A platform of platforms for building the world we want

20 October 2015

Over the 250 year epoch of the industrial revolution, humanity has screwed up the planets
life-support systems, perpetrated and enshrined systemic injustice, and generally failed to
create thriving societies that balance nature and culture. Its time to change that, and build the
world we want to live in.

Over the last year or so, separately and together, a group of enterprises have been working on
platforms that:

- Develop replicable approaches for creating community wealth across a network of

resilient small cities, because you can't build the new system without righting the
injustices of the old (Neighborhood Economics);
- Aggregate, diligence and move the investment capital needed to build the new system
(Artha Networks and others participating in the SODA data commons);
- Spread innovation and collaboration processes and practices within and between
institutions that grow the new ideas we need (Induct);
- Put solutions into the hands of people working on the frontline of social change at all
scales, everywhere (Sphaera); and that, together
- Facilitate the learning, weaving and reflecting on the signals, data and feedback
traveling across the network.

Why platforms?
Platforms are a terrific new class of business models for building the world we want because of
their inherent scalability and disruptiveness to incumbent industries. Sangeet Paul Choudary
has developed a useful framework for understanding platforms.1 All platforms are
characterized by three layers: community / network / marketplace; technology infrastructure;
and data.

community All platforms combine all three layers, but may emphasize them to
different degrees, and also evolve in their configuration over time. For
example, a platform like Wordpress is almost all technology
tech infrastructure infrastructure and provides virtually no value through data or network
effects. Platforms like Uber or AirBnB are heavy on the marketplace /
community layer, and over time also generate significant value from the
data
data they aggregate.

Similar patterns hold in our group: Neighborhood Economics is all about the network, using
events to build a collaborative community modeled on the successful SOCAP format, and
needs very little native technology infrastructure. By contrast, Induct has built a powerful
technology layer around which it is forming a community of people working on innovations
inside and, eventually, across organizations. Sphaera is building white-labeled technology
infrastructure that powers peer networks like those convened by Neighborhood Economics and
connects them to others like it, notably a group of Rockefeller Foundation anchored initiatives
that are moving more than $1B in public funding into more effective solutions for community

1 http://platformed.info/platform-stack/
resilience. Sphaera is designed as a peer-to-peer platform linking them to each other in a
growing, global network of networks.

Over time, all platforms generate data that can become very valuable in themselves, for the
analytics and revenue opportunities they engender. For example, the social progress indicators
that the Neighborhood Economics network is pioneering inform new comparative impact
statistics across the social change industry. These data commons will allow all of us to create
more value on our respective platforms.

community Neighborhood Economics

tech infrastructure Sphaera; Induct; others

SODA data commons

data

Why now? Why us?

What is emerging is an intentional, collaborative cabal that is building a platform of platforms
that is modular, interconnected, and deliberatively designed to maximize openness,
transparency, and learning.

Our group of ecosystem architects shares a set of characteristics, which are proving to be
good predictors of effective participation in our endeavor. They:

- Value actions over words;

- Think in terms of abundance (of solutions, opportunities), not scarcity;
- Are generous, not protective with resources, information, and time;
- Are collaborative by default, not competitive;
- Are functionalist, not structuralist form follows function; and
- Leave their ego at the door.

The beauty of ecosystems is that we all occupy our niches and the parts cohere without a
central conductor. To build an effective network, we trust the network effect. As such, we
engage in a number of coordinated activities that advance our collective goals in the context of
each entitys mission and strategy. Specifically:

1) Neighborhood Economics is an emerging network of community quarterbacks who are

rolling up their sleeves to make their cities thrive, working with and learning from each
other. They are engaged in collaborative product development to create community wealth
and make sure it is created in every neighborhood including disenfranchised African
American and immigrant ones. Detroit is emerging as the locus for halting gentrification,
the localization of social progress indicators, and incorporating all voices in community
economic development planing. Cincinnati serves as a finance lab for the network,
prototyping a finance toolkit including new B2B lending institutions that leverage public
funding pioneered in Providence, and localized crowd funding platforms like KivaZip tested
in Louisville. Neighborhood Economics does not need its own native technology
 infrastructure, and will instead benefit from a virtual hub hosted by Sphaera where its
community can learn from each other, as well as from peers and subject matter experts
from outside their immediate networksuch as those curated by the Rockefeller
Foundation in its networks. Neighborhood Economics will also benefit from Sphaera for
sharing its financial inclusion innovations with related efforts such as those those
undertaken by the Rockefeller Foundation, and other peers on the platform. Through
Sphaeras non-profit sidecar, the Neighborhood Economics network will have access to
unrestricted funding for its community quarterbacks to incubate, experiment and travel with/
to each other to collaborate on replicable solutions;
2) Induct (a privately held Norwegian company) and Sphaera are collaborating on the next
set of features for their open ideation and solutioning platforms, working with a community
of foundations and their partners that share their goals for improving the effectiveness of
practitioners in the social change industry as a path for scaling and accelerating impact.
This partnership is an example of alined tech companies integrating their service offering
with each others platforms for the benefit of the larger ecosystem;
3) Sphaera is building the decentralized connective tissue, a virtual backbone that links the
hubs, communities and practitioners that are tackling the hard challenges we are facing in
the 21st century. This includes participating in the design and development of an open API
architecture for the social data commons. In building the new peer-to-peer infrastructure
that the social change industry needs in order to be more effective, we will benefit
immeasurably from working with both the Neighborhood Economics and Rockefeller
Foundation networks at our own early stage, to make sure that what we build works for
quarterbacks working at scales from grassroots to international. The infrastructure Sphaera
is building is radically leveling, horizontal, and democratizing.

The opportunity
The time is right to try this at scale. Our group is looking for both venture and project based
financing.

Venture funding: We are currently seeking $2M in equity and/or debt for Sphaera that allows
for the next phase of growth while working with the Neighborhood Economics and Rockefeller
Foundation networks that are using the platform to make the deployment of over $1B in public
funding for community resilience more effective. Getting to $1.2M in the raise triggers a 400K
seed grant into a companion non-profit sidecar,2 essentially piloting what is designed as an
ongoing program to support the incubation, learning and network building activities of
community quarterbacks of the kind brought together by Neighborhood Economics.

Project funding:The Neighborhood Economics network is, together, raising $1M over the next
two years for its collective impact work, enabling the group of community leaders in Detroit,
Cincinnati and Providence to collaborate on replicable models for financial inclusion, locally
appropriate economic development and planning. This work will forge new connections
between, and tell the story of, resilient, inclusive local economies that become stronger and
smarter as the pioneers learn from each other, supported by both analog and digital platforms.
We are seeking a $50,000 grant now to provide leverage for a grant proposal to the Knight
Foundation and other funders.

2 See the Appendix for a note on structure.

Appendix - Hybrids for a higher purpose

Sphaera is set up as a hybrid social enterprise, consisting of a for-profit Public Benefit

Corporation (PBC) and a non-profit 501c(3) sidecar with a related mission.

The PBC is mission anchored, with protective provisions for a class of Founder stock that is
held by the four (non profit) social change organizations that collaborated on its genesis:
Ecotrust, Island Institute, Mercy Corps and Oxfam America. It is governed by a typical Series A
board, with founder, investor and management team representation, as well as representation
from the community of users. Its core concern is to build the peer platform and sell related
software-as-a-service to foundations and other actors in the social change industry
essentially getting the rich kids in the industry to pay for the radically horizontal peer-to-peer
infrastructure. Exit strategies we contemplate include sale to the community of social change
organizations and peers that are co-creating value on the platform. Sphaeras financial and
social impact are directly proportionate: the more portals come online, the larger the global,
living library of solutions available to people working on solving the hard problems of the 21st
century becomes.

The sidecar is governed with by a separate, independent board of directors. It exists to

leverage the for-profit: it makes grants of software licenses to underserved communities, and
provides financial and staff resources to use them effectively, create new solutions, and
engage in collaboration. It also undertakes special projects that advance the overall mission of
accelerating the pace of social change, is dedicated to peer learning across the ecosystem,
and serves as conduit to international partners who are not comfortable working with any for
profit, even when it is a social enterprise.

Advisory Board (non governing)

Licenses, $, pro bono services Peer learning, unusual alliances

This hybrid structure is directly inspired by Salesforce.com, whose sidecar non-profit, the
Salesforce.com Foundation exists to leverage the IP, talent and resources of the for-profit.
Initially intended as a corporate philanthropy program, it quickly emerged as a very productive
customer acquisition channel. In similar fashion we can get the flywheel of a network effect
going by having the sidecar focused on facilitating peer learning, brokering solutions, and
actively growing the network of networks.