In the summer of 2021, I had the closest thing to a calling I have ever experienced. I am not the most religious person in the world, but I don’t know how else to classify what happened on July 25th 2021. I was driving back from an event, I had the spark of an idea that connected the prior two years of my working life one second, and I pulled over into a Black Rock Coffee and banged out a post to capture this spark, which I later titled “The 3 Economies Of The Internet”. This post is where I outlined my thesis for the “access" economy”. Here is a short excerpt from the post so you can just the gist.

Kids in Africa can learn how to dance like kids in LA. Young adults in India can understand how mathematics work as well as the best students at Harvard. And adults in Spain can learn how to start a startup just like Y Combinator grads. The information is out there for anyone to learn. This does bring up a key cultural issue though. It isn’t culturally acceptable for a European teen to have the same level of startup competency as one living in SF. Yet, this is exactly what has happened, due to the Knowledge Economy. And it’s not just startups. It’s every subject. Due to the proliferation of knowledge, more qualified people are simply showing up.

More people aren’t just applying to YC. More QUALIFIED people are applying. More people aren’t just applying for jobs. More QUALIFIED people are applying for jobs. How? It’s because these people soaked up knowledge and succeeded in the first economy of the internet. They became masters of their craft by learning online, which has made them qualified. The problem is that the world doesn’t have great mechanisms for filtering a mass amount of qualified people. The new issue that arises from it is a lack of access for millions of talented creators, workers, and craftsmen. They my have the skills, but there is no way to actually prove it.

The End of the Knowledge Economy

The Knowledge Economy had a great run. Trillions of dollars in value were created, millions were lifted to new income brackets through entrepreneurship, and some of the world’s hardest problems were solved simply because the answers could be accessed on the internet.

But we’ve gotten to a point as a society where there is too much knowledge and it’s outpaced our ability to filter people with that knowledge. There are hundreds of blog posts for how to get into an Ivy League school, but only so many spots availble. There are millions of people starting companies but investors are still only funding people in their network, because of the trust filter. Job positions get so overrun with candidates that recruiter doesn’t even reject anyone anymore; They just don’t have time to reply. All of this is a consequence of the world having more knowledge than ever before. This is a good thing, but enough is enough! It’s time we move on to the next economy of the internet; The Access Economy

What is the Access Economy?

If the knowledge economy gave everyone the opportunity to be experts in a field, the access economy is the ultimate human organizer. It matches up the qualified individuals with the right opportunities while using a completely new framework for evaluating and identifying talent. If the Knowledge Economy thrived on resumes and applications, the Access Economy must pioneer something completely new. Resumes and applications weren’t designed to properly assess millions of qualified people.

Nearly 3 years after my calling, I am pursuing this vision. We have raised additional capital for this effort, and we’re working on a brand new product to bring the "access economy” to 2024. Seedscout and ILTT will be involved in the new world we’re building, kinda like how Harvard and Stanford were involved with Facebook’s founding. I hope in 20 years, we look back fondly on the first two networks once we hit 1M and 100M and maybe even 1B networks created on this platform we are building.

We Are Looking For People Connectors. Is That You?

Although I am being somewhat vague on what exactly we are building, It doesn’t stop me from recruiting people to build on our platform. Why? Because everyone has a pull to connect great people. So far in this new universe we’re creating, we have two networks.

We Currently Have:

• Seedscout, which is a network for founders and investors to meet each other

• ILTT, which is a network for founders who want to build long term and enduring businesses.

But we know there are people reading this who have an ambition to start their own network but have lacked the technical infra to actually do that well. I’m not talking about a winky dink Slack community or a noisy FB community. No no no, I am saying, what if you had the power to create a a complete intro marketplace between two groups of people who you know need to meet, without needing to spend years learning to code or thousands building it for you.

Maybe It’s:

• A connected employee starting a network for solo founders to meet cofounders for their companies.

• A recruiter starting a marketplace between job seekers in their network and companies they know of.

• A GP building a network for his GP friends and LPs

But why stop at tech? Hell, why not build:

• A network to connect home buyers and home sellers

• A network to connect home contractors to home owners in need

• A network to connect all your stunning single friends who don’t know each other (yet).

So, let your imagination run. If you had an out of the box platform that allowed you to connect any group of people you have ties to, who you would you connect? Reply to this email and tell me, and maybe you’ll be surprised how easy it actually is to build a marketplace to connect that network with no code and very little time.

News For Our Current Networks

Above, you see the direction we are moving in. With that said, this this doesn’t impact the daily ops of the current networks on our platform. So below, find news on events and job opening for the first two networks on our new platform.

ILTT News

We have FOUR events coming up for that this week, which you can find below. Founder with a long term orientation? Come to one, come to all! Looking forward to seeing you at an event.

ILTT Event Schedule This Week

1. Monday - Casual Founder Hangout / Community Meet & Greet

2. Tuesday - How To Get Your First Check From An Angel Investor

3. Thursday - Give/Get Pitch Practice, Get Pitch Feedback and Give It To Others

4. Friday - Learn More About ILTT and How to Get Involved In our Program

We’re Looking For A Network Lead

I cofounded the ILTT network with a few other great people, and I am running the ops for it right now, but we are looking for someone who wants to take the torch of what we’ve incubated and run with it within the greater ecosystem of what I mentioned above.. This is a phenomenal opportunity for a startup minded person who believes in the power of long term thinking in business. This would start as a very part time unpaid opp to start, but you’d have true ownership in the success of ILTT and could lead to a paid opp over time. I may put out a longer job description in the future, but if this strikes you as interesting, reply to this email.

Seedscout News

Looking For a Network Lead

As most of you are well aware, I also founded Seedscout. I have given it a strong 3.5 years, but based on my announcement above, I am also looking for someone to take over Seedscout ops and get it to the next level. I have truly given it my all, and although it is providing value to our customers, I believe bringing someone on with a fresh perspective could be critical to getting it where it needs to be. To be clear, I am seeking someone to take over the product/network, not the whole company. If you have been following my journey and think you can do a better job than I can in the second leg of this network, I'm all ears. You know my email.

Wow, that was a lot. Things are happening. I am glad to have you on this journey with me. Any questions? Please reply. Want to start a network on our new platform? Please reply. Want to run ILTT or Seedscout? Please reply. And go 49ers! (They are up as I write this, hopefully that sticks).