From 10 to 20: Paola Santana, Founder & CEO — Social Glass
We asked 12 amazing founders and investors to share a look back and predictions for the road ahead. Celebrity photographer Ashley Batz joined in to capture these trailblazers on the cusp between decades & author Alice Berman penned an essay about decade that was. Find the full article here.
Who inspires you? Scientists like Galileo, Marie Curie, & Stephen Hawking ; artists including Dalí, Guayasamín & Chagall; and the writers García Márquez, Emily Dickinson, & John Steinbeck.
What’s one thing you find yourself thinking on a daily basis? What is the next evolution after democracy and how can post-democratic societies approach collective and effective decision-making?
What is the most important part of your routine, the thing that really keeps you on track mentally every day? My morning “ground time”; that’s when I organize my house and my mind, and set the tone for a meaningful day. It usually involves some journaling and a contemplative practice.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever given? “Do you.”
Which trend for the coming year is your favorite: sustainability, personalization, or AI? AI, and not just Artificial Intelligence, but Augmented Intelligences and Artificial Intuition or Imagination. I’m really thrilled about some breakthroughs happening in those fields and their impact in shaping the world as we know it.
What changes have you seen in the past decade when it comes to your field of work? Where do you see those changes continue to apply themselves in the coming decade? An unsatisfactory transition to more democratic regimes that hasn’t translated into better, more effective and more inclusive decision-making. Observing this phenomenon, I’ve asked myself probably the most fundamental question impacting my vision and focus — is the ultimate goal to perfect a political system designed over 2,000 years ago in a radically different context and with limited tools at hand; or is it time to leapfrog and experiment with a set of new systems, that might not look like anything we’ve experienced before as a civilization? The next decade will witness a lot of questioning and experimentation that will move us towards finding answers rather than sticking to what we know works sub-optimally today.
Which trends do you think are most important for us to focus on in the next year? Next decade? Next year: Aggressive development and investment in frontier tech applied to the creation of innovative governance models. Next decade: Testing and experimenting with different governance models to unveil new public systems that are performance- and profit-based. Next century: Separating governance from politics and transforming public entities into profitable and revenue-generating organizations.
What’s been an obstacle you’ve consistently run up against in this industry, and do you see that changing? Limiting government innovation to the “govtech” industry therefore reducing the amount and sources of investment funneled into those solutions. Limiting the notion of ‘excellent government’ to an evolved form of democracy, instead of leapfrogging democracy and creating what’s next. Limited creativity to consider separating talking politics from running government. Change on all three fronts are major disruptions I’m leading at Social Glass and our first product, Micro.
Where should we be looking for inspiration on “what’s next” in investing? On the global and local challenges just in front of us that haven’t been definitively solved to date. I think most investment is funding over-saturated markets serving the 1%, and that the next big opportunity for VC might be in owning the word “venture” and unlocking innovation from people and regions desperately in need of category-defining global solutions.
What are you personally invested in (on an emotional level) over the next decade? In creating the world’s next political system after democracy, designing how it works, how is it shaped, how we allocate and distribute public resources, redefine the concept of public, and reimagine the function and operation of governments that work for the rest of us.
Read all 12 profiles here.
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