"A Letter From the Founder" - Why am i doing this?

My name is Mike. I’m the founder of Proseed, and our current leader.

Thanks for stopping by…

The text below is my attempt to explain:

How Proseed happens
What it’s for.

Let’s go back to the beginning

The Proseed community is a Safe Space

In 2017 Proseed was launched by a group of entrepreneurs with the vision of being an accelerator for innovation in Thailand. As our community grew and evolved we found our mission statement evolving – We grew into a community of entrepreneurs who are eager to partner and practice altruism in a safe space with like-minded individuals.

A key to supporting our goals is keeping our community safe. To ensure that safety, most of our processes require members to reach consensus before our community takes action – For example to join our group you must be accepted by all the members.

The Benefits of Exclusivity

By setting high bars for acceptance, we guarantee our community and members two benefits:

We enjoy deep and genuine trust and friendship in our membership circle.
Our members gain unassailable validation for their personal credibility.

Let me expand on this:
Since it’s known Proseed membership requires a consensus vote from ALL members, it’s also true that every single Proseed member has to their credit, at any moment in time, that their credibility was approved by a vote of peers, within the last 6 months.

Leadership

Our leadership is determined similarly – Any one of us can choose to be the leader, at any time, as long as they agree to shoulder the responsibilities involved, and only so long as they remain unchallenged. Effectively – The keys to running Proseed are on the table…

The keys are on the table – Grab them any time!

The keys to driving Proseed are always on the table, and any member can choose to pick them up, and lead our community forward, but like Mjolnir – Thor’s hammer , the keys are heavier than they look, and the dividends for leading this group are not much more than a few free beers and pizza.

So why do i do this?

I lead here because i’m worried about my daughters.
I believe our deepest existential threat is not the climate crisis, the rising of autocratic power, or indeed anything we see pundits chattering about on the news.

It’s something else…
But before we dive into that further, i want y’all to know that despite what the news tells us the world is getting better.

The world is getting better

For the skeptics – I highly recommend reading “Factfulness”, by the now deceased Dr. Hans Rosling. He made it his life’s mission to measure how we’re REALLY doing, and ensure as many decision makers and members of the public were aware of our situation.

Dr. Rosling – An MD by training – meticulously collected data for a select set of questions. Things like ‘How many girls finish school?‘ and ‘What percentage of the world’s population is poor?‘. For each measure he chose, he was able to demonstrate, with empiric evidence, that there’s a marked, and accelerating improvement in the “human condition”. But it’s happening AT GENERATIONAL TIME SPANS.

Change for good is happening at a generational time-span.
Our kids can’t afford to wait that long.
Mike Darnell – Proseed

Things are better than they were in 1997

I feel that, despite the current trend for 90’s nostalgia, things in 2022 are way better than they were 25 years ago. In case you’re not entirely sure, let me remind you what we were coping with in 1997 –

Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule
Princess Diana DIED.
Less than 1 person in 50 in the world had internet connectivity

1997 was fucked, and I don’t want to go back there, even though that was the year I smoked my way across India with the delicate flower who later became my 1st wife. But I digress…
So what’s the point?

If things are getting better, why worry?

Because I’m Jewish – Worrying is kinda our thing…, but more importantly, because things aren’t getting better FAST ENOUGH to ensure my daughters’ life is better than my own.

So what’s this threat? What am i so concerned about? What drove me for these past 4 years to invest 30% of my time on Proseed, even though it’s totally without financial merit? What is casting a cloud over my girl’s future, and the future of everyone else?

I believe it’s something we all carry with us. Something that shouts at us from every billboard. Assaults us in every mall…

It’s GREED

A self portrait as Mammon – Demon Lord of Greed

I believe that by choosing our material items and bank balances as the primal measure of our value, we’ve triggered cycles of consumption and destruction that are unsustainable. We’ve upgraded greed’s status from vice to virtue, but the materialism we worship is a mathematical impossibility – A planet with limited resources cannot sustain unlimited growth.
Our GREED today is our children’s GRIEF tomorrow.

Actually i think that after 2020 & 2021, it’s evident that yesterday’s greed is our grief today!

Our GREED today is our children’s GRIEF tomorrow
Mike Darnell – Proseed

So what to do?

The good news is that Greed is a social malignancy, and therefore can be remedied by taking social action. Proseed is our community’s evolving best attempt at taking such social action – and indeed, what sane person, knowing their kids are at risk, would do nothing?

Members of the Proseed community – Business people, entrepreneurs, doers – commit to be benign in our business dealings, support each other, and support our communities at large, as best we can do at the moment, to combat the malignacy of Greed and make the world a better place for our future.

If this sounds like something you believe in, you’re welcome to join us!

Doing good

Our featured charity for the evening were Hands Across the Water, dedicated to saving Thailand’s most vulnerable children from dangerous environments and to giving a home to those who have no family or known relatives to care for them. With your help, these kids don’t have to go hungry, miss out on education, face the challenges of life on their own or be forced into undesirable employment.