Introducing the Belonging Fund

Angel investing to help people heal, connect, and prosper

1. How can humanity heal itself?

2. How can we build and maintain meaningful connections?

3. How can we ensure greater economic equality?

Visionary artist Android Jones — a leader in multimedia psychedelic art

1. The Future of Healing: Psychedelics

Humans suffer from so many mental and emotional ailments including depression, anxiety, and trauma-induced behavioral responses. The net result is we can’t fully show up for each other or ourselves. In the US alone, recent estimates show 16 million adults had an episode of major depression in the course of a year — and that was before we collectively experienced the trauma of a global pandemic. During June of 2020, the CDC reported the problem had grown to 40% of US adults reporting that they were struggling with mental health or substance use.

  • The first of two MAPS-sponsored Phase 3 clinical trials for MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD were statistically significant, and the FDA has granted the trials with a Breakthrough Therapy designation
  • Ketamine is being legally clinician-prescribed by doctors to help relieve depression, anxiety, chronic pain, PTSD, OCD, and other mental health-related conditions because multiple studies have shown it has robust and rapid effects on alleviating depression.
  • Psychedelic therapies using traditional or entirely new compounds
  • New delivery mechanisms for enabling mass-market consumption of psychedelics
  • Tools + services this new category of companies will need
Photo by Manny Becerra

2. The Future of Connection

I’ve been working on the problem of loneliness throughout my career because so many of my earliest memories are rooted in abandonment and the feeling of not belonging. The desire for connection has fueled my life’s work.

  • Cohort-based products— where you can learn, play, and grow with others
  • Community-led products — where the product is inherently better and more valuable because you’re part of something larger than yourself (ex: Peloton)
  • Consumer products that give people a greater sense of belonging by helping them connect to communities, friends, colleagues, romantic/sexual partners — or even pets + nature
  • Reimagining of personal & professional interactions through gaming, virtual worlds, audio/video, etc.

3. The Future of Economic Equality: Decentralization

I believe many of the most exciting new companies will disrupt the centralized authorities that exist today. Today just a handful of the world’s largest companies control most of the infrastructure of the web and have hoarded a treasure trove of the wealth creation that the internet has enabled.

The distribution of $96.1 trillion in American wealth, in 2019
  1. Earn more income, save more income, or both
  2. Own or receive assets that can appreciate in value, such as a home or stocks
  • Web 3.0 solutions that help capture, grow and share value amongst individual contributors rather than locking the value in proprietary platforms — in particular I’m interested in new models that are built for creators so that they can share in the profit and have a more direct path to monetizing their fanbase
  • Teams working to decentralize finance and solve some of the hard problems surrounding it (like scalability & cost)
  • Picks + shovels that enable mainstream consumer adoption of crypto products and services

--

--

Product at Twitter. Life story: “Nevertheless, she persisted.” Optimist. Technologist. Wearer of many hats.

Get the Medium app

A button that says 'Download on the App Store', and if clicked it will lead you to the iOS App store
A button that says 'Get it on, Google Play', and if clicked it will lead you to the Google Play store
Esther Crawford

Product at Twitter. Life story: “Nevertheless, she persisted.” Optimist. Technologist. Wearer of many hats.