian/MATH expression, I always viewed them as separate, and so did the team. It was more like, “Yes, data is good governing!” rather than, “Yes, haha, Asian guy, math!” That said, I study psychology a lot and recognize the unconscious manifestations humans make. Also, Yang’s Asian jokes didn’t help this.

Third, I couldn’t believe the number of people who said MATH should have been MATHS to be technically correct. If you’re a marketer, never listen to that sort of stupid thinking. If the hat said MATHS, it would have been confusing and a disaster. We were marketing to the mainstream, not Harvard.

A NEW WAY FORWARD: Empty Words Accessible to All

By the fall of 2019, our campaign had plateaued. The MATH ideology had pushed us into 7th as we polled 3–4% on average, but we had been stuck there for months. This was when the campaign had an identity crisis. There are two approaches at this inflection point for companies.

1. Stick to your identity and believe your next breakthrough is coming
2. Recognize you are marketing to a new audience, and you must adjust your image

There is no right answer. Trump rode MAGA, obscene masculinity, and covert racism from 3% all the way to the White House and beyond. Meanwhile, people love to say, “What got you here won’t get you there.”

Given that none of us really knew what we were doing, we opted to hire consultants and become more professional and mainstream. This was probably the right move.

One of the ways we sought to professionalize was by adjusting the message of the campaign. On this, I believe we mostly failed to execute, but that’s an article for another day.

One manifestation of our new message was to make a new slogan that was accessible to the whole mainstream of the Democratic Party. The consultants we hired for this had an incredible and deep political pedigree. They spent a few weeks crafting the slogan and what they came up with was, “A NEW WAY FORWARD.”

This slogan might mean something to you now, but when it was first conceived, it was a totally empty and meaningless platitude to pretty much everyone who heard it. In the meeting, it was presented, someone literally said, “it means nothing.”

To which the consultants said, “exactly!”

You might think I’m joking, but I’m not. What’s shocking, they even made a compelling case for why they had intentionally designed the slogan to mean nothing.

The argument was that Yang now had enough social influence that he could give words and expressions meaning. A New Way Forward was an empty phrase that could be infused with the exact vision and image that Andrew Yang wanted to give it. There was no historical constraint around the meaning of the expression.

I thought this was actually pretty insightful. MATH had been a good slogan because it inherently meant something to people. By associating with that word and its historical meaning, the word gave us meaning when we were irrelevant and insignificant. In contrast, with A New Way Forward, we were in control. We meant something, and the word did not.

Despite the compelling pitch, I thought the slogan failed. The slogan succeeded at being a few words, but it wasn’t original, nor did it have a clear message. Given what the consultants shared, if we infused the slogan with the right meaning, it could have been original. This gets us to the central problem at the end of the campaign, though, which is that we never really nailed down a clear or compelling mainstream message.

My analysis of the success of this slogan is clear even to this date. Yang is running for mayor right now, and MATH hats abound in great quantity, but old merchandise with A New Way Forward remains sparse.

This last stage of slogan development here represents the Early-Majority in the product adoption curve.

In my view, even though we failed at execution with A New Way Forward, I find the strategy compelling. Platitudes can be acceptable, but only if you have big clout and the slogan is so generic and empty that you actually cause it to sound original. Something inherently original, of course, is never ruled out.

This concludes my totally imperfect discussion on slogans. Much more could be said on this, but I’m not out to make my career as the slogan expert. This is simply a view into the thinking and development behind some slogans.

There is one last extremely important point. How you actually market and launch your slogan is essential. For example, the MATH hat didn’t become the centerpiece of the campaign by accident.

How to effectively brand and roll out messages will be one of my future articles.

Until then, goodbye, friends!

“That’s the question everyone is asking these days, Andrew. What’s the new system? What’s the new system?”

One of the top thinkers of our day said this during a private meeting I was in. It was me, her, and Andrew Yang. The fast one I’ve pulled here is that she was addressing Yang, not me, but the words perfectly illustrate the task of the 21st century.

The speaker is a brilliant woman who runs a prestigious think tank. This wasn’t an uncommon meeting for Andrew Yang and me at the time.

It was 2018 and as we hopelessly tried to gain traction running for president, we paradoxically found ourselves in meetings with a stunning potpourri of leaders. This list includes congresspeople, obscene billionaires, little billionaires, crypto punks, think tank leaders, and financial titans. The twist is that many of them never intended to support us; they were simply intrigued by this guy who seemed to have an answer to this question that, indeed, everyone was asking.

WHAT’S THE NEW SYSTEM?

This question is what first brought me to Andrew Yang in 2017 and landed me on the founding team of his presidential campaign. Having lived in Silicon Valley, it was quite easy to see where technology, capitalism, and failing government were taking us, and it was a bad place. When I met Yang, we agreed that we needed something big, something that prioritized human well-being. His Universal Basic Income was the best and most practical thing I had heard at the time (yes, really!), so I joined his team.

Despite this, everyone knows Universal Basic Income is not enough. A small income floor will help keep people afloat, but then what? Surely our society can promote more than poverty-based survival.

Over my time on the campaign, I heard a lot of ideas. Magical systems of benevolent neighbor networks, 3rd parties, socialism, a return to free-market, direct democracy, and all sorts of strange apps that seemed to think they could replace democracy through the App Store.

All of these ideas lacked in one way or another. I came to see three critical dimensions that any change to the social system needed to fulfill. These three dimensions are:

1. The idea must work with the trends of technology
2. The idea must host practical logistics it’s proposed government reform
3. The idea must align the incentives of human self-interest

All of the ideas I heard during my time with Yang struggled to meet one of these criteria and thus lacked a convincing pitch.

THE NETWORK STATE

The most compelling idea I’ve read about is Balaji S. Srinivasan’s Network State, recently detailed on the website of his new project, 1729.com.

Balaji’s idea summarized is that a group of people can eventually obtain collective bargaining power over a Nation-State, and eventually gain statehood, by organizing in the cloud, building a community, pooling assets, and buying land.

The Network State as Explained on Balaji’s Website:

• We recruit online for a group of people interested in founding a new virtual social network, a new city, and eventually a new country
• We build the embryonic state as an open-source project
• We organize our internal economy around remote work
• We cultivate in-person levels of civility
• We simulate architecture in VR
• We create art and literature that reflects our values
• We eventually crowdfund territory in the real world, but not necessarily contiguous territory, (more like a thousand apartments, houses, Cul de Sacs, etc., he says)
• Over time, community members migrate between these enclaves and crowdfund territory nearby, with every individual dwelling and group house presenting an independent opportunity for expansion

You can sort of think of the Network State as a social network with a cryptocurrency that crowdfunds territory and operates as a sovereign collective.

BALAJI’S CASE FOR NETWORK STATE

Balaji makes a whole variety of points detailing the benefits and practicality around this solution on 1729.com. I’ve also listened to him speak about this on a few podcasts as well, so I will crowdsource some of the ideas.

Why people want this

Balaji argues we need and want a clean slate to build something new without historical constraint. He says that it’s the same reason why we use a new sheet of paper for a fresh idea — we’re not constrained to the scribbles of the past.

• To validate this point, many political thinkers, activists, and everyday people want a fresh government, given my experience. So that desire is real. Starting anew has just never really seemed like an option. In many ways, one could compare Nation-State vs. Network State’s situation to the horse vs. car. People wanted to go faster and farther, but they didn’t know the car was an option until someone thought of it.

Balaji argues people form communities in 2021 based on ideology rather than the old way, geography. This is causing increased frustration as governments struggle to serve their people.

• This claim is also valid. Anyone who spends a lot of time talking online instead of hanging out with their neighbor is a living example of this.

Why it can work

• Balaji says there are two definitions of a country: numerical and societal. Numerical basically means the number of people or capital. Societal basically means the influence that those numbers command.
• For a numerical example, Balaji cites many countries with small market caps and small populations (5mm people is common). He says, look at how easy it would be for a cloud community to get bigger than that. He is not wrong. r/WSB has more people than about 140 countries. With that many people declaring themselves a state, exerting financial influence, and working collectively, they will eventually be recognized. I think he’s right on this.
• Balaji compares the Network State to cryptocurrency by citing how effortlessly cryptocurrency has exerted influence on the financial system, which is arguably the stronger system compared to the Nation-State.

FEASIBILITY OF THE NETWORK STATE

It took me about 20 minutes to realize the Network State is obviously going to happen. I’m not exactly sure how or in what capacity, but it’s happening. An expression in Silicon Valley is that it’s easy to predict the future; it’s just hard to know when it’ll happen. If you keep up with history and technology, you will find yourself quickly predicting the future. I have succeeded at it many times.

I’m not saying the Network State is good (analysis on that below), but I am saying it’s obviously happening. The reason the Network State (TNS) is going to happen can be explored by referring back to the three points above:

1. Technology: the Network State follows with and is supported by the power of technology’s future, which is generally unstoppable. TNS checks this box.
2. Government: like with Crypto, people will do this, pooled resources command influence, and you can’t shut down the internet. The result is that the Network State will be built, and then it will eat parts of the Nation-State. End of story. There will be no negotiation. There will be no lobbying. TNS checks this box.
3. Economics: the incentives are aligned here because individuals all gain through this system. More rights and financial freedom are enabled. Self-interest and money align. TNS checks this box.

The central question in social contract theory (a fundamental philosophy behind government) is how much freedom should individuals give up to gain the security of the collective? History is riddled with ideas surrounding this. Some like Hobbes said we need to give up everything for protection from a Monarch. Others like Locke believed in a more free and small government. Nearly all of the ideas required a group of people to be in charge of making the rules. This is where a lot of problems begin. Who do we choose? How do we choose them? What happens if we choose them and they suck?

Balaji’s Network State still has many details of this sort to be determined. I also recognize that the Network State is a method of forming a state rather than a fixed set of values and principles to guide all states. Despite this, I believe, given the radically different nature of how a Network State is formed and governed, and the principles that will be universally true for all of them, a structural analysis is still valid.

For simplicity’s sake, I believe we can chiefly assume most Network States will probably be some form of democratic, decentralized governance. In other words, people write their own rules collectively, the rules are enforced by computer programs, and if you don’t like the rules, you can pick a new community (or, hell, you could fork it and make a new one).

A key feature here, however, is that if you don’t like your state, you can easily leave. This flexibility of choice in a state is weird to us now, but I find it a fairly potent form of state accountability. We have already seen this sort of people vs. those in power with the Justin Sun vs. Steem debacle.

Concluding feasibility, Network States could be a niche trend of the anti-establishment, or it could the next logical form of governance that seems radical today. Right now, it’s hard to know. But without a doubt, it’s happening in some capacity. I think the niche scenario is probably a 10-year time scale, and anything more significant is a 30-year time scale.

IS THE NETWORK STATE GOOD?

After working as Andrew Yang’s Director of Marketing, I left marketing behind to finish answering the question, “What’s the New System?’ My specific interest in “the New System” has been how we can design this new system for human well-being. Or, Flourishing, as Martin Seligman refers to it. This intersection of psychology and government is precisely what I’ve studied full-time, as my job, for the last year.

What is good?

To me (and many in psychology), well-being is the only KPI, or bottom-line, of any life and inadvertently any societal system (social or financial, primarily). In my view, well-being is the end-all-be-all answer to what makes life worth living, how we should measure progress, and how we should determine ethics.

When we look at modern capitalism and status quo governance, we can see that we are failing on the measure of well-being. Suicide, depression, divorce, and many other social indicators are all going up and in the wrong direction. As I often say, if everyone is sad and wanting to kill themselves, what’s the point of all of this effort to achieve material progress?

Most people evaluate the efficacy of a social system based on the success of the financial system it promotes. People measure social systems that way because financials are easy to measure, and people think financials are a close enough proxy to well-being. I’ve studied this extensively. It’s only marginally accurate. The short summary is that individual income growth, not GDP, not GDP per capita, is the only measure that is reliably related to increases in life satisfaction. Additionally, this is only constant at low-income levels. Money has little impact on our well-being at higher levels. This is because we have human needs that money can’t fulfill!

For these reasons, a state of any type needs to be considerate of whether it is well-designed to promote well-being rather than casually waving its hand at a grinding financial system claiming things will work out.

This is where reviewing the goodness of the Network State means reviewing it through the lens of well-being.

Well-being and Governance

To be clear, the task of “designing” a system for human well-being is a bit of a loaded one. As you’d imagine, psychological well-being is terribly complex. Despite the popularity of many books touting one big answer, there is no one big answer, or “monism,” to the good life. This is empirically true. In contemporary psychology, well-being is an umbrella term used to refer to a range of characteristics that make up the good life. At this moment, there are 13 rigorously tested and verified characteristics* that we know to independently contribute to well-being. Yes, thirteen! You don’t hear about this often because 13 sources of well-being is not so catchy or trendy. Worse, the sources are not fixed things you can easily instruct folks to do, or “ought” to do, like ten jumping jacks.

This all means that the best way for a social system to provide well-being is not to try to provide well-being but instead promote well-being. There are many things a state can do to promote well-being, but if we were to keep it simple stupid, I believe it could be narrowed down to these four items:

1. Physical Security / Financial Security
2. Freedom to Develop
3. Support Early Childhood Development
4. Design Communities for Interpersonal Connection

In my view, a state’s ability to deliver on these four needs provides us with an effective heuristic to initially screen a concept.

If you look at the list, the first two items are more orthodox, and they’re not likely to be changed much by the Network State inherently, so I won’t cover them much here.

The last two are less orthodox, and I believe the Network State’s inherent design impacts them. I’ll review how this happens, but first, I will explain why needs three and four are essential state-promoted provisions for well-being.

Support Early Childhood Development

Early childhood, 0–6, is without question the most crucial phase of a human’s development. Bad parenting or living in financial straits during this phase can send a child into an anxious-depressive state for life. Some of the most effective ways to mitigate the risks of a child’s needs not being met are to live in shared communities. Shared communities decrease costs for parents, and psychologists also say children benefit significantly from exposure to different adults. Neighbor-parent Facebook groups are abundant and an indicator of the desire for this. Enabling community networks can improve parenting which is the lion’s share of the “nurture” we think of in the nurture vs. nature equation of how we become who we are.

Design Communities for Interpersonal Connection

It’s not a dispute in psychology that a sense of belonging and an abundance of human connection with the people we love is one of the most effective forms of medicine against depression, anxiety, and neuroticism (three of the most common psychopathologies). Connection has also been found to be the most influential source of meaning in life and one of the most reliable emotional highs. One prominent team of neuroscientists even referred to connection as being “in some fundamental neurochemical sense, an opioid addiction,” given the boost our brain receives when hanging out with people we like. This means connection picks us back up and brings us up high. Truly, the benefits of connection are near endless and touch every facet of our life.

A RETURN TO THE TRIBE

If we want to intentionally promote well-being, and if we had to fall to the level of a single answer, a monism, I believe that it would be to support the development of ideologically based communal living. I choose co-living because the frequency of interactions and shared experiences, which are abundant in shared communities, are found to be vital in driving connection. I believe co-living should be ideologically based because the magic does not arrive when living with people we do not connect with.

If a state can promote scaled co-living while otherwise maintaining general security, freedom, and financial progress, they are well beyond the 80/20 towards the good life.

On my initial read, the Network State is well-suited to execute on a return to community-oriented living and well-being.

How the Network State Promotes Well-Being

First, the Network State supports and enables remote work. Remote work creates geographical freedom, allowing Network States to live in less developed locations where the land is malleable to communal infrastructure. Additionally, remote living often reflects a lower cost of living which will support early-child rearing for couples.

Second, Network States are inherently ideological. I recognize the risk of echo chambers, but those already exist without the benefits of physical proximity. In my view, at least people will be happy in their echo chambers rather than sad.

Third, the Network State fundamentally promotes intentional living. This may seem minute, but in my view, it’s transformative. As Martin Seligman has found, learned helplessness is the human default, and hope, or in this case, the power to choose, must be learned. If you can easily choose your government, it’s hard to question whether or not you can select every other aspect of your life — your community, your location, your work. It’s all your choice, and that awareness of autonomy is found to be one of the essential self-stories that foster the many sources of well-being.

With a trend towards remote work, a governance system supporting it, ideologically based communities and housing, and the power to choose, the Network State seems to be naturally poised to promote well-being.

For these reasons, my initial read on the Network State, in its most preliminary and nascent ideology, is that it is a promising direction.

REMAINING QUESTIONS AND PROBLEMS

It should go without saying, the Network State and my thoughts on it are within this optimistic phase of almost complete speculation. Where this goes is unknown, but I think the proposed idea from Balaji has compelling roots. That all said, before I would advocate moving towards this system, we’d need, at a minimum, some substantial thinking on both the logistics and implications of a Network State. I imagine one could draft up hundreds of questions with ease. For me, I’ve simplified my questions into a few key themes below.

Logistics

How does a Network State defend itself in these tiny geographical pods against the laws of the Nation-States they are in?

• This is a late-stage problem based on Balaji’s vision, but I struggle to see a world where my little apartment complex of whatever online state won’t be free from the United States enforcing its laws.

How are public services executed?

• Continuous geography of a Nation-State has the benefit of seamlessly sharing the costs of public services. Nine thousand little pods will struggle to set up water on their own. In my view, this would make them dependent on Nation-States and ultimately not in control.

What is the vision around membership and the flexibility of changing membership?

• Changing your affiliation too frequently would undermine the system as a whole, but being able to vote with membership is a substantial feature.

Access and Governance

How does this system provide for people who do not have financial freedom or geographical freedom?

• The Network State sounds excellent if you have money or remote work. Otherwise, how this becomes transformative for an hourly worker is unclear to me as they commute from their online state apartment into the United States to work as a barber. I believe it is essential for the “new system” to provide a pathway for all people.

What is the governance model, even if decentralized?

• I’m not well-versed, at this time, on blockchain governance, and I recognize all states will vary, but what is inherently possible matters. I assume most will be democratic, but democracies carry risks of oppressing minorities.

How does the Network State maintain legitimacy when it will effectively resemble the internet and its many dark corners?

• E.g., the 8chan dark web state where rape and whatever else is allowed. One could argue that these states would be too small to gain bargaining power, but it’s not like large groups of people carrying out atrocities is uncommon in this world.

— —

The referenced thirteen sources of well-being are most notably laid out in the book Transcend by Scott Barry Kaufman. Dr. Kaufman is one of the leading thinkers on human psychology, well-being, and human potential.

1. Positive Emotions
2. Negative Emotions
3. Life Satisfaction
4. Vitality
5. Environmental Mastery
6. Positive Relationships
7. Self-Acceptance
8. Mastery
9. Autonomy
10. Positive Growth
11. Engagement in Life
12. Purpose and Meaning
13. Transcendence

This essay is an excerpt from Chapter 7 of a book I was writing about my time building Andrew Yang’s 2020 campaign from Zero to Movement. Read more here.

“Okay, let’s do a run-through and make sure we have everything,” Katie says, standing commander style in the living room amongst Muhan, Yang, and me.

“Check-in sheets?” she says.

“Check,” I say.

“Pens?”

“Check.”

“Business cards? Flyers? Camera? Music Playlist?”

“Check. Check. Check. Check!”

“Okay, great. This should be fun. Let’s go.”

The four of us pile into Yang’s mother’s 90’s Subaru and are on our way to Philadelphia for our first public event. The meet and greet is hosted in what I described in an advertisement for the event as “a very cool warehouse.” The drive is reminiscent of our campaign’s launch — we are full of hope with starry eyes, wondering what will come of our near future. About 50 people have RSVP’d, but we have 93 interested on Facebook, so anything is possible.

When we pull off the highway, it becomes clear that we’ve made a grave mistake. The streets are barren and rough. Buildings are boarded up. Trash is strewn about, and there’s a big train line running right through the district — which is always trouble.

“Uhm,” Yang says, pursing his lips, “Are we in the right place?”

“Warehouse on Watts. This is Watts street. It should be right up ahead, that brick building,” Navigator Muhan says, pointing at a brick building. The first level of the building is wrapped in black tar, with splotches of graffiti, discolored steel doors, and the far too iconic set of dueling green dumpsters next to the entrance, all located in an alley of crumbling asphalt. The second-floor windows have bedsheets taped across them. Not alarming one bit.

Muhan looks up again from his phone, “Confirmed. We have arrived.”

The venue is a mess, to say the least. We’re given a small section of the first floor, which is blocked off with musty black curtains and cheap foldable tables that are stood up tall as makeshift barriers. The ceiling is low, everything is painted black, and one wall is a floor-to-ceiling mirror which gives the room an uncomfortable vibe. Plus, there’s a hanging disco ball.

Katie, Muhan, and I race to make the venue presentable — Muhan is setting up music and a projector, Katie is organizing the merchandise table, and I’m making a panicked phone call in the alley because I forgot to order the pizza.

“What toppings should I get?” I shout to Muhan through the warehouse’s now open delivery door. I wait for a brief moment until I hear a faint “Buffalo chicken!” echoing from within the very cool warehouse.

“And we’ll add two buffalo chicken,” I say on the phone.

When attendees of our event trickle in slowly, they join a lonesome Yang who is bored and milling about the free buttons we’ve left at the sign-in tables. We’ve not yet figured out that Yang should be revealed to the crowd after everyone arrives, so for the time being, Yang makes small talk with a handful of college kids, most of whom are old Venture for America fellows. Then the trickle stops. And that’s it. About 15 people ultimately show up, one of which is a one-eyed fellow running for local office who counter-campaigns the other attendees the whole event. Of course, I am unsure what to do with myself and take 200 photos with my gargantuan Nikon telephoto lens. However, I use the mirror to make it look like we have twice as many attendees.

Yang, who has a tremendous ability to show up as a performer no matter the circumstances, puts on a dazzling performance despite the venue’s stage lights blazing right into his face the whole time, “And that, Philadelphia, is why we need to build a new type of economy! One that puts people first! And don’t forget to pre-order The War on Normal People!”

“You know,” Yang says, taking the optimistic route home to New York City, “I met some really cool people tonight. Like that guy who was an American Sniper. Did you all talk to him? I couldn’t believe the stories that guy was sharing!”

“Oh, yes! He was a phenomenal archetype of persons in the system who retain perspective!” Muhan says empathically, with four leftover pizzas in his lap.

“That guy was charged up when he heard your message,” I say to Yang. “It’s exactly what we’ve all been saying. All we have to do is get the message out there, and people will catch on.”

That night, after returning from our big trip to Philadelphia, I take a moment before bed to record a journal entry titled, “we could win.”

When we told Zach Graumann about the Philadelphia event, he was mystified at what he was hearing. In his slightly southern draw, riddled with confusion, he said, “Y’all, what on earth? You’re all not freakin’ out about this?” I’m not sure if he was more worried about the event or how nonchalant Yang, Muhan, Katie, and I were about how it went.

Muhan, Katie, and I have been preparing for Zach Graumann mentally for weeks. Zach is a corporate guy, Director of Philanthropy at UBS, which is an investment bank with a cool trillion dollars in assets. Zach was in this corporate job until he quit and sent a two hundred word manifesto to the entire bank staff saying something to the effect of #YangForPresident bitches. That impressed our team, to say the least. Joining a crazy campaign like this automatically makes someone a bit of a neurotic change-maker, but I thought that move placed Zach without a doubt in the true believer category, even though he wears suits.

It’s hard to introduce Zach without acknowledging his image. Zach’s slightly shorter than me, about 6'2" it seems, and he resembles nothing short of a picture-perfect blonde businessman. And I mean that literally, Google “blonde businessman,” and you’ll see a Zach Graumann doppelganger with meticulously combed hair, sharp blue eyes, a clean-cut long face, paired with a trim blue suit.

Zach grew up between Buffalo, New York, and Hartford, Connecticut, as an overly enthusiastic Buffalo Bills fan. For college, he went to Duke University, where he studied political science and sang Acapella. He’s been a ‘suit’ with a pretty voice ever since. I’m not sure where the southern twang comes from.

All things considered, these are the traits you’d want in a Campaign Manager for your longshot political campaign — buttoned up on the outside, radical mover on the inside.

Zach’s first week in the office has pushed our apartment office from chaotic to a total shit show. When Katie is working, five of us are competing for four seats, which means someone is always on the floor. Often, it’s me, but only because I like lying down full prone while I mischedule meetings. Yang likes to joke when we get a real office, we’ll roll out a sliver of carpet for me to lay on. The office is also now residence to three mammoth boxes of books, 500 Yang branded goodie bags we overzealously wasted our money on when we fell in love with the logo, and four boxes of merchandise. Plus, Muhan still lives here and simply has no interest in making it look like a home.

It was only a few days after Philadelphia when Zach laid his very own eyes on one of our fundraisers. We raised about zero dollars, and he was beyond himself. Zach and I were standing at the check-in table, which had been the scene of a bloody data capture meltdown. We were both arms crossed, frowning as we suffered through flashbacks of crashing web pages, frozen laptops, cached data clearing out people’s information, and no backup paper sheets for print out. This is when I hear him muttering to himself, “This is unacceptable. This is so unacceptable. We have to fix everything immediately.”

This essay is an excerpt from Chapter 7 of a book I was writing about my time building Andrew Yang’s 2020 campaign from Zero to Movement. Read more here.

Have you ever noticed that presidents tend to have distinct, memorable, and well-penned signatures? During my first week on the campaign, I realized that Andrew Yang had either not taken note, or chosen not to follow their lead.

At the time, I was designing the campaign website, and I wanted to place his signature at the bottom of the biography section. I picked up a letter Yang had just signed to see what I was working with. I was horrified. Is that even a signature?

Before I could stop myself, I blurted out, “You can’t seriously be signing things like this, are you?”

Yang stared at me blankly, picked up the letter, examined the squiggle closely, and shrugged. “Yeah, that’s my signature. I’ve never really thought too much about it. Why?”

“Oh, well, we have to create a new one,” I began, “you’re running for president of the United States. We must keep a tight image, and the signature is critical to that.”

I grabbed my laptop and pulled up a Reddit post containing former U.S. presidents’ signatures.

“Look, man,” I said, scrolling through the list of unanimously beautiful Hancocks, “this is what you’re up against.”

Yang watched thoughtfully, the gears of his mind turning. When I reached Obama’s most immaculate signature, with its curvy capital B and distinctive vertical slashed O, Yang jumped up from his seat, “All right! I’m in!”

I don’t know if it was due to my showmanship, or if Yang just wanted to put an end to my nagging, but either way — the signature workshop was on.

Yang and I took a seat on the floor. Shoeless and cross-legged, we scrawled out new iterations of his signature on the back of old envelopes.

The first few tries were disappointing — Yang kept unknowingly scribbling the same signature as before and asking me, “is it pretty?” in a childish voice.

Laughing and slightly unsure of how to provide constructive feedback, I responded, “Uh, not quite… try to form some letters … or something.”

The signature needed to meet a few criteria. First, it needed to be legible. Second, it needed to be simple enough for Yang to be able to write on the fly. Third, it needed to carry a distinctive feature that would make it memorable — like that undeniably cool vertical slash in Barack Obama’s autograph.

We had burned through our pile of envelopes and made little progress — but then I had my lightbulb moment.

“You know,” I spoke up, “When I was in the fourth grade, I sucked at cursive. But this girl I had a crush on taught me a trick that totally saved me during yearbook season.”

Yang looked up, intrigued, so I continued, “Her strategy was simple yet effective — sign the first and last initials of your name big and clear in regular print, then scribble the rest.”

Yang shrugged. “Worth a try, I guess.”

I grabbed another stack of envelopes for us to practice on. I gave it a try, crafting a neat capital A and capital Y, each followed by a scribble of unintelligible letters. Like a game show prize model, I presented it to him.

“What do you think?” I asked.

“Ooh! So fun! I like this!”

Yang tried it out himself while I watched over his shoulder, coaching him through the motions. “Yeah, so just make a really big ‘A’… yeah… ok… then scribble…. ok… big ‘Y’ now… ok… nice!”

Yang held it up. It was perfect.

Consciousness has long been touted as the human advantage. While consciousness surely grants us the ability to learn the laws of the physical world and manipulate it to our needs and demands, if one stops to think, they will quickly realize the baggage that consciousness has brought along for the ride.

Consciousness has granted humans the awareness to solve problems, think abstractly, and to even realize our place in the universe (however microscopic that may be). However, it’s also given us a stunningly inflated sense of entitlement that we use to justify our destroying the planet and slaughtering of everything living in the name of our own comfort and pleasure.

Think about it; we’ve shredded (and continue to shred) every plant that has a use for us. We enslave animals. We breed and slaughter them for food. We kill them for fun. We destroy mountains and burn forests for our houses. And if we found a way, we’d be doing the same thing to every other planet in the universe.

So yes, consciousness has surely made us feel special. And we can do lots of cool things that other animals cannot. But, this essay isn’t even about the entitlement and destruction that comes from consciousness, it is instead an investigation into the world of internal chaos that it has catalyzed.

In other words, I believe consciousness is a sickness our body is trying to reject. It is a late stage development in evolution that our 2-million-year-old primate body actively works to push away and hide from during our entire existence.

If you’re skeptical, it’s an easy sell. If you connect the dots on the many different things humans love to do you’ll quickly realize the one thing they all have in common is that they make us stop thinking.

That’s right. We spend our lives being drawn to activities that help us avoid our consciousness and to not think.

Let me elaborate.

If I asked someone what their absolute favorite activities were, what would they say?

The majority of folks would list off painting, running, eating, reading, watching movies, drinking, smoking weed, watching sports, having sex, or some other equally engaging activity.

And if I asked someone what the perfect career would be like, what would they say?

While the specifics of the job may vary (income, location etc.), the foundation is inarguable. The average person would describe their dream job as engaging, something they love, something they could do all day without noticing the time has passed.

If you review all of the above scenarios of both work and play it’s clear that in all of them the person is fully immersed, lost in the moment, out of their head, and focused on their exploding senses. Even while reading, a brain stimulating activity, one will get so immersed that they just leave their conscious mind completely. And I argue, that’s exactly what why we like any of these things.

Think about all of your favorite activities. You leave your head. The best runs we go into a euphoric auto-pilot, the best days painting we just create without a second thought, the best sex we go full animal.

For years, I spent every night reflecting on the events of that day to help catalog what I really enjoyed the most about that day. I wanted to use this to build a really fun career and life by doing more of the activities I enjoyed. From my reflections, I began to believe my thing was people because I’d get so lost in good conversation. During a good conversation, I’d lose time, and be immensely present.

As I grew older, I tried new things and began to build a diverse portfolio of hobbies. I thought about my hobbies a lot. I thought I was weird for liking so many things. I’m not even a bubbly weirdo spouting love and energy, I just find many things to be pleasant.

That’s when I noticed all of my favorite activities had a similar thread: they were just things I found myself deeply immersed into. And that’s the whole point. Immersion is out of the head.

I began to look at others and how they spent their time and it was very similar to my activities. It became clear: what we truly desire as people is to be immensely present. And the reason we love being present is because we want to escape consciousness.

If you read between the lines, that’s all anyone is ever trying to do.

And I am sure you’ve already asked yourself, what about thinking, Andrew, that’s fun and isn’t that completely embracing consciousness, making you very wrong and silly?

The thing is, I see the act of thinking abstractly about a problem as an activity no different than what you do at work. Immersing yourself into your thoughts on a problem in your head is no different than immersing yourself into a math problem on paper. Both equally remove the self from consciousness.

The important note here is that consciousness and thinking are very different. I have to think to write this sentence, but talking to myself and becoming aware of myself in relation to other items is consciousness.

In other words, thinking about how to rob a bank is complex and fun. Consciousness is wondering why you (self) don’t fit in at school (self in relation to a thing).

Lastly, even when consciousness seems to be doing good via some wholesome self-discovery (i.e. the ego), I argue it ends up ravaging the self and bringing on unnecessary pain. Truth seekers know this best (more on this later).

Regardless of the above, even if you like ‘thinking’, the sad truth is that I’d even argue the majority of people do not enjoy it and are unashamedly on a quest to do less of it. Surely every data set has outliers. And unfortunately, in this data set, those outliers are the likes of you and me, the people who like to think.

The average human, though, trudges through their day racing to get home, sit on a couch, drink beer, have media videos pounded into their head, eat, masturbate, then sleep. All activities that let you leave your mind and immerse externally.

And even for us thinkers, we push ourselves to be present and out of our mind.

Western worlds, having run the gauntlet of industrialization, are just trying to get away now. Millennials are wildly active in pursuit of their ‘purpose’ (aka something so fun they get out of their head) and the entire populace has taken the world of yoga, meditation and mindfulness main-stream.

To further extend this point, a yoga teacher in a class of mine once told everyone to ‘be present with the lightness of a dog lost in a field smelling flowers.’ Envying the animal for its lack of consciousness. Praising animals for this ability to be present is not new.

Dogs are the world’s favorite pet simply for that. The unconditional love and lack of grudge holding make them the envy of our species. We sit in awe (and aw) at their seemingly infinite pool of present moment joy. With any animal, we tend to believe the cause of their present moment loving is that they aren’t conscious and they don’t over think the world around them. And we are pretty jealous.

I find it a funny coincidence that the species that feels entitled and special for their high executive functioning admires other creatures for their lack of it.

Does this not start to paint a picture that our biology is just working our life and existence wishing to bring us back to where we were 70,000 years ago when consciousness arose?

Let’s not forget how evolution works. A random mutation in the genome happens, that mutation sometimes gives a creature an advantage to survive. Because of that, it survives and reproduces. That’s it. Nothing within evolution accounts for the quality of life of that creature. Consciousness was a mutation that helped us realize we can make fire and use words. That made us great at not dying. That’s why we have it. I think a lot of us forget how possible it is to have a feature on our body that developed for survival and exists with literally zero consideration for how much we smile.

Yes, very fun stuff, I know. Let’s continue to explore our human obsession with being present. Starting with Buddhism.

The philosophies of Buddhism and Hinduism are older than any other stream of thought at nearly 3,500 years old (yes, Buddha is older than ‘Jesus’). They are humanity’s longest living pattern of thought, meaning we like it so much we keep telling our kids about it, and coincidentally it’s all founded on not thinking at all.

Up until now, most of what I have covered is how our mind actively tries to escape itself but it doesn’t really paint the picture of consciousness as a curse. From what I have shared, consciousness sounds more like a neutral agent that exists in our life.

But, unfortunately, that’s not the whole story.

Part of the challenges associated with consciousness is that we can think, and think, and overthink. Our conscious mind allows us to create egos, identities, self-worth, and then compare that to objects around us such as people, buildings, oceans etc. Sometimes these things are great for the individual such as when we are blindly full of ourselves feeling good, naïve like kids missing the point, or standing in a place of clarity seeing the truth.

The other times, though, these developments from the conscious mind are pretty painful. A good example of this would just be a kid in high school trying to fit in or someone who thinks they are really smart, then fails a test. Their identities are crushed and painful sadness ensues. Thanks, conscious mind!

While we might not have hard data on it, it’s no secret that the average human spends lots of their life insecure, sad or depressed. Need evidence? Just look at art. Inarguably, art is an extension of the mind. It requires deep intensity and emotion to create it, just like this article. What is created by our hands in the physical world, exists first in the non-tangible world of the conscious mind. While some art is happy, lots of it is built on sadness. It’s great art but I am just making a point.

This is how we begin to not just illustrate consciousness as a neutral agent, but instead as the active antagonist to our existence.

For example, I have always found it ironic that the conscious mind creates the ego of the self, then it is also the conscious mind that curiously investigates science, ultimately crushing that ego and bringing the self back down to irrelevancy.

That doesn’t sound so bad, except for the fact that crushing your ego usually carries with it an existential crisis full of confusion and meaninglessness. Yes, indeed, losing your identity is hard. I find this all ironic because if the conscious mind had never created the ego in the first place then we wouldn’t have had to ‘seek the truth’ and experience the pain of tearing it down. This is what I mean when I say truth-seekers, who love thinking, experience intense unnecessary pain for their ‘love’ of thinking.

Is it worth it just to gain the knowledge that we are irrelevant? We are really prided that we know humanity’s physical size and relation to the universe. But really, most people go through pain to get there and what’s the point? Does a dog need to know ‘the truth’ of the universe to live a quality life? Not really. I am just as much of a truth-seeker as the next guy, but I have to admit, our species has an unhealthy obsession with collecting knowledge for really no real reason.

I suppose it just points us to the philosophical question, ‘what makes life worth living?’ … be it truth or flourishing? Does truth enhance flourishing?

Discuss this with yourself and write me back. Moving on.

Relating back to the point of science losing identity and ego, I think, this experience is actually the best of the troubles brought on by consciousness. It sounds painful, but consciousness brings on much worse.

For example, many others simply overthink reality and kill themselves. If we are to tout consciousness as man’s greatest asset, we’ll need to find a good way to explain and offset the conscious minds ability to make itself so miserable that wants to blow itself to pieces.

And let’s again consider the mind of a truth-seeker as they begin to ‘seek truth’ and question reality. The truth seeker reads books about science, history, and technology. They start to realize the world is a giant ball of math. They begin to see overlaps between genetics and computer science. They question life as a simulation. They realize free will is a fallacy. They realize religion is fake. Neuroscience helps them realize everything they experience is electricity. Obviously, I’ve been there. But if you Google around, this is pretty common and pushes most people into a bleak view of reality and many others to Nihilism. If I could quote from the movie Jackie, “There comes a point on man’s search for meaning where he realizes there are no answers and he either accepts it or kills himself.”

And all of this is capable because of our friend consciousness. I am happy I’ve learned the basics of science and predict benefits to come from it, but even still, that’s a lot of hell and for what outcome? Truth?

All of that truth-seeking sounds like a really painful set of lessons that are all rooted in discovering the truth. But what good, really, is the truth? There’s only debatable application here if you ask me. The argument is basically that the truth reduces suffering in the long term. Learning science etc. helps someone be calm about a human’s place in the world. Or conversely, the truth helps us find cures for physical pain like cancer.

That’s a really tough sell if you ask me, though. If consciousness helps us reduce suffering, I’d say we’d be in a much rosier spot if we never had it and were just as super present as a dog from the get-go. Even through the lens of reducing physical pains etc. it really only puts us in a philosophical debate about what is life and what’s the purpose of extending it?

In life, we die no matter what, so you can’t claim that science prevents the suffering of death and/or losing a family member. Living to 40 vs 80, you’re going to experience the pain of your parents death eventually. So really, all the truth does now is delay the same suffering we will all eventually face.

I agree, though, if there was ever any motivation to life, it would seem that to reduce suffering is a good goal. But that just brings me back to my point, does consciousness really reduce suffering? Or does it increase suffering?

From the way I look at it, we suffer a lot in the name of acquiring knowledge. But what does that knowledge do for us? To offset the suffering we endured to acquire that knowledge, it’s going to have to really take life up several notches on the quality scale, something that I simply can’t admit it does.

And that’s the story of consciousness.

Perhaps it really is a curse or a sickness that developed in us 70,000 years ago. While we are the best at survival, clearly an evolutionary win, we live aware of the vastness of existence, but with no real answers — beautiful and torturous at the same time.

It all depends on what barometer you are measuring consciousness up against. If you measure it against truth and knowledge, consciousness is a grace and miracle. But if you measure consciousness up against quality of life, that’s a more challenging argument.

It makes me think of an old cartoon where an image is shown of humans full of ego and self-worth pushing themselves with great stress to fulfill a modern world of an ideal life. Meanwhile, in the second frame, a couple of dogs look on laughing at our naïveté for what really makes life worth living.

The Curse of Consciousness: Why Peak Human Pleasure Exists in the Absence of Thought was originally published in Thrive Global on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We live in a couple’s world, more than that really, a communal, socially intoxicated world. Being social is part of the human experience, historians and anthropologists theorize that our fiendish desire to be included in things originates from a learned evolutionary bias: if you became a social outcast during hunter-gatherer times you missed out on key communal resources and died. Therefore, those who had biological dispositions to social inclusion survived most and the genetic code was passed on with a greater emphasis.

That’s why you and I can’t help but innately desire to be liked and included because our brain thinks that being included means our tribe will serve us extra gruel at lunch and maybe fight off a lion for us. But now we live in a modern world and our desire to be included is a great hindrance because our tribe is now seven billion instead of ten, and a lot of those seven billion are assholes.

That’s why this piece isn’t about being liked or fighting off lions, but instead, this article is about the how and why fighting the genetic desire to be included socially through infinite isolation is a big life win.

Contradictory to our genetics, in the western world, we believe in individualism to a great extent. We get an I.D. number from our country, we get a name. If we kill someone, only we get punished and not our family. Each person gets freedoms, and certain ‘unalienable’ rights (in theory). Everyone gets to pick their spouse, their career, and they get their own house with their own room.

The many examples of our individualistic society I could list on and on. It’s an exhaustive list dating back to the Roman times where our individualistic society became structured.

The contradiction in our world is fascinating. We care more about our individual identity than ever before but are increasingly subject to a world of social acceptance and group activity.

If you travel alone and book a hotel you get two beds or a bed for two. If you eat lunch alone, the server clears away the second set of utensils. If you go to see a movie alone, people ask if you’re okay. If you start a business alone, no one will invest, and if you’re single people start to force potential partners on you.

Because lord knows you can’t be happily single and alone!

Despite this world, we all still have time alone; in our room, walking to class, on a flight, or on a lazy Saturday. We love it. It’s even created trend some identify with as the “extroverted introvert.” However, most people can’t handle much time alone. It’s those same extroverted introverts who start to hyperventilate if they sit in a room alone for more than a few hours.

We call this cabin fever.

Cabin fever is the resulting emotional state we arrive at when we don’t talk to people for a long time or when we stay in one place without much external stimulation for extended periods of time. It’s a horrendous anxiety and a happens because of the expectations of social interaction we’ve built living in an oversocialized world.

A great example of this was a week ago when I saw a video viral on Facebook about a guy who locked himself in his house alone for a week. The man ensuingly cried tears, started shivering and defined his time alone as a senseless prison. I’m sure his direct family was really proud of him.

This was cabin fever, or in other words, an anxiety of the mind. From the whole ordeal, the man’s takeaway was that being alone is horrible and no one should be alone.

Really, not the right lesson or takeaway at all. Yet as one would expect, hordes of internet trolls agreed and swore off isolation. Instagram will surely benefit.

Like the man in the video, our societies inability to meet itself calmly in solitude is why we have an orange popsicle as President in the United States.

Our hero and star treated his time alone as a prison sentence. Being alone is not a prison sentence. It’s actually the greatest luxury we have in this thing we call life. The problem in his strategy was how quickly he transitioned from a life of addictive online socialization to complete isolation for seven days. Making a shift that drastic out of nowhere is obviously going to suck.

To enjoy the fruits of isolation, one must gradually experience isolation. There is where my personal experiences become relevant.

When I was 20, I was just like this millennial man baby on Facebook. If I was alone for one Saturday night I’d be itching for chatter like a madman. It was near unbearable cabin fever. Sitting alone in a house could become torture.

This bothered me. So one day I created an active goal to strive for: being so calm and comfortable with myself that I could spend an eternity of time alone (in a prison or on a beach) and content.

I wanted to be so mentally calm and clear that if I wanted to, in theory, I could lock myself away in jungle cabin for years and not be bothered. I wanted to reach a point where my quality of life was free of what happened in the external world.

Today, I feel like I am nearing that goal. Be it subway or beach, hostel or palace, I find a seemingly infinite degree of contentedness.

My biggest test was a month in South America alone with a zero-sum ability to speak Spanish. By day 28, I had realized I operated the trip content from start to finish. I had no urges to leave. No urges to stay. Whatever was cool. I was with myself at all times and that was enough.

Considering that I am now 24-years old, this degree of progress took me four years. And as early as of 10 months ago I was struggling with a week alone. My progress being comfortable alone was so slow I began to question if it was possible if I would ever be comfortable alone.

Slowly, it’s come together.

For others, I recommend it more than ever. The process is a day by day. I started by staying in on a Saturday night. Then a whole Saturday. I missed parties and clubbing. I missed movie nights. I battled FOMO, hard.

But over time, you start to realize staying in on a Saturday night is actually what you prefer.

As did I, I began to push myself for weekend trips to new cities alone. Flying across the country and being alone for a week in a new city. I moved to a new city. I spent weeks bumbling about looking for friends.

Then, I started to travel internationally to countries whose languages I didn’t speak. I was surrounded by people in big cities but I couldn’t communicate with anyone.

That was hard.

Eventually, through the struggles and pains, you graduate up a level and up a level.

As I went through this, I began to wonder if it was an infinite staircase of levels or if there was ever a point I’d reach a mindset that just worked everywhere and always.

I am starting to think I’ve reached that now and a lot of the inspiration for that comes from Buddhism. As a brief overview, a Buddhist philosophy posits that contentment of life is free of the pursuit of highs and lows.

Not just physical highs like having sex, partying or eating good food. It’s a freedom from the highs of non-tangible things like a compliment, having a good conversation with someone, or even thinking.

Buddhism basically says you don’t need to eat to be content, you don’t need new shoes to be content, you don’t need to think to be content, you don’t need anything external to be content. You’ve got what you need, always. Just be.

For me, this was profound and proved to be a breakthrough in my quest for isolation. What used to be challenging moments of isolation for me are now, through the lens of Buddhism, quickly satiated by the truest reminder that whatever I am craving, I don’t need.

Considering further, it obviously applies to the oversocialized world and becoming comfortable with solitude.

The crying man on Facebook could benefit. And we all could. What Buddhism helps to deliver is the thing I became in pursuit of at age 20; infinite confidence and comfort with the self.

This a paramount to a quality life. Beyond even the lavish outcomes of actually being infinitely content with yourself, we have to consider the implications this has on our behaviors throughout life.

Part of my choice to become comfortable with the self at age 20 was because it seemed absolutely ludicrous to me to start building and investing in a career when I didn’t know who I was. It seemed ludicrous to me to start building relationships with significant others, when I didn’t know who I was, when I wasn’t comfortable with who I was.

How could I expect an everlasting love if one of the two pillars of that love was still under construction? How could I build a career I love if I built a career on a personality that wasn’t really who I was?

This isn’t even about the selfish benefits that come with infinite contentment, but logically it doesn’t make sense to be getting married to a person when you don’t know who you are.

These fruits are grown in isolation. Being alone forces deep thoughts to surface. Conquering isolation provides one with infinite mobility. Being happy alone lets you move cities, travel alone, take massive risks and bet the house every time because you know you always have what you need.

In this over socialized world, I urge every reader to battle your biology. Twitter isn’t building you the foundation for a career and it sure isn’t building the foundation for a marriage.

Put down the phone and get to know yourself.

Learn How to Be Alone so You Can Live Your Best Life was originally published in Thrive Global on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

When you discover the ego, you become fixated on it.

You crumble to pieces when you realize you’ve been living under a fake persona craving worthiness. You spend every waking moment trying to find out why you’ve needed to prove yourself.

You study your childhood and dig for old stories of yourself. You try to understand. Nothing makes sense. You begin to realize you always felt inadequate. You had a brother smarter than you. You were never enough to anyone.

You realize that your whole future life you imagined were all built on these insecurities to prove your worth. You become repulsed by it. You realize your goals and future fake. They are not you. You trash your goals and future plans. This seems like a wonderful plan. You can’t imagine living a life solely to prove yourself anymore.

Life is great, you think. You are working hard to value yourself.

Then you realize current job doesn’t fit into your career goals anymore. Then you realize you don’t even have career goals anymore. You start to hate going to your job. Your job now just becomes a means to exist.

You are learning how to value yourself while now working in a job that makes no sense. You have no future plans or goals.

Life becomes confusing and painful. You work to buy food. You buy food so you don’t shrivel up and die. You begin to wonder why you even do that.

Why even exist? Why am I even eating food?

You wake up feeling like shit again. You go to a job that you do not even dislike, you instead hate. You still don’t even know why you are waking up anymore.

You exist. You eat. You don’t know why you eat. A burger seems meaningless. You have no future goals to stand for.

Through this process, you slowly begin to value yourself, but you still have no goals. You are comfortable with who you are, that’s fun but you have no goals.

What’s the point of valuing myself? None of it really matters.

You don’t know why you wake up. You don’t know why you lie down at night in preparation for tomorrow.

You just do.

You start to really value yourself but life still seems like hell in a blender.

You begin to wish you were ignorant to your ego again. Life was better with an ego. You were motivated, you had goals, now you have no goals and no motivation.

You go to work late. You get headaches by noon. You begin to wonder if valuing yourself is really what it’s made out to be. You like yourself but life is still hell.

You have no purpose. You are existing. That is all you are doing.

You read things. You show up to work. You read more things. You need answers. You ask Google why this sucks so much. You read more answers. Soon you begin to tear through books. You are a voracious vacuum of knowledge.

You become realize life is hell because you have no goals or motivations. You now have a goal. Paradoxically, your goal is to find a goal. But it works.

You still hate your job. You now have a clear goal: find a goal. It’s good times. You feel a breakthrough down the road. Life is tough, but you feel true to yourself. You are being bold.

You start to really hate your job. You realize it’s everything you don’t want. But it pays for food. And food buys you time to find out what your new goal will be.

You still hate the job. You wish you didn’t have to spend half of your waking hours pushing paper. You want to be finding your new goal.

New books. New adventures. They call to you. And this job stops you.

You want to quit. But if you quit you can’t buy food and you will die. And you still don’t know what kind of job you would even like. A new job will be just as bad as this job, just with a different desk.

Life starts to suck again. But you value yourself. You crushed your ego a long time ago. You know that how you act is authentically you.

Eventually, you find a goal. Something you care about. Something you want to work on. You are hesitant. It is broad and random. Is this thing a goal? It’s been in front of you this whole time. You didn’t realize this new goal could be a goal.

You wonder if it can be a career. How do I get paid for this? What skills do I need? A new goal arises: making your new goal into a career.

You read new books. Books not on philosophy but books on practical skills. You start equipping yourself with the tools you need to make your new goal a career. You feel positive.

You are grounded on genuine, authentic goals. You feel valued. You feel your worth. You have a goal. You love yourself. You can love others. You aren’t a dick anymore. You don’t have to win. You don’t have to prove anything. You believe in present you.

You realize your new goal is crazy. It’s a big leap away. You wait for a good opportunity. You wake up and realize it’s been months. What the hell. You say fuck it. You quit.

You don’t know where you are going. But you know you will make it work. You are bold.

Beating the ego: the arduous journey in 900 words was originally published in Thrive Global on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

What does it mean to die young?

Many months ago, I was visiting the famous New York City to attend an event of curious young persons who ask big questions. On the final day of the event, we gathered in Rockefeller Park just by World Trade Center One. Beyond the fact that the date was September 10th, there was something special in the air.

Gathered in a circle, we formally introduced ourselves, shared our family heritage and, if we wanted, spoke about our greatest fear. My brain racked through its memories and feelings with hesitation despite my full well knowing what my greatest fear was from the moment of the prompt.

At the time, for many months, I had been experiencing profound, sporadic bouts of anxiety due to a fear of dying at any moment through some unpredictable freak occurrence. In other words, I had a fear of dying young and having been in New York City for five straight days, those feelings of anxiety had been multiplied.

New York City is chaos on a good day, and with a fear of dying by randomness, I felt unable to measure my surroundings. My entire stay I found myself actively measuring up objects and people. I was fearful of buses clipping me, bicyclists running me down, AC units falling on me, subway shooters, or worse. I didn’t intentionally think these thoughts, but that micro-second hesitation before decisions flickered with fear.

The thing is these were not new thoughts for me. In San Francisco, my previous home, for many previous months, I had felt the same. In any city, really, I found these feelings. Even in suburbia Virginia, I found myself anxious running along a sleepy 35 mph neighborhood road fearful of that one guy who would lose control.

As someone who has climbed abandoned water towers, taken mopeds through Asia, kissed a wolf, and traversed South America alone, I wondered what was happening to me. I had many questions;

• Is this part of growing old?
• Is this going to get worse?
• Will I always live like this?

It was frightening. I didn’t want to live like this forever. I was only 23.

For answers, I sought deep meditation to figure out the root of my fear. I found my discoveries interesting and worth sharing.

So here it is.

As I have come to articulate it, I had a fear of sudden, unwarranted death. I didn’t want to die prematurely.

I thought a lot about why I was so scared for seemingly no reason. The culprit, I think, has been over empathizing with stories in the news. The internet has made premature mortality easy to conceive. We have all read enough stories to know that a spray of bullets will kill a 20-year-old just as fast as it kills a 50-year-old. And with Facebook making it so easy to keep up with everyone you’ve ever met, who hasn’t had an old friend show up in their feed to the tune of condolences and prayers?

For me, all of this helped the idea of dying young deeply materialize in my mind. When I read that a 24-year old has died out of nowhere because of a mysterious brain tumor every Doctor missed, who can’t help but wonder what surprise might be awaiting them. For every story you hear, someone else is living it wondering why it was them.

There’s something about the concept of dying young that is haunting. Not just my own, but for anyone. When these news headlines come out, as one has seen in Virginia recently, “12-year old jumps from overpass and kills 23-year old driver” we all feel like we have been robbed. We have this gut feeling of senselessness and absurdity. And as I have come to learn, it seems the younger the person or the more random the death, the more intense our pain and sorrow.

We are sad because the younger they are, we think, the more they missed. And the more random the incident, we think, the more undeserved the death.

If we are trying to ask ourselves why dying young is so soul-crushing to us, we have to look at these two factors, age, and randomness, to inform us because I’ve come to see these are the two key criteria that wrench our stomach the most.

I’ve thought a lot about the randomness of death and death by age, and I’ve come to notice there is one common thread: loss of unlived life.

Dying randomly, we feel robbed. Dying young we feel robbed. We feel robbed because we think there was more to that story.

To us, that life will now go unlived.

So, what is unlived life?

Unlived life is exactly what you think it is: friendships from school that never matured, tough breaks up that never happened, books that were never written, dreams that were never explored, art that was never created, and ideas that were never discovered.

For those who die young, we wrench at the idea of the careful education and love given to someone through their childhood to prepare for their own adventure only to see it vanish; the diapers changed, the thousands of hours of studied, and the new clothes for college then poof. That bright young journalist you grew up with is split in half by a speeding motorcycle.

For those who die to randomness, we wrench because as humans we love to believe in some type of order to our universe and that to die because of random chance is unjust. We boldly affirm that life consists of three key stages: being young, being adult, and being old. A proper life includes all three, and the more of that you ‘miss out on’ the more sinister the loss.

As I began to meditate more on the above discoveries, it became clear that the fear associated with dying young was this indeed unlived life. I began to look deeper into philosophy on the subject for more opinions on life and death.

Reading about the philosophy of death it becomes clear a lot of folks aren’t just worried about unlived life but more so: what is life after death? But I don’t find this question too worrying. I am actually okay with the concept of being dead (dying maybe not but being dead yes) and I will tell you why.
A lot of us are scared about life after death because we don’t really know what happens, and that doesn’t fit our desire for order and predictability. The uncertainty of it all is what eats us up.

It doesn’t bother me, though, because from my meditations on the topic I realized something obvious, life after death is binary: either there is something or there is nothing.

I see that once we are dead, if there is something (another life), then the journey continues and we’ll have plenty more questions and things to do. But if there is nothing, that is also okay, because even though we don’t realize it, we have all experienced nothingness before: the nothingness of death will be equal to the nothingness before life.

In other words, what was life like before you were born? Imagine that and that is what life would be like if there is nothing after death. In a weird way, there is something really comforting about this. Knowing that we have experienced nothingness makes nothingness less intimidating.

If you find as much comfort in that realization as I do, then you come to the same outlook on death as I have now: the idea of being dead isn’t so bad because we know the outcomes of death, something or nothing, instead, the real fear associated with death is the fear of losing unlived life. As we discussed, what we truly fear are the missed contributions to the world, fears of stories left of untold, jokes left unspoken, hugs never given, tears never shed, and words never woven.

Let’s think back to our fear of losing unlived life. Let’s imagine the person who dies young or the person who dies by random accident. Why does this bother us so much? Why does missing out on shared stories or given hugs bother us so much?

I don’t think it’s that complicated. We feel robbed of unlived life because, for all we know, this is it. We have life right now but we don’t know what it is. We don’t know where it came from. And we don’t know if there’s more of it after we die. That’s scary to us. Even if you practice a faith, you really don’t know otherwise you’d just kill yourself to get to the promised land. We all live with this subconscious fear that this could be the only experience we have, our only opportunity to experience and our only opportunity to contribute.

Whatever the fate may be after death, if we have a desire to experience and contribute, dying young is cutting short what might be our only opportunity to do so. That’s why even in a meaningless universe, we still want to thrive because if this is it, why not at least make it worthwhile?

Really then, a fear of losing unlived life, is a worry that we won’t be able to make the most of our one chance we have at life. And dying young, we feel robbed of our opportunity to that.

This is really important. Our subconscious mind knows all of this and it influences our behavior.

How do you think a lot of people respond to this fear?

Well, most people try to live the most life they can as fast as possible thinking that if they do that someday they will pass some magical threshold where they are content and have lived enough life. Importantly this looks different for different people because everyone defines ‘life’ in their own way.

For some people, life is about making a contribution, so they work really hard to write books, build companies, or create some type of legacy. For others, life is about indulging into hedonism, so they have lots of sex, party hard and eat lots of fatty foods.

Judgements aside, both parties are trying to sprint towards a non-tangible amount of life. No matter what you achieve there is always something bigger, and no matter how many times you party, there is always another celebration.

As you can imagine, sprinting to accumulate life experiences doesn’t have the effect people want because they never actually pass the threshold. There is always more.

Sprinting to acquire experiences doesn’t work. We end up spending life in pursuit of life, as it coincidentally passes us by. For the person who fears death and fears missing out on life’s contributions and experiences, this isn’t going to work.

Thankfully, there is an alternative. Consider the point made by Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor and inquisitor to death, who spoke something on this topic which was profound:

“the longest-lived and those who die soonest lose the same thing. The present. The present is all that they can give up since that is all you have and what you do not have, you cannot lose.”

Marcus’ point here is that the present is all that exists and that the past and the future are delusions that only exist in our mind, which is true. This is obvious but can take a while for us to truly realize it in our behavior and actions.

The key point though that I want to apply to the discussion on death is that Marcus’ emphasis is on the now or in other words, the present. We must realize the way we segment life are built on these imagined quantities of time. Being young, adult, and old, are completely made up framings of time and life. Day, weeks, and years are also completely made up framings of time.

All that exists is right now, I cannot repeat that enough. Time is not like an old movie film where the clips still exist after they have played. There is no reel in life, there is only a perma-state of what is happening at this moment.

This is important because one of our greatest mistakes as humans is that we imagine that there is some giant gap of time between life and death. Obviously, though, this isn’t true.

As discussed, humans have two states: life and death. What comes after life is death. Since life is in the present, what comes after the present is death. In other words, there is no gap of time between life and death. It is just the present, then what comes next, which is death.

My grandfather put it best, “the only thing separating life and death is a short phase of transition.”

Look around your room, this is life. This is now. But on the immediate other side of this is death. There is no gap of time or space.

This could seem depressing to some, but I do not find it so. It’s reality and liberating. It drives home the point that Aurelius mentioned, that the present is literally all we have. Whether you are 90 years old or 20 years old, we are all just “one short phase of transition” away from death.

So how does this all relate to dying young? Let’s recap.

There are two reasons we hate the idea of someone dying young. The first is that when someone dies young we feel wrenched about the preparation and potential lost in that human. The second is that most people who die young, die through random chance events, which makes us feel even worse as we perceive the death as unjustified.

(note: dying by random chance events at any age is enough to make us sick because it still remains unjust in our eyes.)

Dying young and dying by random chance have one thing in common: a loss of unlived life. Above, we unpacked unlived life and found that because we are uncertain about life after death, we want to maximize this experience we have and contribute what we can.

Trying to maximize life, people sprint to acquire experiences which is unhealthy. We then investigated the present moment alongside Aurelius where we emphasized the present is all that exists, and within the present is where all life exists.

Reviewing the information above, there’s a clear operative here.

The root of our discontent is a fear of not making contributions and having diverse experiences.

This can be handled by everyone differently, but the important note is that living by way of bucket list is not a good answer. Life is now, a bucket list exists in the future and the past. It’s a list of things you want to do and things you did do.

The best we can do is to live a quality life in the moment. A quality life includes struggle, happiness, wins, and losses. The present moment doesn’t mean just lay on the beach for eternity. It’s a state of mind. To conquer a fear of dying young, or at a fear of dying at all, is to foster a frame on the world that is content with now always.

I don’t want to get too deep on solutions here because it is largely subjective. A lot of my motivation in writing this was to diagnose the root of a pretty widespread fear. In my attempts to do that, I used objectivity and unbiased reason. How to live in the present, well, my only advice could be subjective and biased.

To not leave readers on a cliffhanger, though, I personally find there to be three key philosophies to live by.

1. Managing Expectations

I am sure there is a more academic way to say this, but the gap between reality and expectations are truly the origins of discontent. If you expect a $1000 bonus and get an $800 bonus, you are sad, regardless of the fact that you just got a bonus.
More relevant, the idea of losing unlived life is an expectation. We expect to live through the phases of life (young, adult, old) like we are owed.

2. Value Added Judgements

Deriving from Buddhism, there is a frame of mind that works to remove the learned judgments we have on things. For example, we look at weeds as ugly and bad. But really, a weed is just a plant. Buddhism works to look at a weed and see it not as good and not as bad, but as a plant that can be beautiful.

There is a famous Chinese proverb that discusses this.

• A farmer’s horse runs away. The whole village tells him how unfortunate that is. He says maybe.
• The next day the horse comes back with five other wild horses. The whole village tells him how lucky he is. He says maybe.
• The next day his son, while trying to train one of the horses is thrown from the horse and breaks his leg. The whole village tells him how unfortunate that is. He says maybe.
• The next day the military comes to recruit for the draft and his son doesn’t have to go. The whole village tells him how lucky he is. He says maybe.

Applying this point of view onto life, it’s endless contentment.

3. The Myth of Sisyphus

20th-century philosophy, Albert Camus, wrote a story called the Myth of Sisyphus where a man is banished to the worst punishment of all time for his sins: rolling a stone up a hill for eternity without ever reaching the top.

The meaning is that rolling the stone up the hill forever is the worst punishment of all. But as Camus argues, “Our fate only seems horrible when we place it in contrast with something that would seem preferable.”

In other words, if Sisyphus is able to forget about all of the other places he wishes he could be, then it isn’t so bad.
I’ve used this frame of mind when I find myself in my worst moments and they immediately improve. Stuck in traffic, I just think, “well I don’t really have any other fate” and your outlook can help but improve. On a bad date, I just think, “well this sucks, but I am here so I might as well own it.”

And so forth.

That’s the most I am willing to share. This piece was a thorough inquisition into the fear of dying young rather than subjective solutions. The answers are for your own finding.

Best wishes.

How Battery Startup Advano Went from Pitching Silicon Bayou to Crushing Silicon Valley: a Chat with CEO Alex Girau

The startup journey certainly is a woeful one and that story has been no different for Advano than it has been for any other long-storied startup. Especially when it comes to hardware.

Advano is 10-man startup out of Silicon Valley that does batteries. More specifically, Advano does lithium-ion batteries with new applied technology using surface functionalized silicon nanoparticles. Which, to me, and likely you, is one of those things I hear, have no idea what it means, but it sounds intense. More on this later.

This fall, Advano just finished up being one of the main features in the summer cohort for Silicon Valley-based accelerator, Y Combinator, and are now batting away investors like flies on honey. Soon, Advano will be closing its first venture round.

At first, this sounds like a pretty standard timeline for a startup. Get some seed, get into an accelerator, get intuitional investors scale a bit and then sail away to Aruba. Except, for Advano, this is that moment that has been on the horizon for three years since their birth in 2014.

That’s where the real story begins.

Up until February 2017, Advano was a one-man team, founder Alex Girau, with no investments and a whole slew of part-time contractors and university undergrads. The only thing harder than the first customer is the first employee and/or co-founder. These were the woes of several years.

However, just like a slow-moving train cresting a hill, Advano hit a point of high momentum. In February, Girau brought on Dr. Shiva Adireddy, a research professor of Physics at Tulane.

As a co-founder, then in March the team scored a $500,000 seed investment led by Fifty Years VC and Social Impact Capital. In April he was accepted to Y Combinator, and then now, in September, is closing a second round of capital including institutional investors.

Talking with Girau, he reflected on the moment, “We pretty much went from two guys sitting in a lab writing grants and doing a lot of experiments to — with that 500k, in a matter of two months — having our own 1500 square foot lab at four employees. Now, we’re at ten employees and probably even more.”

While Advano has a long way to go, they have great momentum. However, if Girau hadn’t been plugging away, making crazy bets and honing the Advano message for the last four years, the team would have laid an egg at Y Combinator.

Instead, the team displayed themselves as experts and were shining brightly on demo day.

What most impresses me about Advano is that the team has to pitch and explain to people what lithium-ion batteries with silicon nanoparticles are, just as fast as other startups share their rather banal pitches on “faster grocery delivery” or “UBER for smelly socks.”

This is why I caught up with the founder and CEO Alex Girau. He’s a wizard with his words.

The notable tale of Advano is not one of their recent successes but the one of their journey and slog from 2013 to today. It’s easy to see it paid off, but it takes some tenacity to show up for four years and have, on paper, relatively nothing to show for it.

Hopping on the phone with Girau, he filled me in on the origins of Advano and how it became a thing:

“I was actually enrolled at Tulane for my Ph.D. in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and the technology for Advano actually combines new technologies that were formed from two groups of people, one in the Chemical Engineering Department and one in the Chemistry Department.

Basically, our big breakthrough with Advano is that we make silicon nanoparticles with unique surface chemistry which make batteries way better. One of the biggest problems, though, is that silicon nanoparticles are hard to make at commercial scale. However, this Chemical Engineering team had found a way to manufacture these nanoparticles at scale at a low price. Secondly, the team from the Chemistry Department was specializing in how to apply and use silicon chemistry is unique ways. This combination of both is what created the fundamental technology that Advano is bringing to market.

I knew this was big but honestly, at the time, but I didn’t know for how or for what.”

As Girau continued on, he shared that nanoparticles are 1000 times smaller than the diameter of human hair. Which I think is cool. But more importantly, he noted this new technology was actually intended to be used for gene therapy as targeted drug delivery vehicles. As he described it, “silicon nanoparticles would be like the Trojan horse delivering a drug payload.”

Regardless of this technology, Girau shared that he had already caught the startup bug. In his second year of his Ph.D. program, he worked to create a water bottle that was able to disinfect water using solar energy. He had teamed up with a medical student and begun applying and winning business plan competitions.

Later in 2013, after his third year in the Ph.D. program, he actually dropped out, licensed the nanoparticle technology from Tulane and went to start Advano. As he shared:

“For the first year, I consulted Fortune 10 Companies to save some money to really start the company properly. Then I started writing the business plan for Advano. I was looking for the hot industry to apply this technology to because I knew that this gene delivery method was going to take forty years to get through the FDA. And I didn’t want to have gray hair by the time this thing takes off. I literally spent another year trying to find the right market. Doing industry analyses.”

Eventually, as you can infer, Girau hit on batteries. In his words:

“Right now we don’t have a problem generating energy. We have more solar than we know what to do with. But the problem is how do we store it cheaply and efficiently and how do we leverage it in times where energy is not being generated? That’s batteries and it’s one of the few things that I see that is truly bottlenecking society.”

Saving the details, which are actually massively interesting, Girau explained to me in literally five minutes how applying silicon nanoparticles to batteries changes everything (essentially making them store way more energy in less space) and is truly a game changer for the industry.

And I got it. I was legitimately sold and I know nothing about batteries. Reviewing the transcript of our call, I literally said, “Wow. If I’m an investor, I’m pulling up money.”

This is exactly what makes Advano such a neat story to tell. Pitching “The UBER for Dog Biscuits” is easy and also probably not a real problem. Advano solves a real problem and Girau was able to communicate the fundamentals of chemistry, nanotechnology and the market opportunity, in five minutes, to me, a guy who does none of that.

Because of this, I predict mega growth for Advano down the road.

Obviously, though, once Girau picked batteries, it wasn’t all roses. Going from business plan to smooth five-minute pitch took a while. About two and a half years actually.

He shared that when you launch a company, “entrepreneurs just pass you off as the new guy and investors don’t even give you a look off the bat because you don’t even know how to take investment or what protocols to follow.”

To compound noobie status, Girau discussed the pains of finding partners where he struggled to find another co-founder, people telling him he was too young to be CEO and many other faltering part-time co-workers.

Girau spoke it most well when he was reflecting on his journey in 2013 when he began the consulting:

“in the first year, you quit your job and you get all high and mighty with a large ego. And then, in the second year, what happens is reality smacks you in the face and you get humbled so quickly because you really have no idea what you’re doing. And then, in the third year, things start to change.

You’ve been around the block long enough. Entrepreneurs, they respect grittiness, and if they keep seeing you around they say, ‘Alright, well this guy, maybe he’ll stick around. He’s grinding it out, okay, that’s respectable.’ You’ve been told ‘No.’ by so many investors that you learn how to play the game and become investable.”

Girau, I think, really summarizes the startup experience. While Advano launched in 2014, Girau began the journey in 2013, which, sometimes we forget, was a really long time ago. 2013 was the year of the Boston Bombings, Obama was just beginning his second term and Google Glass was still a thing.

Between then and now, Girau has quietly chipped away at lithium-ion batteries.

Closing up our discussion, I asked Girau what philosophies he lives by and what advice he might have to share, this is what he said:

“The first philosophy I live by is to enjoy the process. I love what I do because I love every single day of the process. I fundamentally love every single thing I’m doing. Normal jobs, your highs are just high and your lows are just low.

Not very big. But when you do a startup, things are magnified. Your highs are really high and your lows are really low. You need to have the amnesia. It’s like in sports. The last play doesn’t matter. You need to have amnesia. It really is enjoying the process because it’s going to be a long one.”

He continued:

“Additionally, a piece of advice I have is that I spent way too much time asking people for their opinions on a pitch deck. What happens is, it turns out there are too many cooks in the kitchen.

An Angel Investor has a different angle than a Venture Capitalist. Those are two different points of view that you really should not be trying to conjoin into one seamless presentation.”

And that’s all there is to it.

To keep up with Advano, be sure to check out their website. If you want to catch up with Alex Girau, you can reach him on Twitter here. I highly recommend asking about how silicon nanotechnology works with batteries.

It’ll take five minutes and it’ll blow your mind.

Until next time.

How Battery Startup Advano Went from Pitching Silicon Bayou to Crushing Silicon Valley: a Chat with… was originally published in Startup Grind on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Today, we investigate the world and its challenges through the lens of one badass world-storyteller.

My friend J.J. Kelley will take us on a ride through some projects he has covered first-hand such as Joseph Kony, the Congo Civil War, the Murderous Drug-Crisis in the Philippines and even some treachery here at home in the United States. Most importantly, he highlights for us one critical root cause of suffering: lack of governmental accountability.

J.J. Kelley is a Director and Producer for the National Geographic Flagship Documentary Series, EXPLORER. However, believe it or not, J.J. hasn’t always been a world adventurer. Though, he was always a badass. J.J. began as a normal guy who entered college with not a single clue as to what he actually wanted to do.

However, similar to the likes of Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, J.J. Kelley dropped out of college after one year. Not to pursue software, but adventure. Coming from a small town in Minnesota, he liked the big world. While working a few small jobs, J.J. would save and travel. He began to ask, “how can I make this a career?”

The big break for J.J. came after he decided to bike the Alaskan Oil Pipeline and record it on a camera. This documentary helped him get into film school and additionally was the piece he used to hustle his way into National Geographic for his first internship.

The rest is history.

Since then, J.J. has filmed on and worked on all seven continents and up to 45 countries. Thanks to the particular planning and security measures with Nat Geo, J.J. hasn’t just been to these countries, he’s gone deep. Congo Gold Mine Warlord deep.

And this is why I reached out to him: What trends has J.J. seen that we haven’t?

When I asked J.J. what was the most urgent item in the world and what story needs more attention he shared:

“I think one common thread I see involved in a lot of the problems that we have is there’s a pretty huge inequality gap, it’s the classic haves and have-nots. The have-nots are either going to be tormented or they’re going to fight back. There are these people in the Congo that dig and they hope for just a couple of little flakes of gold so that they can cobble it together and get five dollars over the course of the month. They don’t even know what the flakes are for and they have no idea that the stuff is called gold. They just know people want it.”

The big point made by J.J. here and throughout the entire interview was highlighting how people who fit the bill of “have-nots” and lack a voice which is what makes it the most pressing issue.

He emphasized that time and time again around the world you see people with low income being exploited by governments that go unchecked and knowingly abuse people who have no way of speaking up.

While both J.J. and I agreed this concept wasn’t anything revolutionary, it is interesting to consider the implications here. J.J. supported his corrupt governance claim the following citation:

“Recently, I was down in Alabama/Louisiana with a lawmaker who was looking into this thing called environmental racism. It’s not your traditional racism but more like these communities of former slaves, freed slaves, where the land had been passed down for generations. We saw people with their front yards filled with human sewage, or people with landfills that were being dumped right in their yard, or that we put our petrochemical plants right near them. Like we put all these toxic things that kill people right in their front yard. I mean we’re legitimately hundreds of miles off from any small/medium cities and I thought, ‘how do these people get their voices out.’”

For anyone who lives in the United States, the lack of voice is a significant issue. Many analysts attribute Middle America’s strong reasoning to identify with President Donald Trump to their inability to be heard and what he gave them: a voice. J.J. even spoke to the polarization of the United States Government:

“A project I am working on is Senator Bernie Sanders. His whole fight is equality and getting both sides to work with each other. They’re like, ‘we’re fighting against each other, we’re never going to come together and solve the big problems in the world today if we can’t get along.’ We need to have people that are going to be more conservative, we need to have more people that are going to be more liberal. You need to find some kind of center.”

As J.J. and I trailed down the path of untapped Governance, we tackled one of his latest and truly most frightening assignments which was covering the War on Drugs in the Philippines.

Unlike the War on Drugs in the United States, the new President of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, has given citizens full permission to hunt, murder and kill drug users in the streets. As J.J. put it after being there first-hand:

“There’s a parallel in all those stories. Look at the drug users in the Philippines, these are very poor people that are really at the bottom of society. So, it’s easy for the people with wealth in the larger population to be okay with throwing those people under the rug and going out and killing them. Their voice is so small.”

In the seven months that he’s been in power, eight thousand people have been straight up murdered on the streets and almost a million people have surrendered to the government looking for rehab

There certainly is an interesting paradigm that has revealed itself over-time in our human history. Any student of history has seen this happen time and time again where power begins to abuse itself.

As we mentioned, the concept itself isn’t revolutionary, however, in 2017 where we live in an age of transparency and information, the mass populace have a much deeper voice than ever. J.J. weighed in:

“I think I got into this whole thing with the idea that I just wanted to be out there. I just wanted to have an adventure. But once you are here you can’t ignore the fact that there are stories. You’d be squandering the opportunity if you didn’t take those unheard stories back and try to make a ripple.”

I asked J.J. how to get involved in things like this. He shared:

“Obviously, we’d love it if anybody would tune into our show that hasn’t seen it before. In terms of getting involved yourself, you could go out there, you could put yourself on the front line. You could find these people. Or you could work with people that are going there and just share those messages, spread that word. Support that work financially. Or even just share it on social media. Just to try and amplify that voice even more.”

What I love about J.J. is the guy’s courage. If you have a moment to read our full interview transcript, it’s totally worth it. J.J. quit Nat Geo after scoring a full-time job because he knew he wanted to be in the field. Slowly but surely he proved he could be a field Director. J.J. travels to literally the most dangerous places on the planet for the sake story and voice.

If you want to get involved, as J.J. shared, take action. That’s the whole motto at Pocovo. Pocovo strives to give voice and push a world of discussion into action. Think less and act more.

To keep up with J.J. Kelley, I first highly recommend his Instagram, that’s where I first connected with him. But most importantly, here is his website where J.J. publishes snippets, images and some of his best videos.

You can download all of his episodes on iTunes by searching National Geographic or go to nationalgeographic.comand access a lot of his content there on the Explore page.

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REAL THE FULL INTERVIEW HERE.

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**Originally posted on Pocovo.com, a forum for voice, discussion, and action.**

The Problem Seen Round the World: Emmy-Nominated Nat Geo Producer J.J. Kelley Weighs In was originally published in Startup Grind on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.