Economic Reporting is deeply flawed. It’s time to fix this.

I speak to professional investors across various asset classes and strategies on a near daily basis. I read financial and political reporting from nearly every vantage point for at least a few hours most every day of the year. And I ask questions of every American that I feel I can have a conversation with about their views on their city, their state and their Federal Government. And from all of this, one thing is clear, most Americans know nothing about how their country is faring economically.

Ever since 2016, I have been saying that a good part of my investment strategy could be defined as the “Survival Economy” which I’ve said is fundamentally built upon a belief that American economic supremacy is dying, and might be terminal. The investment strategy has therefore been both to be palliative in nature (make the pain less severe and provide as compassionate end-of-life care as possible) but to never give up hope on finding a cure in-time.

What should scare all of us is how non-factual, so many of our conversations have become about, well, so much. And what amazes me is how so many Americans talk about their “economy” as actually “the stock market” combined with some key economic indicators that were established as indicative of the health of the economy decades ago. I believe that many of these economic indicators are stale-dated.

Therefore, I am writing a request for startup. One that I think might not be a multi-billion dollar business, but could very well be a highly profitable business that could meaningfully help reshape discourse about the American economy, and help people make more sober decisions about how they invest their money, and how they make decisions on who and what to vote for. I also think, that done right, it could help increase compassion and empathy amongst fellow Americans, something that is alarmingly in short supply.

So here is what I’m looking to fund and build as Executive Chairman:

1. A B-Corp that before building any product at all, enters into partnership agreements with as many companies that have access to real-time bank balances of Americans and other financial outputs in such a way that is respectful of both today’s patchwork of privacy laws and is privacy-centric for all constituents. In conjunction, works to build a publicly accessible and transparent framework of measuring America’s economy built for the 21st century.
2. In conjunction with both an editor with a strong journalism background, a public ombudsman, and a content team that is truly representative of America today, create a daily content production team that uses the dataset and economic framework to educate people on how people all across America on how America’s economy is impacting all parts of our lives.
3. In conjunction with a strong data science team and API partnerships team, build an API-driven business on licensing this data to 3rd parties who can use this aggregated data in ways to make more informed decisions.

The founding team members I am looking to recruit are:

A software executive with proven leadership strengths and at least 2 years of successful operating and management experience in a role at a software company that was under 50 employees when they started that has grown significantly since joining.

A software engineer with proven leadership strengths and who maintains an up-to-date proficiency of most scaled stacks and who still enjoys contributing code as much as they do managing and coaching others.

A partnerships executive who has built an API-driven marketplace in SaaS from scratch or from early days.

The way in which I am looking to incubate startups is actually to hire executives who are entrepreneurial in mindset, rather than find a founder to back (although if I could find this team already assembled, I would consider leading that round, if I could be first money-in).

By providing executives with a much higher amount of equity than they would otherwise earn without taking “founder risk” and by providing close to their existing base compensation, and then coaching those executives as I do almost every one of my founders (and even some of their execs), that this is a model that will more closely align my objectives with the founding team’s collective objectives. I believe everyone wins best when incentives and values are aligned.

Who am I? I am a very active investor that is known for the deep trust and love built with the founders I have supported as a loyal servant to the missions that matter most to them.