I am grateful. So many things in this world have changed, and great change was needed. We faced a pandemic that disproportionately targeted the weak and the sick among us, and humanity around the world rose to the occasion to help the most vulnerable among us. I could not have imagined a more beautiful intention manifested at scale. We lead with love.

Many of us, including myself, lost important loved ones this year. I miss my friends… in every sense. I spent a large portion of this last year in some type of mourning, struggling to accept losses of vibrant lives. The questioning of “why” brought to me a greater degree of inner peace and tranquility, as I learned to be more in balance with the flow of the world around me.

I have slowed down and sped up at the same time. I am not running around in cars and planes to endless speaking engagements and meetings. Instead, I stay at my house most days, caring for my three children and focusing on the things that matter most. The more important things that I focus on, the more important things that I have to do.

This renewed focus on what is important created a Renaissance period in my life. My creativity, passion and projects are all proceeding beautifully. For those in alignment and working on things that matter, I have witnessed many stories of success, starting with my own. The journeys have not always been easy nor direct.

At the end of 2020, my car accelerated into a pole, leaving me unconscious with a severe concussion. It took me nearly two months to recover my full cognitive abilities. During the concussion, I went into a form of autopilot. As I started to regain my frontal lobe consciousness, everything that I was working on during this autopilot period was important and in alignment. I have been on a guided mission ever since.

Over the last decade, the Founder Institute had grown to be one of the largest physical event organizers in the world, and, overnight with the pandemic, we moved everything online. As we moved online, the business grew by up to five times across many metrics. This challenged us to change and to grow simultaneously. We figured out how to do so many new things. It has been one of the most beautiful transformations that I have witnessed. I am proud of the many teams around the world that made this happen so seamlessly.

As the core Founder Institute startup accelerator grew during the pandemic, a new business line grew exponentially. We watched how venture capital excluded opportunities by geography, gender, age and race, so we decided to try and fix it. Our solution is to launch 1,000 new venture capital firms worldwide by 2025 through a new program, called VC Lab. We ask all enrolling general partners to sign an ethical pledge, called the Mensarius Oath. VC Lab has grown by 11x in one year, so we will hit our goal to transform the venture industry faster.

Despite being quite busy with all of these activities, I successfully launched a new role-playing card game, called Save the World. New card designs were finished just in time for my birthday, and I am eager to play with my friends once the pandemic starts to subside, which leads me to another piece of good news. I had the second dose of the Pfizer vaccine right before my birthday. This is just another reminder of how amazing the human response to the pandemic has been.

We are at the beginning of a beautiful period of human activity. I see an enormous new economy unfolding over the next decade that includes healing ourselves and our environment. For generations, human economic activity has been largely destructive to the world around us. So, the global metrics of economic activity are largely metrics of destruction. I tell the following hypothetical to demonstrate this point…

A giant pit mine in Australia pulls ore out of the ground, destroying the natural habitat. The ore is shipped to China on polluting cargo ships. There, the ore is fashioned into steel, burning more fossil fuels, and shipped to the United States. It is then transported by truck to a river, which is damaged and polluted to build a bridge from a suburb to the city. On that bridge, an accountant drives in their car, making an hour-long commute each way every weekday. The accountant travels to a job that they do not like and that is not needed.

How does any of this hypothetical make sense? Yet, stories like these define our existence.

We are starting to create markets, industries and companies that reverse the destruction. We call these “For Progress” companies, and they are part of a new “Regenerative Economy.” In many ways, the pandemic marks the start of this transformation. I see that the Regenerative Economy will grow larger than the traditional destructive economy over the next decade, allowing us to completely reverse the destruction that we have done and that has been done over many generations.

So, in the end, I see this as a beautiful time, and I am grateful to be alive. I am excited to help in small and in large ways wherever I can. 

I am quarantined, like much of humanity, and I am happy to be alive.

I hear a lot more birds and a lot more ambulances. One third of humanity is sheltering in place to stop the spread of a pandemic.

What is going on?

I feel that the universe is telling us to stop. For me, we exist in conversation with the universe, and sometimes messages require reflection and interpretation. Not here. This message is clear.

We need to stop now. 

We have created this relentless desire for more. More food. More substances. More experiences. More toys. More houses. We run round endlessly pursuing materialistic trauma loops, easing pain with material things.

We need to work on things that matter.

We make more to get more, so we do a lot of unimportant things. We can’t even stop doing things that don’t matter when our lives depend on it. This much needed pause leave us sheltered alone to reflect on what matters.

We are stewards of this planet.

We face so many existential threats of our own making. For many of us, living in balance and in harmony has been lost. We have the power to be beautiful. We can foster creation, and we can inspire life.

There is no end to our potential.

Watching our response to the virus has been inspirational. The virus has awakened us. There is much damage for us to undo. We care, and we can do remarkable things when we try.

What can be?

We are taking a break to protect the old and the weak among us. How beautiful is that? We have this moment to reflect on what we want and to start working on things that matter.

We can make this world as beautiful as we want. We are among the fortunate to experience a new decade and a new chapter of humanity. There is not going back, only forward. 🙏 

I am returning from a two week vacation where I followed my heart with no set destination nor any plan. Everything was perfect, and the synchronicity was heart warming.

Stunning locations were encountered randomly. Amazing hotel rooms were stayed in that normally book months in advance. Beautiful people appeared on path to assist at every turn.

The core of this journey has been to let go and follow an open heart, which is my reflection as I turn 47 years old. Letting go is not easy in this global village that we created.

We have built an impressive world of the mind. Everything makes sense. We have careers and jobs and houses and money and families and beliefs. We have created constructs upon frameworks upon ideas, all designed to create a sense safety in our lives. We hold on tightly to these constructs, which helps to keep everything running. 

I no longer believe that our constructs are true. We are living in a world of the mind that is designed to hide a plague of inter-generational traumas that effects each of us differently, as a victim, as a victimizer or as a savior. The time has come to heal our traumas and follow our hearts. I know. 

I am the child of an abusive alcoholic parent. In order to escape the pain of a traumatic home life, I started programming computers and eventually building the internet. I grew up to help create our global communication network, starting out as a socially awkward and abused boy. Many others building our tools and our society started out just like me.

I realize now that we can not build a future of light and love from a foundation of pain and suffering, no matter how safe we feel in our constructs. I have taken the hard steps to heal myself, and I have discovered amazing powers to see within others and help them heal themselves. I have met other people with amazing powers to help heal as well. We do not need a new tool or a cool outfit or a better vehicle. We need to heal. 

Once we all start to heal, we will have a solid foundation to build a bright future for humanity, where we can achieve our potential to create things that matter on the grand scale. I believe that there is a triumvirate of healing to get there. 

• We break the major trauma loops that create pain and suffering among ourselves and others. 

• We follow our hearts for the major directional changes in our lives. 

• We are consciously acting in our day to day activities towards each of our greater purpose. 

This is a journey, not a destination. We are on the path of one. We are one individual acting alone in the tapestry of life. We are also one collective working together to achieve our potential as a species. Together, we shall heal. 

There have been great divides between men and women, between colors of skin, between colors of the cloth. When you leave behind the world of the mind and start to follow the heart, none of these divides exist. None of the constructs are accurate.

We are here, together, as one. A grand awakening is underway, and I am excited for the year ahead. My intention is to help inspire and help heal as many people as I can. Thank you for reading this and being part of the journey. With love and gratitude – Adeo

Silicon Valley is going through an existential crisis that the recent troubles with Facebook exemplify. On the one hand, there have been important technical developments that allow companies to scale revenues and grow at a historically fast pace. On the other hand, companies are struggling to find meaning and purpose that have a positive effect on the human condition. Often, these two forces are at odds with one another.

Facebook embodies this existential struggle, and they have lost the moral authority. As it has scaled to reach nearly one-third of humanity, Facebook has exploited digital addiction and other weaknesses of humanity, fostering a world of disconnectedness, narcissism, extremism and hatred. Instead of bringing people together on a platform to share and grow, we now have a world of vanity metrics and extreme views.

The troubles of Facebook are now being confronted by many leaders in Silicon Valley. People are realizing that belief in a mission that advances the human condition is more important than scale and is also the new metric of true success. When all of the stakeholders, from the team to the customers, believe in the mission of a business, both scale and success can be achieved. A quest for purpose and belief is being discussed and pursued within the largest enterprises and the smallest startups across Silicon Valley today, and this will ultimately benefit all of humanity.

17 years ago at the age of 28, Elon Musk and I were driving one evening on the Long Island Expressway, and a discussion started about space. We had both sold companies, and we were exploring different ideas about what to do with our lives.

Making an impact in space seemed impossible for two people with no industry experience. It was too hard. It was too expensive. It was the domain of governments. One by one, we realized that all of our perceptions about space were based on assumptions and not based on real data.

As we drove, we decided to learn more. We planned to meet various space organizations around the world, examining the actual complexity and costs of space. We also concluded that Mars, a planet similar to Earth, was the target destination for initial human exploration of the Solar System.

After trouble securing launch vehicles for a first company, called Life to Mars, Elon went on to create SpaceX. I went on to join the Board of the X PRIZE. On February 6th, 2018, SpaceX successfully launched the Falcon Heavy, a private rocket capable of carrying humanity to Mars.

If you dream big, anything is possible. The limit of your potential is the limit of your imagination. We can live in a world without limits. Congratulations to Elon, and, for everyone else, dream big and let’s go amazing places together, starting with Mars.