Initiative · Societies
A special projects studio for democracy.
We’re AI-first builders launching high-leverage initiatives for a more flourishing democracy. We form small, fast-moving teams that take an idea, test it under live conditions, and—if it works—spin it out as an independent organization. We build the projects established organizations can’t take on: the ones that are too risky, too novel, or too hard.
- Consumer advocacy
- Community formation
- Public-service access
- Civic participation
- Worker empowerment
- Organizing & mobilizing
- Media & information
- Democratic accountability
Where this sits in my work
I work on the same problem at three scales. New Social Forms is the small one—groups, and the forms they run. Andus Labs is the middle—organizations, and how they hold together with AI on the team. Portfolio is the largest: whole societies, and the institutions a democracy needs that nobody has built yet.
It is also the one where I am least often the author. Most of what Portfolio makes gets launched by someone else and spun out to stand on its own, and that is the point—the studio is a way of starting things, not a place to keep them.
The team is founders, engineers, designers, product executives, journalists, marketers and strategists. People here have founded companies later acquired by Microsoft, Google, Snap and Zillow, shipped products at Amazon, Meta and Samsung, reported from dozens of countries, and taken companies public. It is an unusual group to find working on civic infrastructure, which is most of why I wanted in.
Portfolio
Put your talents to work for a flourishing democracy.
If that’s what you want to do, get in touch.