Why Human Respect Labs?
Because the biggest successes in human creativity, entrepreneurship and innovation start small.
HUMAN RESPECT LABS is an experiment of experiments. If every human endeavor is an experiment, including one you might be dreaming up, we must find a promising project. It will either work or it won’t.
It sounds Darwinian, but a project either survives or fails.
Because HUMAN RESPECT LABS is a project, too, it will survive or fail. That means we have a strong incentive to get things right—our survival depends on it. And getting things right for us means helping you get things right.
But first, you need a project.
What Kind of Project?
We’ll choose around five projects per year on a rolling basis. Perhaps one of them will be yours.
First, your project must enhance, expand, or educate people about the philosophy of Human Respect (HR), which is the philosophy of our parent foundation. Then, it must fall under one of the following categories:
Content Creators. Use video to help us gain mindshare around a culture of HR.
Community Builders. Create event opportunities that emphasize HR principles.
Communicators. Write a script or book that helps people imagine a world of HR.
Innovators. Pitch tech projects promising to displace compulsion or advance HR.
Strategists. Present us with a PR, social media, or strategic plan to expand HR.
Entrepreneurs. Pitch minimum viable proposals that create value and hold liberatory potential.
Or, as a subscriber, you will find one of our requests for proposal (RFPs) waiting in your inbox. You might think to yourself, we can create that.
Working within the above six general categories means operating according to a subtext: How can we use creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation to liberate people? How can we use voluntary cooperation? How can we reduce coercion?
Of course, we are also interested in ways to educate or inspire people to embrace our philosophy. So some of our creators will be artists, filmmakers, or writers.
Small is Beautiful
Business gurus can be full of contradictions. Some will say, Be like Elon! Use exponential thinking! And that’s fine as far as it goes. But we think small is beautiful.
That is, we are looking for brilliant projects by brilliant people that might be in the germ stage of development. Our motto, which we heard from another business guru:
Start small. Fail early and cheaply.
A corollary might be: Test assumptions quickly. Pivot decisively.
The idea is that you don’t want to waste a bunch of time and money in a vain attempt to architect some monstrous plan or system. We certainly don’t want that. So the test is not just of your project but of you and your team.
How Much is Enough?
If you’re a Director of Development looking to win a $250,000 award for your organization, this is probably not the place to apply. Instead, use this site to keep talented friends in your network apprised.
HUMAN RESPECT LABS is all about small projects with gritty teams of 2-5 people. Our maximum project award is $30,000, which would be disbursed in three tranches. We will offer award amounts based on the alignment of projects to our objectives and limited resources.
So, What’s Our Why?
In short, Human Respect (HR).
Our awards are designed to catalyze projects that enable people to circumvent legacy systems, coercive middlemen, and powerful elites. We are dedicated to liberatory projects that expand peaceful interaction.
But this will take an upgrade in our collective consciousness, so we will fund culture and media products along with early-stage campaigns, innovations, and ventures.