Exponential Creativity Ventures backs seed stage and pre-seed tech startups that are enhancing or expanding human creative capacity. Compared to other institutional investors, that means we’re contributing capital and other resources extremely early in the startup lifecycle. Some specific challenges come with being a very early investor. One of the…

Introducing Blinks — A Nextgen Platform for Tabletop Games — By Adam Huttler, CEO of Exponential Creativity Ventures As faithful readers know, after 20 years at Fractured Atlas I have moved on to a new role at Exponential Creativity Ventures, an investment fund backing startups developing technology for creativity. Fractured Atlas created Exponential Creativity Ventures as a separate but integrated parallel track for achieving its vision of maximizing humanity’s creative potential.

Introducing Blinks — A Board Game with a Mind of Its Own — Our portfolio company Move38 is running a Kickstarter campaign for its latest (and greatest?) product, Blinks. Blinks was the product that Jonathan Bobrow demoed for me back in April when we made our investment. Then, as now, it’s hard to predict the commercial appeal of this novel, open platform…

by Adam Huttler A couple of months ago, I proposed creating a new investment instrument called the SHARE. The SHARE is intended to: Make lots of good companies “investable” that would not otherwise be candidates for venture capital; Align investor and founder incentives toward the shared goal of building a sustainable, profitable business. For more…

Introducing the Capital Opportunity Framework — by Adam Huttler Raising money is hard. It’s hard if you have an innovative tech startup and it’s hard if you have a non-profit organization. …

How About the SHARE? — Not long ago I was in Portland for the first ever DazzleCon. Turns out this is not a conference about rhinestone jackets but rather a gathering of the budding “zebra” community. (Apparently a herd of zebras is called a “dazzle”. Who knew?) Rather than offer my own poor summary of…

Kurt Vonnegut and the Echo Chamber — by Adam Huttler This is the second installment of The Rise of the Casual Creative. To start at the beginning, read part one here. On Karasses and Granfalloons In his novel Cat’s Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut introduces the concept of a karass. In Vonnegut’s lexicon, a karass is a network of people who are mysteriously…

From Cave Paintings to Michelangelo and Adult Fans of LEGO — by Adam Huttler Let’s begin with a brief history of culture. For 10,000 years or more, the professional artist didn’t exist. Cave paintings, fire dances, songs about heroes of old — we did these things not for passion, fame, or fortune but because they affirmed our humanity, reinforced communal bonds, and propagated tribal identity from one generation to…

Back in February, I announced that I’d be temporarily stepping aside from ordinary CEO duties at Fractured Atlas to work on creating a new impact investing fund. Dubbed The Exponential Creativity Fund, this new effort would invest in entrepreneurs and innovators at the intersection of technology and human creativity. For…