1517 Fund
@1517fund
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We back dropouts, renegade students, and deep tech scientists at the earliest stages, before anybody else. Want to chat? Reach out:👇
Investing across North America
Joined July 2015
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Hola! For the folks who are new, 1517 is more than just vibes!
We back people who want to build the future. We are the first believers & the last doubters.
We invest in both startups & builders. See below for more info. 👇 1/3
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Industry doesn't have to be ugly. It can be beautiful.
Shin-Nagoya Thermal Power Station, Japan.
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Nuclear cargo ships. The renaissance.
> for commercial shippers, there aren’t any realistic alternatives to nuclear [..] "Engines in ordinary ships are the size of houses,” [..]large container ship needs 3k MWh/day [..] the capacity of the biggest grid battery ever built.
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Yes, it can.
Culture changes all the time. But it requires us to show up & put in the work.
I can't get over this pic. Look at this. Engineering Art.
This can't be taught. Either you have it, as a culture, or you don't.
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Today is Reformation Day.
505 years ago, Luther nailed 95 Theses to Wittenberg church.
He protested the sale of indulgences — pieces of paper that, if you had one, you got heaven. Without it? Fires of purgatory.
Our thesis: the university degree is the modern indulgence.
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Young builders have a choice this fall:
They can go (back) to school, and risk campus shutting down again because of the pandemic.
Or they can build. We’re launching The Invisible College: $50K investments in ideas / R&D for builders to leave campus:
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The earliest attempts to build a car didn't look anything like a car.
Inventors in the 1860s were convinced that the next leap in mobility would be obtained by building a steam-powered anthropomorphic walking machine that pulled a carriage. And so the steam man was born.
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Today we're happy to share , an easy way to find & share grants for your startup, so you can fund your company without giving up equity:
This early release comes pre-loaded with 80+ grants, but users can also submit their own!
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Let's admit it.
You might be cool, but you'll never be JFK chilling in front of an atomic mech suit cool.
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Things that the world needs,
— More airships.
Things the world doesn't need,
— Airship haters.
Just this tweet writer's 2¢
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Yet another giant oil tanker submarine proposal. March, 1982.
"Giant Atomic [Tanker] Submarines," a proposal from 1958 to use a nuclear reactor to transport oil at 55+ mph/90+ kph. Cargo ships operate at ≤ 20mph/32kph
The idea isn't as absurd as it seems. Uranium is magic. It would need to be refuelled once every 25 to 40 yrs.
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#15
: Harvard could admit 10x as many students, but it doesn’t. It could open 10+ campuses in different regions, but it doesn’t. Elite schools are afraid of diluting brand equity. They’re not in the education business. They’re in the luxury watch business.
The Harvard elites are unwilling to entertain fundamental change
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We are sorry to be the bearers of bad news, Senator. But everything from insulin to OJ is made inside those "thing[s]."
We tried getting insulin the "natural way" from cows & pigs. And it used to kill people.
These "thing[s]" save lives.
btw, this is the thing that makes lab meat
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"Alternative to the land use of Los Angeles: all people who inhabit this area could be accommodated in four residential towers. And all around could be free nature."
1974.
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1517 companies don't just make great products; they also make high-technological kinetic art.
@divalbanerjee
,
@BaliAnirudh
&
@liese_max
's metal 3D printer for their startup
@vuecason
.
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“You want a deepness that endures, a deepness that [we] can depend on? [T]here is a deepness in the sky, and it extends forever.”
RIP Vernor Vinge.
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"Giant Atomic [Tanker] Submarines," a proposal from 1958 to use a nuclear reactor to transport oil at 55+ mph/90+ kph. Cargo ships operate at ≤ 20mph/32kph
The idea isn't as absurd as it seems. Uranium is magic. It would need to be refuelled once every 25 to 40 yrs.
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Wanna build giant robotic sandworms?
A 1517 portfolio company in OC, CA is hiring engineers, geologists, drillers to make sandworms real.
If you think you've got the skills & the will, say hi — apply [at] the domain
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If you'd like to make iconic designs, remember:
Good artists copy. Great artists steal.
"And we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas." — Steve Jobs
Some designs are so iconic that their aesthetic echoes for decades after their time.
Panasonic's GX400 radio, released in 1975. The design encourages users to prod & play with their radio.
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How NASA (and others) used to mill complex parts before CNC.
Our machine age can be divided into two eras, Before CNC & After CNC.
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1 Computer = 150 Engineers!!!!!!
Most calculations at the time were done by human "calculators" (often women) who were cheaper than engineers. Maybe IBM's 1950's marketing dept was taking artistic license?
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Students and their parents are sold an expensive piece of paper and told that without it, they’re stuck in professional and personal purgatory.
Meanwhile, universities build luxury dorms and pay high six figure salaries to an army of administrators.
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Ask not what dropping out can do for you — ask what you can do after dropping out.
With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to build the future.
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Vladimir Voevodsky was kicked out of HS 3 times. And then was expelled from Moscow State University after skipping classes & being an "academic failure."
He was bored.
The dropout went on to publish several papers fleshing out Grothendieck's work.
A few years later, his
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We've been giving grants for years but making it official now:
Minimum $1k to help you get a project off the ground and get moving.
No strings attached. No equity taken. No ISA claim on future earnings.
Shoot us an email to get started:
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"After he applied to the Thiel Fellowship, we wondered if Austin [Russell, CEO of
@luminartech
]’s ideas were crazy or crazy awesome. And truth be told, we couldn’t tell at first.
Now the world knows Austin wasn’t crazy -- he was crazy awesome."
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A young Glenn Seaborg standing in front of his life's work in 1946.
By 29, he had discovered Plutonium, and then worked quickly to expand that list to americium, curium, berkelium, californium, einsteinium, fermium, mendelevium, nobelium & (eventually) element 106, Seaborgium.
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Heads up: this goes for *anybody* working on projects to mitigate the effects of COVID19, not just people who meet our thesis.
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This Sunday, it's worth taking a moment to remember that many of humanity's critical breakthroughs were dead on arrival.
Electricity? Useless. What can you do with a Leyden jar? Kill a turkey?
Integrated circuits? Overhyped crap.
Steam engines? Impractical. Dangerous. Stupid.
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If you're like us, you must be wondering how much Apple's new Vision Pro headset costs to make. Here's a leaked breakdown of the BOM. We cannot vouch for its authenticity/reliability. Caveat lector.
Source:
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Don't be this guy.
Apply to 1517's Flux Capacitor.
Get $$$. Find cool people. Get shit done.
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An old favorite. Astronauts on skylab dancing, performing acrobatics, and recreating 2001 to the tune of Strauss' The Blue Danube
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Happy (almost) New Year!
May your 2023 be full of wonder and the absurd :)
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Happy Monday! What are you building today?
📸 — Edison's laboratory at the Ford & Edison Winter Estate.
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You aren't Howard Hughes. We aren't the CIA.
But if you yearn to explore (and know the lore),
we'll give you $100k to explore the sea floor.
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Yes.
I still don’t understand if “cracked” is a good thing or a bad thing…
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In the coming days, a HS dropout is going to depressurize his capsule, pop the hatch & step out into space. Picking up Project Apollo's torch.
It will be the first private spacewalk ever. And it'll be done using a private spacesuit by an all civilian group w/ the dropout's
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Taiwanese water re-directing drain. Reportedly placed on a steep slope.
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The future beckons.
Illustration, Boeing's 2707, a supersonic passenger aircraft designed in the 1960s.
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Our species' first space explorer launched today, 62 yrs ago.
The odds were against Yuri. Half of the rockets before his had failed.
Chief Designer Korolev was so beset by anxiety & chest pain before launch that they had to sedate him.
Yuri's heart was a calm, steady 64 BPM.
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At this fund, we knoll. Do you?
A Jaguar XK-E's engine knolled.
"[knolling] means organizing objects at right angle[s ...] Andrew Kromelow, a janitor at Frank Gehry’s [workshop] Kromelow used to arrange his displaced tools at right angles on all surfaces[. He] called this routine knolling"
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London became so busy by the late-19th century that the UK Post Office made an autonomous, electric underground rail system to transport mail between different sorting stations.
The system was in use for 76yrs, before being closed in 2003.
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Our thesis? Investing in people & companies that most dismiss as jokes.
And yes, this is real.
We stan real ambition.
Wanna build giant robotic sandworms?
A 1517 portfolio company in OC, CA is hiring engineers, geologists, drillers to make sandworms real.
If you think you've got the skills & the will, say hi — apply [at] the domain
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Isometric fence diagrams are beautiful. They are a way to visualize 3D space via carefully arranged slices.
These diagrams were made by the USGS in the early 1970s. Their careful use of color rivals the Swiss.
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We wrote New 95 Theses to make this point. You can read them here.
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We are not ambitious enough.
We should strive to end all disease.
This is awesome. Imagine never getting sick again. I would sacrifice my pinky to be immune to the 15000 colds my immune-only-to-basic-hygiene kids bring home from school.
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They defined computing for the next half-century.
What are you getting done this week?
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If you were building a robot; the materials, motors, arduino/microcontroller & whatever else you need to make a barebones prototype.
The grant is activation energy for young people. When you are 16, scrounging together $1k for your project is a big deal.
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Some designs are so iconic that their aesthetic echoes for decades after their time.
Panasonic's GX400 radio, released in 1975. The design encourages users to prod & play with their radio.
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i promise well stop as soon as we hit 1 au bro. i promise.
just 30 trillion bro. bro cmon and well solve it all. i swear
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Undergrad, high school, and dropouts -- we want to fund you with $50K to work on getting started on research and development for the deep tech, science, and technology plays of your dreams.
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Ralph Mosher with his "Human Augmentation Research and Development Investigation," or Hardiman. One of the earliest exoskeleton designs.
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If you try to reject this system, you’re labeled a heretic, a crazy person, irresponsible, or — the worst insult of all under this new cathedral — like the *underclass.*
It’s Yale or jail. And the university clerics will make you fear for your soul without that degree.
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A sketch of a sci-fi city by the concept artist Won Jun Tea. 2022.
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"In the year 2023, when all our work is done by electricity"
"Cartoon Dynamo" from 1923, by H.T. Webster.
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Today 1517 is hosting the first Fellowship Summit: the Renaissance Reimagined.
We're really excited and can't wait to see what the future has in store.
May a 1,000 Fellowships bloom.
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@ryan_senne
Luigi Galvani, mostly because it's such a fun name to say out loud, "Luigi Galvani what are you doing on those shelves? Luigi Galvani get down from those shelves this instant!"
Or, alternatively, Broca or Golgi(e).
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We think this is wrong.
Decades of increasingly tyrannical rule by the universities has not increased the rate of scientific advancement.
But it has increased student debt, the pay of university clerics, and stagnation.
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We just moved into a new office!
So we asked some of our portfolio company founders for their advice about moving into a new office. Here's what they had to say:
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We look back at the great innovators of the last centuries — many had no degrees.
If universities accomplished what they claim, you’d think you’d see many more great, real innovations.
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Kristian Birkeland was a Norwegian polymath who became obsessed with the aurora borealis to the point that he invented new technologies to fund his obsession.
He figured out how to model the Earth's magnetic field in a vacuum chamber to understand what caused the aurorae.
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Today is reformation day, it is heartening to see the message against these modern indulgences grow and take root.
Onwards to a new renaissance!
Today is Reformation Day.
505 years ago, Luther nailed 95 Theses to Wittenberg church.
He protested the sale of indulgences — pieces of paper that, if you had one, you got heaven. Without it? Fires of purgatory.
Our thesis: the university degree is the modern indulgence.
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May we all strive to create something as beautiful and powerful as the Navier-Stokes equations.
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If you take pride in your work, it will stand the test of time.
These are the umbilical connection points for the Saturn V.
This rocket wasn't built to be "good enough for Govt. work." It was built with pride & it shows. Even 60yrs later.
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We believe great minds not only can be found outside of the universities but that many more flourish outside of them than the university clerics would want you to believe.
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Young Feynman chilling with von Neumann and Ulam at Los Alamos.
Each person's clothes and posture are true to them.
The aristocrat (von Neumann), the everyman (Feynman), and the office worker (Ulam).
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After hearing that Sikorsky had started an aviation company, the composer Sergei Rachmaninoff showed up & wrote him a $5k check (~$85k) to complete his first plane in the US, the Sikorsky Yorktown. An early airliner.
Sikorsky at the plane's christening, May 8, 1925
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Sign
#4
is, of course, an embarrassing childhood obsession with jet turbines.
Good Economist article on young prodigies. Identifies three characteristics. Strong resemblance to great founders as well:
(1) gifted children begin to master a particular discipline – a language, maths or chess – much younger than most
(2) this mastery is achieved largely on
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Chat, no matter who you are. No matter where you come from. No matter where you're going.
Be the kind of dropout whose profile pic goes this hard.
In the coming days, a HS dropout is going to depressurize his capsule, pop the hatch & step out into space. Picking up Project Apollo's torch.
It will be the first private spacewalk ever. And it'll be done using a private spacesuit by an all civilian group w/ the dropout's
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Big things start small.
Jack Parsons, one of the co-founders of JPL & Aerojet — arguably the world's first rocket startup, was a highly gifted dropout + autodidact.
He figured out how to reconstruct bombs, serving as an expert witness in a case. As a demonstration, he blew up a car for the court.
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We'd bet $2.72 Trillion that they definitely wouldn't have given a dime to these guys.
Had this exact conversation recently, albeit a different foreign country.
Me: "How can you expect your fund to get into good deals if you have a mandatory 3 month process?"
Them: "We know *dies internally*."
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As this blew up, we're going to piggy back on this & say that if you're a scientist or researcher who wants to build atomic mech suits, then we'll give you $100k over 3 months to do so!
apply here:
Let's admit it.
You might be cool, but you'll never be JFK chilling in front of an atomic mech suit cool.
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You don't get the concept of greatness named after you in half a dozen cultures by going home (early).
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July 16th is the day of evolutionary leaps.
On July 16th, 1945, humans unlocked the power of the atom for the first time.
24 yrs 19hrs 2 mins later, three humans slipped the surly bonds of Earth to walk on another world.
Each is worth remembering. Worth celebrating.
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This Wednesday, take a few minutes out of your day to learn about degenerate matter from one of the greatest teachers to ever live.
Let Feynman teach you about why imagination matters & how Oppenheimer figured out one of the most exotic states of matter.
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