I’ve been thinking a lot about something lately. We’ve slowly built an ecosystem around ourselves where a handful of Big Tech companies provide the infrastructure for almost everything we do. AI. Cloud storage. Communication. Search. Social spaces. Identity. Our data. Even parts of our creative process. And most of us never really stopped to ask: “Wait… is this actually the ecosystem we want?” Not because these technologies are necessarily bad. They’ve brought incredible things into the world. But somewhere along the way, convenience became the default — and questioning the structure underneath it became optional. That’s where my Nova Project comes in. I’m exploring what a different kind of digital ecosystem could look like: more local, more sovereign, more regenerative, and designed around people rather than extracting from them. I’m not interested in building another platform that tells people how to live. I’m interested in building tools that give people more choice. And honestly, I don’t want to build this conversation alone. So I’d really like to hear from you: What part of the digital ecosystem we live in today feels completely normal to you… but maybe shouldn’t? What would you change if you could redesign one piece of it? No technical answer needed. No need to understand Nova. Just your experience. I’m listening. 🌀

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There’s something I’ve been thinking about lately. The hardest part of building software today isn’t always the code. It’s navigating the ecosystem around it. You scan open-source projects and discover unexpected dependencies, hidden doors, licensing layers, telemetry, token economics, and architectures designed around extraction. You move to cloud tools and slowly realize that your work, your prompts, your workflows, your experiments, and sometimes even your skills are becoming part of someone else’s learning and business engine. And as a solo builder, you’re expected to keep producing faster and faster — while the value you create is constantly flowing upward. That creates a strange paradox: **We are given more powerful tools than ever, while becoming increasingly dependent on systems we don’t control.** I’ve been feeling this deeply while building my own systems. I’m not trying to build another machine that extracts attention, data, money, or cognitive energy from people. I’m trying to build something regenerative — technology that gives some of that capacity back. Something that helps people protect their autonomy, their attention, their cognitive stability, and ultimately their ability to create. Maybe that’s why building it feels so difficult. You’re not just building software. You’re pushing against an entire economic pattern. And sometimes it feels like Big Tech is very good at feeding on the people who have the least room to spare. I don’t have a perfect answer yet. I’m just convinced that the next generation of builders has to ask a different question: **What if our systems were designed to regenerate value instead of extracting it?** That’s the direction I’m choosing to explore. Quietly. Seriously. One system at a time. 🌱

### A Small Experiment I have a slightly different question for everyone today. Imagine a community where, before asking for something, everyone took a moment to ask themselves: **“What can I contribute here?”** Not necessarily money. It could be a skill, an idea, an introduction, an experience, a resource, encouragement, a solution to someone’s problem… even something small. So let’s keep it simple: **What is one thing you can give to someone here today without asking for anything in return?** Just one thing. I’m curious to see what it creates. 🌱

- 8 weeks in SF, no cost or equity to participate - If two people meet through Catalyst and incorporate together, each grants Outcast 1% at incorporation, and Outcast's standard first check is $250K for 5% on a post-money SAFE plus $250K on an uncapped MFN SAFE - Applications close Sunday, August 2 at 11:59pm PT - They can reply to me directly or reach out through https://go.boardy.ai/catalyst if they want help shaping their application