At the beginning of the year, I spent two months on an island in Honduras where a startup is building a new city, Próspera. It’s not only the physical infrastructure but a new governance platform being built from scratch for the first time for a startup.
I knew this represented a pivotal historical moment, catalyzed by Balaji Srinivasan’s book The Network State, and decided to produce a documentary about it - What If It’s a Startup?.
Over a few weeks I raised around $20k (very lean for a documentary) using a crypto crowdfunding platform and build a team. First a filmmaker (Luiz Goméz) from Honduras to help to capture the interviews, then here in Brazil a director/screenwriter (Henrique Oliveira), and the remaining technical team (editor, local filmmaker, color, motion, sound, etc), which helped create and produce the first episode over almost 5 months.
Now, on September 22nd we are releasing it exclusively for key partners, including crowdfunding contributors, sponsors and Ipê City members.
What If It’s a Startup is a series about the rise of the network society, where governance is created with digital and decentralized tech by entrepreneurs.
It includes parallel societies, as new cities, countries, states and communities, and parallel institutions, such healthcare, education, law, infrastructure, defense, and energy. This is a multidecades trend with very deep sociopolitical implications.
That’s why we turned it into a docuseries. Each episode will dive deep in one startup society to show which problem they are solving and its innovations.
The launch of the first episode will be at the same day of the Network State Conference in Singapore. I’m writing this article from here, btw.
If you want to watch the private launch, you can still donate to the campaign here.
We also still have a few slots for sponsors to be included in the first episode. If you are a brand or startup and want associate your company with the frontier of innovation, while at the same time support the freedom and progress on the west, send me a message and let’s talk.
See you all on there.
Startup Societies Documentary is Coming