VENTURE CAPITAL FOR THE EARTH
GAIA LABS HAS THREE (3) GOALS:
FIRST, TRANSFORM RIO DE JANEIRO (CITY AND STATE) INTO THE GLOBAL CAPITAL FOR SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH, INNOVATION AND DEVELOPMENT FOCUSED ON THE GRAND CHALLENGES.
SECOND, DISRUPT THE TRADITIONAL VENTURE CAPITAL MODEL AND POSITION BRAZIL, THE GLOBAL SOUTH, AND THE BRICS AS THE PRINCIPAL GO-TO SOLUTION PROVIDERS FOR THE GRAND CHALLENGES BY RAISING AND DEPLOYING CAPITAL AT SCALE TO MEET THE DEPTH AND BREADTH OF THE GRAND CHALLENGES, AND
THIRD, CONSTRUCT AND DISSEMINATE GLOBALLY, NEW AND EVOLVING APPROACHES OF PLANETARY DEVELOPMENT WHILE SIMULTANEOUSLY RAISING CONSCIOUSNESS, EXPLORING CREATIVE METAMORPHOSES TO THE GRAND CHALLENGES AND REDEFINING WHAT TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION MEANS.
AN OVERVIEW OF THE GRAND CHALLENGES
The Grand Challenges (GCs) facing humanity, other species and the planet are interconnected crises that threaten life and the ecosystems that sustain life. These challenges span multiple domains – environmental, social, scientific, technological, political, economic and philosophical, to name just a few. In addition, these challenges are entrenched and embedded in the very fabric that humanity has constructed upon the earth, in short, in civilization itself, such that their principal characteristics are at a global magnitude and scale that has no precedent. All aspects of air, land and water have been negatively and profoundly impacted.
PROFIT = CLIMATE CHANGE + POLLUTION + POVERTY
(PR = CC + PL + PV)
Part of the mythology surrounding capitalism’s global hegemony is that profit or surplus value is a natural state of affairs, and that incessant growth and the accumulation of wealth tend towards infinity in accordance with the laws of nature. Nothing could be further from the truth. Nature recycles. Everything. Including waste and any and all surpluses of energy. Unless it is prevented from doing so.
At Gaia Labs we believe:
(i) that venture capital has a crucial role to play locally, regionally and globally in proposing and structuring sustainably constructive approaches to the GCs (hence our global investing mandate),
(ii) that Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and the Global South hold the technological, natural & human resource and cultural key(s) to the future of the planet,
(iii) that these “keys” are embedded in the Earth, in indigenous cultures (in the West, East, North and South) and in the African cultural diaspora,
(iv) that design and consciousness raising are necessary tools to be added to the already existing quiver of VC options to address the GCs, and
(v) that only by raising and deploying capital at a scale that is fully commensurate with the challenges facing us, do we have a chance of keeping capitalism in check, while new avenues are explored to guide capitalism to evolve beyond itself.