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