An SF Democracy Week convening
Innovators & Investors for Democracy Forum
Capital, technology, and democracy for a flourishing future
Thursday, October 8 · 10:00AM-4:00PM · San Francisco
A day for funders, family offices, foundations, philanthropic advisors, corporate representatives, civic and civictech entrepreneurs, and civic leaders, to help us figure out how to revitalize our democracy to strengthen our communities, economy, and country.
Cross-partisan by belief and design. Right, left, center, and none of the above.
Space is limited and we’re balancing the room across the spectrum and roles, so registration is by request.
Interested in sponsoring? See the partner info or email partner@democracyweek.net.
When
Thursday, October 8, 10:00AM-4:00PM
Where
San Francisco
Who
Civic entrepreneurs and leaders, funders, foundations, family offices
Part of
It’s much harder to build great companies inside a failing country
Every term sheet signed in the Bay Area and across the US relies on things few people think about: functioning courts, fair competition, rule of law, intellectual property rights, public investments in research and education.
On top of that, the foundations of our innovation ecosystem and all our quality of life progress over the last two centuries have been eroding in recent decades: Public education, investment in research, infrastructure, net neutrality and other enablers of fair competition, good governance, and more.
Rules, resources and business opportunities shouldn’t depend on your alignment with whoever won the last election.
At the same time, we are building AI faster than we are building the institutions and norms to live alongside it, and technology is changing how people get their information, how they discuss critical issues, and how they choose who governs them. Sometimes the technology is helping. Too often it isn’t.
We invite you to join us on October 8 to discuss, debate and start building what’s needed so we can build towards having a thriving democracy that supports innovation and human flourishing for years, decades, and generations to come.
What’s at stake
Democracy is economic infrastructure
Rule of law, working courts, predictable rules, fair competition, and power that changes hands peacefully. Investors price political risk in every other country on earth, and we’re getting closer to having to price it in the US.
What’s missing
Funding the people rebuilding it
Civic work has a funding problem. Grant cycles are slow, venture returns are hard, and a lot of good work dies in the gap. There’s no better investment right now – philanthropic and for profit – than in protecting and revitalizing our democracy. Let’s figure out how to strengthen the funding pathways for that.
What we choose
Safeguards, and better defaults
Ranking algorithms, synthetic media, and agents that can act at scale. We need to prevent the harms, while accelerating how we leverage these tools and technologies to revitalize our human-centered government and democracy.
Five pillars, and the issues underneath them
We’re organizing the day around the five First Principles of our democratic republic, a draft cross-partisan framework we’ve been building with feedback from across the spectrum. Each pillar gets time on stage and at least one breakout group.
The points under each pillar are deliberately narrow, because we want each one to become a question you can actually answer and measure. Sharpening that short list into a usable Democracy Index is one of the things we’ll work on together during the day.
Innovation runs through all five. Some of what democracy needs is new technology, and a lot of it is the startup mindset applied to problems the field has been losing on for decades. This is a starting list, so please share additional ideas when you register or message us.
Pillar 01
A Culture of Liberty & Democracy
Individual rights and freedoms, and the civic life that makes them work.
- Civic participation. Are people showing up? Local meetings, volunteering, contested races.
- Trust and connection. Whether people know their neighbors well enough to disagree with them and still be friends.
- Reasoning together. Deliberation platforms, citizens’ assemblies at scale, sensemaking across difference.
- Connect or corrode. Does a product build real relationships between people, or quietly replace them?
Pillar 02
Economic Liberty & Shared Prosperity
Freedom to build, fair competition, and protection from concentrated economic power.
- Cost of decline. What backsliding does to capital formation, hiring, and contracts.
- Concentration. A few firms controlling the compute, the models, and the defaults.
- Fair competition. Open markets, or winners picked by a handful of elites.
- Work and dislocation. What happens to our politics if AI displaces work faster than communities adapt.
Pillar 03
Free Speech & Information Integrity
A free press, and protection from manipulation by disinformation, bots, algorithms, and AI.
- Algorithmic accountability. Ranking systems decide what tens of millions see, and nobody outside can audit them.
- Provenance. Synthetic media now costs close to nothing. What verification survives it?
- Local news. 213 counties have no local outlet at all.
- Speech protections. Who gets amplified, who gets removed, and against what stated rules.
Pillar 04
Free & Fair Elections
Easy to vote, hard to cheat, every vote counted, and power that isn’t for sale.
- Access and integrity. Easy to vote, hard to cheat, certified results respected.
- Fair districts. Nonpartisan redistricting in red, blue, and purple states alike.
- Money in politics. Who funds campaigns, and what that buys.
- AI in campaigns. Persuasion at near-zero cost, and agents that act rather than just post.
Pillar 05
A Government That Works for the People
Rule of law applied equally, independent courts, and real safeguards against corruption.
- Rule of law. Applied equally, whoever holds the office.
- Balance of power. A legislature that legislates rather than handing its authority away.
- Corruption and capture. Lobbying and regulatory capture, from the business and the citizen side.
- AI in public institutions. Adopted fast, with very little civic oversight of how it gets used on people.
CrossCutting Issues
Capital, and a shared democracy lens
Two questions run through every pillar, and they’re a big part of why this particular room is worth getting together.
The capital gap. Supporting for profit and nonprofit civic work through venture and philanthropy, and aligning instruments to need. Recoverable grants, evergreen vehicles, PRIs, blended structures, and a framework for a democracy fund thesis.
A Democracy Index worth using. A short set of measurable questions under each pillar, so a company, a fund, or a civic initiative can see clearly where it stands and what it could do better. It’s not intended as a blacklist, but an “areas for improvement” collective effort.
Democracy and prosperity are on the same side. A healthy market economy and a healthy democratic republic each depend on the other, so building well for one shouldn’t cost you the other. When the two look like they’re in conflict, that’s where we need to put more effort to come together to resolve it.
Accountability that runs both ways. Scores on companies and founders should roll up into a cumulative view for the funds behind them, and help guide investors, HNWI, and people with 401Ks where to put their money. If we’re asking a founder what their product does to civic life, the people writing the checks should be looking at the same question about what they back. That includes us.
An open invitation
Built in the open, and better with you in the room
We’re building this framework with people across roles, sectors, and the political spectrum. Everyone who shows up gets to shape what gets measured, and what counts as a fair question.
That asks something from each of us. If you invest, it means helping shape a framework that could be applied to your own portfolio. If you’re building something, it means answering questions about your product that nobody has asked you before. If you organize, it means sitting with people who are building and funding things you might not entirely agree with. If you’re a consumer, user, member, or citizen of any tech platform or community (meaning, everyone), it means reflecting on your own daily behavior and choices.
All of that sits a little outside our comfort zones, which is a good sign, because we have important and challenging issues to work through, and we can only do that together. Please come join us and help us get it right.
Fewer panels, more conversations
Breakout working groups
The day will be split between panels, lightning talks, and small facilitated breakout groups, each taking a pillar or a cross-cutting question and working through it to have some suggestions to build on. The Chatham House Rule enables people to focus on the topic.
We invite groups to come back with draft ideas for action plans to help us build towards action after the event.
Relevant projects (for profit or nonprofit) could get support through the Democracy Accelerator. Mentors and partners are also invited to join for that.
Want to convene a group or share something that isn’t listed? Please email us.
Initial Speakers & Conveners
People who have built companies, funded them, run them, and worked in politics on both sides. More being confirmed. Have something to share, a recommendation of someone we should invite, or want to partner on this effort? Please send us a message.
Chris Yeh
Blitzscaling Ventures
Founding General Partner of Blitzscaling Ventures, and co-author of both Blitzscaling and The Alliance with Reid Hoffman. He has founded, advised, or invested in more than 100 startups since 1995.
Peter Lupoff
Beatrice Advisors, Lupoff/Stevens Family Office
Partner at Beatrice Advisors and founder of the Lupoff/Stevens Family Office, after years as a Managing Director at Millennium Management. He teaches impact investing at UC Berkeley’s Haas School, advises students at Harvard Kennedy School, and sits on the board of Investors’ Circle.
Melissa Hooper
UC Law SF, Center for Constitutional Democracy
ED at the Center for Constitutional Democracy at UC Law SF. She founded the Rule of Law Action Network at the German Marshall Fund, and previously worked at USAID on combatting democratic backsliding, at Human Rights First, and as a Senior Fellow at the Edley Center for Law and Democracy at Berkeley Law.
Micah Weinberg
Carnegie California, UC Berkeley Goldman School
Nonresident scholar at Carnegie California, and Senior Strategic Advisor to the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley, where he works on its Democracy Policy Initiative. He’s building a new tool for deliberative democratic engagement with the state, and was previously CEO of California Forward.
Sarah Bonk
Founder, Business for America
Founder and CEO of Business for America, a coalition of companies and business leaders working on a government that functions. She spent close to 15 years at Apple before starting it.
Bill Shireman
Solution Citizen, Circle America
Co-founder of Solution Citizen and Circle America, and a member of the San Francisco Republican Party. He has spent decades getting business, environmental, and political adversaries to build things together.
John Gable
Co-founder, AllSides
Co-founder and CEO of AllSides, which rates media bias and puts left, center, and right coverage side by side. Former Republican strategist for three US Senate Majority Leaders, the RNC, and President George H.W. Bush, and a former Netscape and Microsoft Office executive.
Nicole Garzino
Strategy & Foresight leader
Strategy and foresight leader, advisor, and organizational coach with 20+ years of experience across philanthropy and social impact. Currently Chief Development & Marketing Officer at Braver Angels, leading growth, audience development, messaging, public engagement, and fundraising. Former leader at NorCal Grantmakers and Battery Powered, an innovative SF-based donor-funder collective.
David Nabti
Founder, Democracy Week
Founder of Democracy Week and the Democracy Accelerator. He has spent 20 years building startups, accelerators, and civic organizations; co-organizer of national youth conventions alongside the 2000 Republican and Democratic National Conventions; 2008 delegate for Obama; now part of the cross-partisan pro-democracy “purple movement”.
Want to speak, moderate, facilitate a working group, or suggest someone we should have on stage? Tell us.
Cross-partisan from the heart
We’re not trying to get everyone to agree on every policy, but we are trying to align on core cross-partisan first principles to protect and revitalize our democratic republic, and the role that tech, AI and venture capital can play in that.
Concentrated power, money distorting elections, gerrymandering, rules that don’t apply to everyone equally, and distorted information systems are real problems in red states, blue states and purple states.
Innovation here does not only mean new technology. Some of what democracy needs most is new thinking applied to old and stubborn problems, and new models for funding and organizing the people working on them. We think the innovation and startup mindsets could work wonders in our democracy, if applied with core principles of democracy and effective governance in mind.
The people funding and building the next decade of technology and civics have massive impact on those issues. Let’s make sure it’s a positive one.
We’re building on work already underway, including from the cross-partisan civic and democracy movement, previous events we’ve organized (AI & Democracy Unconference, InterdepenDance Day, Tech & Democracy gatherings and civic jams, and more), the recent Investors for a Better America event, and others in our partner community.
Democracy Week is organized under a nonprofit fiscal sponsor. We don’t endorse candidates or parties. We do encourage everyone to vote, organize, and get involved, wherever you land on the political spectrum, while prioritizing country over party, and people over politics.
Think we’re off balance or missing something important? Please tell us.
How to take part
Attend
This Forum is for a mix of civic entrepreneurs, civic leaders, funders, and program managers. We want to nurture connections and relationship building in a community of trust, so the Forum will have a non-solicitation rule, and operate under the Chatham House Rule, except for most of the discussions on stage (unless as requested).
Sponsor or Partner
We’re looking for sponsors from across the political spectrum. Sign up below, or email partner@democracyweek.net.
Back a builder
The Democracy Accelerator supports people building tools, cross partisan civic engagement campaigns, and institutions for a stronger republic. Free to join, no equity taken. Founders, funders, mentors, and supporting partners are invited to join.
Democracy Week & DW Accelerator Community Partners
October 8, San Francisco
A day with people who don't vote the same way, but agree on building a country and future together. Please join us.
Part of SF Democracy Week, October 5-11, running alongside SF Tech Week.