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The Startup Society is a new concept that offers the potential for rapid social innovation. To fully grasp the significance of the Startup Society concept, it’s helpful to consider the context.  Technology and Social Change  Social change and technological change are intertwined. Tools and techniques for agriculture changed society. Social organization allowed specialization and new technology. The printing press made the mass spread of facts and ideas possible, allowing the creation of a new type of social organization, democratic nation-state republics, which replaced feudal monarchies. Today, distributed ledger technology is making new models of social organization possible.  The Nation State System Works…Slowly  Society and economic activity are currently organized under the nation-state system. Old European cities evolved gradually over time and today are a maze of curving streets, fascinating but not efficient. Analogously, nation-state governments have a complex legacy of existing rules. The processes for creating new rules necessarily balance the interests of divergent factions in the population. The result is often a pluralist deadlock. It can be difficult to test new ideas.  Software Startups - Designed For Rapid Evolution Software startups know they have to deliver fast; after all, runways don’t last forever. But you can’t just deliver fast. You have to deliver what is needed, and it has to work and please users. Many startups don’t get it right. Failure is common. But the software startup paradigm allows Founders who have a vision to test their idea, focusing on delivering a valuable service with a fast, lean approach in order to discover what works and what doesn’t as quickly as possible. Startup companies move faster than larger companies to test and prove the viability of new ideas, then scale. Extending the Startup Paradigm to Social Organization People who have great ideas about society can get frustrated working in the confines of the glacially slow system of existing institutions. The startup model offers an alternative. Founders can establish a set of values as a starting point to rally other people who are closely aligned. People who agree with the values can apply to become members of a Startup Society. Founders can establish criteria for admission to ensure members will find each other to be respectable and desirable colleagues. Founders may also choose to create social cohesion by proposing norms of communication and new traditions to encourage members to bond. The Startup Society can adopt mechanisms for proposing and voting on policies and actions.  What Is A Startup Society? A Startup Society is a social group that uses a model that is analogous to the lean software startup model to evolve rapidly. While Startup Societies could take many forms, Jur focuses on facilitating startup Societies with the following properties.  Led by a Founder Software startups are initially animated by the passion of a Founder. Jur believes the same will be true of most successful Startup Societies.  Online / Location Indepedent Some Startup Societies exist in a particular place in the physical world, but location-independent Startup Societies can offer membership to anyone in the world, offering the potential for more rapid growth.  Closely Aligned & Fast Moving  Startup Societies with clear and specific values are more likely to attract members and thrive. Societies unified by shared values can come to a consensus quickly, test new ideas, assess results, and implement policies that work in a rapid cycle of lean innovation.  Web3 - Trustless & Censorship Resistant Existing social institutions have established (albeit sometimes somewhat tarnished) long-standing and valuable reputations at stake, so people have expectations about how they can trust them. New societies that arise overnight can’t rely on reputation and history. But they can use Web3 to ensure transparency and reliability, providing inviolable trust with distributed ledger technology. Startup Societies can use simple sets of Web3 tools designed to propose, test, vote on, and adopt policies, values, norms, and traditions.  How To Build A Startup Society Broadly speaking, in order to succeed a Startup Society will need to have three properties. It must be desirable; there must be some group of people that wants want the Founder is planning to offer. It must be feasible; there must be some practical way to deliver what the Founder is planning to offer. And finally it must be viable; the benefits that the Society creates must be sufficiently significant to inspire continuing participation so that the society will endure.  So the first step in building a Startup Society is to think of why a group of people would want to join together and what they could create that would be meaningful for them. Once you come up with your concept, apply in under two minutes and your proposal will be added to the Society Lab in Jur’s Discord community. The community, including high-profile advisors like Zane Austen from TheNetworkState.com, will help you refine your idea. But hurry, proposals will be evaluated on March 31 so time is limited to participate.  Watch the below video to help you put together your proposal for the Startup Society Founders' Awards. https://youtu.be/uEiGF47tF_A

Jur is offering five prizes of $2,000 USD plus 1,000 $JUR in the Startup Society Founders’ Awards. The awards focus attention on the opportunity to develop rapidly evolving new societies with the aid of blockchain technology. We live under the influence and control of complex systems of social organization and governance that evolved gradually over centuries. Our world order is created by agreements between nation-states and our local governments' power, which also derives from nation-states. We might assume this is the way things have always been done and the only way to do things, but the nation-state system is only a few centuries old. The nation-state system might change a lot over the next century, but it is not designed for rapid change. Fortunately, if we want to accelerate the rate of social evolution, there is another option.  The Startup Society concept is designed to support the rapid creation of digital-first societies with clear simple rules and values and provide a transparent and auditable system for proposing, voting on, and implementing new features for societies. The Startup Society model envisions multiple opt-in groups that people can freely choose to join. In this model, an individual citizen may belong to multiple societies but does not have to belong to any. People can voluntarily self-organize based on shared values and priorities and experiment with rules that support their own ideals.  These digital-first Startup Societies will exist in the context of the nation-state system. Eventually, some startup societies might crowdfund territory around the world, providing direct physical access to citizens of many or all nations. They might also seek free enterprise zone status and diplomatic recognition, eventually becoming distributed peers to nation-states, a new type of entity called a network state. But even a digital-only society could have a very meaningful impact.  Consider a simple example: a Society for digital nomads who are committed to sustainable development. A Society founder could propose a list of values and priorities and invite people to join a digital community. The founder could then propose rules and invite society members to vote. For instance, everyone could agree to purchase a group health insurance policy for nomads and informally commit to only staying in locally owned lodging and purchasing carbon offsets for travel. Eventually, the Society might choose to crowdfund some co-working and living spaces, but clearly, a Startup Society can provide benefits for its citizens even if it is purely digital.  Now that you understand the Startup Society concept and how it could be useful, Jur invites you to pitch your own Startup Society proposal. How could people who share your values, interests, and priorities freely associate in ways that improve their lives?  Apply now.