Danielle Strachman is the co-founder and GP of 1517 Fund, a premiere pre-seed venture capital firm backing ambitious young high-school, college and makers working on big ideas. With a tag line of “Backing dropouts working on hard problems & sci-fi scientists at the earliest stages of their companies”, Danielle has been working on 1517 for 10+ years backing bright young minds to pursue great work.

Prior to 1517, she worked as the early program director for the Thiel Fellowship, a grant based program offering $100K to high potential students to "stop-out" of college for a year and pursue an idea on their own. Some of the fellows of the program include:

• Dylan Field co-founder of Figma
• Austin Russel CEO of Luminar Technologies
• Vitalik Buterin - co-founder of the Ethereum blockchain
• Laura Deming co-founder of the longevity fund
• & more

Danielle is also the co-founder and board member of the K-8 charter school Innovations Academy.

As described in depth in her co-founder Michael Gibson’s book “Paper Belt On Fire”, the 1517 co-founders have found themselves in a host of situations like catching power naps under desks at hackathons to hosting youth filled meetups raging with conversations of interplanetary physics to garage bioscience.

In this episode Robert & Danielle explore:

0:00 - Introduction

3:20 - Danielle's Start at a Conscious Community

10:11 - Alternative Education Philosophies at Innovation's Academy

16:14 - How Impact Drove Danielle to the Thiel Fellowship

18:45 - Traits for Identifying, Multiple Intelligence, Developing New Lexicons for High Potential Makers

29:01 - LLMs and AI as Collective Consciousness

34:11 - Maintaining Imagination in AI Age

40:03 - Allocating Resources and Building Alternative Fellowships

51:00 - Community building + why 1517 is the "Harry Potter sorting hat" for makers

54:17 - Hard Learnings: How Danielle & Michael Got "Kramed Down" In Their Deal on Loom

1:06:37 - Flux Capacitor Program: Developing Deep Technology & Science Companies

1:16:01 - A Court Case in 1970s May Have Driven the Necessity of a College Degree?

1:22:17 - Accelerating vs. Stagnation and Finding Hope

More on Danielle & 1517:

• 1517 Fund: https://www.1517fund.com/
• Danielle on Twitter https://twitter.com/DStrachman
• Medici Project: https://www.1517fund.com/medici-project