Neurodivergent Community Wealth Interview Part 1 of 9

Why did you start Villej? What was your inspiration for creating community wealth?

So, no lie, I saw how Villej could work after my first experience with psilocybin. I'm the last person you'd expect to ever take any type of drug, but I'd heard about the potential for plant medicine to relieve symptoms of depression for up to seven months, so I gave it a try.

I had grown two separate six figure brick and mortar businesses with my former partner, and I had been desperately trying to rebuild one of the businesses I had formerly abandoned so that I could leave that situation. One of those was a print on demand business

I came to see the potential of on-demand manufacturing. It had grown a print business into an international unicorn company. And they were only doing print. What if we brought 3d printers and CNC machines into the mix?

What if people's products were made and sourced locally and only produced when someone needed them? The potential for the environment and to drastically reduce the waste of capitalism is where it started. But then I realized.

We could start the gig economy in manufacturing. Only we make it ethical. Circular. The profits go back to our communities instead of to investors who put no work in, do absolutely nothing to help anyone. In fact, they exploit us.

There's a great example of something similar to this. Holoholo Rideshare in Hawaii. The community came together to compete with Uber. Last I heard, it was quite successful. Imagine if we had one of those in every city, only they were all connected with one open source app.

The idea has expanded greatly from there, but I became homeless before I could realize an app. (And it's massively difficult to make a startup successful even under the best conditions with investors)

But I know what #CommunityWealth can do for the world, and I am never giving up.

Every challenge and hardship I face will just make for a better story one day when the platform launches and people can start benefitting from it and working together.

Because ultimately even though the gig economy was my first inspiration? What I'm inspired by every day is all the people I meet who are struggling, dying even, because we don't have these systems in place for our communities. And it could so easily be different.

So I'm going to make #CommunityWealth happen. Or die trying.

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