V6A

V6A is an R&D vehicle for interesting ideas in their early stages. Like many funds, we are on the lookout for promising work, much of which is overlooked because it’s considered too early, unusual, or transdisciplinary to be supported by existing capital and institutions.

Unlike traditional philanthropy, however, we are most interested in the after. What are the missing conditions and pathways through which ideas become societal capabilities?

We do not believe there is any shortage of good ideas in the world. Our reason for being lies in the observation that society produces more worthwhile ideas than it currently has the capacity to carry and meaningfully integrate. Our hypothesis is that the bottleneck to progress lies in failures of continuity and coordination, specifically the absence of infrastructure that helps ideas survive, adapt, and develop into more durable cultural forms, tools, practices, and capabilities. Many good ideas, whether prototype or pilot, have disappeared after an initial burst of attention and support. We believe this failure is not a reflection of the idea itself, but of due to the conditions and infrastructure that would support their continuity never being formed or encouraged to.

V6A studies and intervenes in this gap through applied R&D and grant-making.

In other words, we are interested in the study and design of metapolicy and the systems through which societies recognize, evaluate, fund, govern, and carry ideas forward. We see these systems as capability infrastructures that like connective tissues, allows experimentation to compound and accumulate rather than dissipate their efforts.

Previously, we operated as an R&D studio building a constellation of projects, collaborators, and funders. Our work focused on emerging open-source technologies and privacy-preserving cryptography; both fields that held strange and consequential ideas with the potential to profoundly reshape the world.

Our role was to bridge the gap between these technologies and meaningful implementation, bringing together diverse sectors and expertise, from public to private to protocol to do so.

The next iteration of V6A is now taking shape.

Our purpose is to widen the range of futures society is capable of holding and sustaining. We do so through specialized funds for defined areas of opportunity, exploratory grants for work that does not yet fit an established category, and applied research that helps promising ideas move beyond discovery into a viable next stage.

Through a initial portfolio of applied projects and exploratory grants, we are developing a practical body of knowledge about how societies recognize, sustain, and integrate new ideas. We call the systems that perform this work capability infrastructure. V6A’s long-term purpose is to make experimentation more cumulative. We’d liek to see a wider range of ieas and tools society can draw upon to meet the challenges and opportunities of our time.

What futures would you like to see?
rithikha@v6acolab.org

V6A Labs