Our collective Crisis - Civilization is Fracturing
We are the least present we have ever been. Technology has made us less focused and out of alignment, and AI threatens to deepen that. Yet the same force cuts both ways: technology amplifies whatever you throw it against, and as the capability of every tool skyrockets, so will the capability of tools built deliberately for presence.
"For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life."
It is 2025. The world stands on the precipice of unparalleled abundance, yet man finds himself imprisoned by his own creations. The prophets of progress once whispered of flying cars and personal robotic servants for all, visions of a future bathed in boundless possibility. Instead, we received dopamine in bite-sized packages - the exploitation of human capital through DoorDash instead of self-sufficiency, the obsession with TikTok trends over transcendence. What was once a dream of shared prosperity has decayed into an algorithmic prison, a world where connection is simulated, attention hijacked, the human spirit commodified.
Civilization is collapsing - not from a scarcity of resources, but from a scarcity of coherence. Without shared myth, shared ritual, and shared purpose, cultures disintegrate into nothing more than profit-driven engagement metrics. We are the most overmedicated, overentertained, overstimulated generation in history, yet never have we been so lonely, so unfulfilled. Material excess has outpaced meaning; consumption has eclipsed contemplation.
The machine feeds itself not on innovation or wisdom but on the endless hunger of the distracted mind, trapped in loops of addiction, hyper-consumption, and echo-chambered thought. The algorithms do not serve truth; they serve engagement, and engagement thrives on outrage, division, and noise.
Society is sick. The culture that we shaped now poisons us. Our food is synthetic, our information manipulated, our leaders relics of a world that no longer exists. The organs of governance, once designed to serve, have become swollen and impotent, wielded by a class too detached from reality to steer the ship. Wealth pools at the top, while meaning drains from below: the material world is abundant, but the soul is starving.
The greatest irony of our time is that we destroy the natural world because we have forgotten that we are part of it. We do not grow our own food. We do not touch the soil. Less than two percent of the population feeds the rest, and the rest, in turn, feed the machine that numbs us all. We are told that our suffering is an error rather than a symptom of misalignment. The endless pursuit of status, of wealth, of external validation are the mirages we chase, while the real oases of self-understanding, self-acceptance, and self-love remain unexplored. We mistake accumulation for fulfillment, power for purpose, information for wisdom, and attention for love.
The void within cannot be filled by conquest. It can only be healed.
A Choice Before Us
Every civilization reaches a moment of decision: evolve or perish. The Fermi Paradox asks why, in a universe teeming with potential, we see no evidence of others who have risen to the stars. The Great Filter is the concept that there is some step in the progression from simple matter to advanced, spacefaring civilizations that species are extremely unlikely to survive. Are we before it or beyond it? Do we stand at the foothills of enlightenment, or are we fated to be just another whisper in the cosmic wind, undone by our own inability to cooperate beyond our tribal instincts?
Western civilization has achieved miracles of material production, yet in doing so, it has severed its connection to the ineffable. In seeking to master the universe, we have lost the wisdom of simply being in it, of just being it. The mystics of old, those who knew the rhythm of the Tao, the dance of Shiva, the silence beneath all thought, held a truth that we have ignored: the world of forms is a veil, a mirage, a dream.
We have become prisoners of the ephemeral, lost in the flickering glow of screens, living in bits and bytes while the real world, eternal and divine, awaits within. The ancients understood what we have forgotten: the illusion of separateness. The path forward is not greater control or greater consumption; it is remembrance.
Humanity finds itself at the brink.
One path leads to self-destruction, by war, climate collapse, artificial intelligence untethered from wisdom, or simply the slow erosion of meaning until nothing remains worth saving.
The other path is far more difficult: it requires a renaissance of spirit, a reawakening to what was once known but since forgotten.
For those who see, the way is clear: heal, remember, transcend. This is not a task for governments, corporations, or institutions. It is a task for each of us, in our own way, to step beyond fear and into truth.
Because of the inculcations we've all received throughout our lives by a self-perpetuating system of systems, when we find ourselves in emotional discomfort, we often self-soothe through addictive and self-destructive patterns of behavior, or lash out, look to blame, and then seek to change or control the people and circumstances around us. This thoughtless reactivity is driven by a fundamental misunderstanding of our shared reality, reflecting a loss of so much of ancient wisdom that is our birthright - as above, so below. What we are experiencing is all happening within the confines of our mind, and is a mere reflection of it.
In his memoir of his time as a prisoner in a Nazi death camp, Viktor Frankl sums up the hidden game afoot in each of our lives - "When we are no longer able to change a situation - we are challenged to change ourselves." For only when we fix what is broken within us will we begin to see those changes reflected in the external world. Before we look at the speck in our brother's eye, we must remove the plank in our own.
In this time of historic upheaval, with greater potential for transformation than any time known to man, the question before us is not how we will survive, but whether we will awaken.
The Call
Humanity's evolution is accelerated by technologies that help us become more present, embodied, and connected with each other. In this time of accelerating technological capability, capital that enables the creation and distribution of these tools has a compounding effect on human consciousness. Investing in them is at once the most urgent and the most compounding deployment of capital we know of. When you create as you speak, you aim right by staying in touch with yourself, your community, your body, and your values.
The next generation of meaningful, consequential companies are being built by people whose work is bound to something larger than themselves. We are not waiting for permission.
A collective of high-agency builders has organized to point this increasingly inexpensive, more capable technology toward the good - taking our oldest tools, ritual and ceremony and togetherness, and amplifying them with our newest. We are building the parallel systems we want to live inside, sharing them openly, and facing the world as a collective rather than as isolated individuals. This is happening right now, and you can come experience it at 25 Dobbin St, in a 20k square foot former parochial school on McCarren Park.
We are organizing capital, talent, real estate, and infrastructure around the proposition that creating the physical space and energetic container for the re-emergence of the artist-technologist, a lighthouse for repeat builders who begin with meaning and intention, will fuel the engine of evolution in the rest of the 21st century. These kindred spirits know that culture is either something authentic you consciously and consistently co-create in the everyday hum of community, or something commercial you mindlessly consume, and that eventually consumes you.
We view creativity as spiritual, and as fundamentally human. We are the reminder that beauty, values, and equitable business practices cannot just co-exist but compound into a single durable flywheel, indeed one that has fueled the world for millennia. The monoculture is evaporating and power is decentralizing.
We are a movement towards an Archaic Revival.
Hohm - An Archaic Revival
"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." - Buckminster Fuller
Humanity desperately needs a return to the values, practices, and consciousness of pre-industrial, shamanic societies as a solution to modern civilization's existential crises. The rational, materialist, and hierarchical structures of today's world have led humanity into ecological destruction, spiritual emptiness, and cultural stagnation.
Inspired heavily by the prodigious, and eponymously named, work of Terence McKenna, one of the most consequential thinkers of the 20th century, Hohm seeks to revive ancient, tribal ways of living, augmented by the knowledge and technology of the present.
Key Elements:
- Reconnecting with Psychedelic Shamanism
- Psychedelics are the gateway to this revival, as ancient cultures used plant medicines to communicate with the "Gaian mind" (the intelligence of nature) and maintain harmony with the environment.
- Hohm works with legal psychedelic substances, beginning with prescription Ketamine and THC, consumed in the optimal setting to induce a mindset primed for lowering our walls and barriers, to receive the healing power of music and community support - two of the chief aspects of historical psychedelic ceremonies across ages and societies.
- Rediscovering Direct Experience Over Dogma
- Carl Jung reminds us that "One of the main functions of organised religion is to protect people against a direct experience of God." The same can be said about scientific materialism and mass media alienating people from direct, personal experience of reality. An Archaic Revival restores intuitive wisdom, spiritual experiences, and connection to nature.
- Hohm pairs psychedelic substances with breathwork, sound, immersive visuals, meditation, and movement practices, each chosen for how deeply it integrates into daily life: the aim is to loosen monolithic groupthink inside our social bubbles and free our minds from the shackles of ongoing cultural indoctrination.
- Dissolving "Dominator Culture"
- Modern society is built on hierarchical, competitive, and oppressive systems that suppress creativity, feminine energy, and individual freedom. The archaic mindset, in contrast, is cooperative, nature-centered, and egalitarian.
- Hohm harkens us back to the time before autocratic monarchies and imperialists imposed their self-serving lie that without multi-layered hierarchies and social strata that humanity would dissolve into chaos. Hohm seeks to aid in healing our individual and collective "father" wounding so that we may integrate the shadow masculine and return to a balanced animus and anima.
- Creating a New Culture with Old Wisdom
- We must not, nor truly can we, abandon silicon-based technology. The die has been cast. Rather, we must integrate ancient wisdom with modern knowledge to create a new kind of civilization - one that values consciousness, sustainability, and artistic expression over consumption and control.
- Hohm's core experiential sound journey is built upon a "tech" stack no one has assembled before:
- The world's highest fidelity audio and visual systems
- Substantive world music and evolving visuals
- Partnering with world-class musicians and artists to provide performances that exist nowhere else
- Artistic, therapeutic, and movement-based programming specifically designed to be partnered with group, individual, and family Ketamine therapy, using
- Perfectly honed dosing structure
- Elongated trip length for maximal processing and reception of wisdom
- Healers, spiritual leaders, and practitioners who have given their lives to the work of supporting others on their journey
- Carefully curated, head-heart aligned journeyors whose energy and presence bring tangible and intangible healing and support during the journey, and as a part of the ongoing community
Hohm combines ancient wisdom from spiritual practices from across ages and cultures with this new tech stack to awaken our true nature. We all chose to incarnate at the time and in this place - ancient wisdom must be delivered in relatable and differentiated form to leave a deep imprint on the modern world.
An Archaic Revival is a vision for rebalancing human civilization by reawakening the wisdom of indigenous traditions, psychedelic exploration, and deep ecological awareness. It is the antidote to the spiritual and environmental crisis of modernity, urging us to embrace shamanic consciousness, visionary art, and direct mystical experience - our oldest tools, carried into the future.
"History is a departure from the symbiotic relationships that characterized the archaic world. The way back is through the psychedelics. They dissolve history and cultural programming, reconnecting us to the timeless mind of the planet." - Terence McKenna
The Core Insight: Transformation Through Guided Experience + Communal Integration
When we gather influential individuals committed to transcendent, state-of-the-art experiences - then structure time for integration and real connection - we become wiser, more effective humans, and the breakthroughs that follow are nonlinear - for ourselves and for our society.
This is not theory: the pattern has been run before.
In the 1960s, researchers like Jim Fadiman and Willis Harman at the International Foundation for Advanced Study ran structured LSD-assisted creativity sessions with engineers, scientists, and business leaders. Their results, partially documented in The Psychedelic Explorer's Guide, were astonishing: breakthroughs in circuit design, product innovation, and architecture, all stemming from just one carefully curated psychedelic session with post-journey integration.
Participants described solving technical problems they had been stuck on for months: ideas became clear, solutions emerged, confidence and emotional intelligence rose.
This is the deeper thesis of Hohm:
When we make space for structured, sacred experience, and support people through it, we catalyze creative insight and collective evolution.
[TRANSITION — Hohm thesis into One Studio as the structure built around it]
What we are
One Studio is a creative co-op & studio innovating at the intersection of pro-social technology, immersive art, and consciousness expansion. We invest and incubate early-stage companies, and cash-flow businesses, as well as hold and activate real estate. Across all of it, we operate from a single proposition: alignment is the alpha. Capital from aligned investors deployed by aligned operators in service of aligned companies, supporting aligned communities, with surplus flowing to mission-locked charitable partners - this compounds more reliably than any combination of these things in isolation.
We have built a functioning flywheel that creates real value within our ecosystem, retains and compounds it, equitably distributes some of it and reinvests the rest of it back into our spaces, experiences, people and work to win the long game. We have designed our systems around deep incentive alignment meant to attract only those who are cultural and operational fits. As McLuhan reminds us, there are no passengers on One's Spaceship - we are all crew.
Our structure functions in the spirit of a cooperative. The thesis is that with advancing technology, shared services & communal physical space, aligned mission, and overlapping goals, our management team can functionally provide strategic and tactical support to an aligned co-op of companies and initiatives. Equity is distributed widely to the people who do the work: employees, advisors, creatives, partners, strategists, ceremonialists, and space holders. The founders are intentionally allocating themselves less in equity holdings vs typical venture-backed startups, reflecting a deliberate trade - shared upside for the collective attracts top aligned talent and ultimately increases likelihood of success and abundance, while stewardship of the mission remains primary.
What We Are Not
We are not a fund: we do not manage outside LP capital for a 2/20 structure, we do not optimize for short-cycle exits or a quarterly distribution profile, and we do not invest opportunistically for pure financial returns - the restraint is structural, not accidental.
Nor are we a holdco built for personal wealth maximization or capital extraction, and we are not open to all capital.
We do not have traditional LPs, we have ULPs - UnLimited Partners, whose capital commitment is only a portion of their dedicated contributions. Like our spaces, experiences and projects, our partners are curated, accepted by invitation or referral only.
Capital, existing entirely in the abstract, has become perhaps the most abundant resource on the planet. The highest quality human energy, creativity, and discernment are what is truly real, and therefore ultimately scarce - we do not disrespect it by treating it as fundamentally transactional or fungible. We accept investment only from member-investors who bring alignment, expertise, deal flow, or other substantive contributions alongside their check.
[TRANSITION — the structural refusals into the money philosophy beneath them]
Reclaiming the Soul from the Market
The Forgotten Alchemy of Value
"All that you can take with you is that which you have given away."
Our civilization has forgotten the original magic of money - that it was once ritual, not merely resource; a reflection of meaning, not a measure of it.
In the ancient world, philosophers, warriors, and mystics alike warned that money was not just a tool but a spell, one that could colonize the soul if left unchecked. Sun Tzu taught that coins in a soldier's pocket could be deadlier than any enemy. Epictetus, once a slave, showed that our true possessions are not what we can buy, but what we cannot lose. Marcus Aurelius wrote privately that esteeming money as a good was a form of psychological compulsion, not power. And Seneca, one of the wealthiest men in Rome, admitted that to possess money lightly is the rarest art of all.
At Hohm, we remember these truths.
We do not reject wealth, only refuse to be ruled by it. We stand for the reintegration of money into the soul's ecosystem. Like the mind, money is a wonderful servant, and a terrible master.
The Hohm Economy: Soul Over Coin
Hohm is a living contradiction to the marketplace of madness. Our economy is not transactional, it is experiential, sacred, and reciprocal.
- We reject the demand of fiat systems for infinite growth from finite spirits and resources.
- We offer an economy of contribution, where value is measured not by accumulation but by alignment and transformation.
- We recalibrate status from net worth to depth of inner work.
- We transmute the control of ownership into the discipline of stewardship.
Our highest currency is integration. Our dividends are community, healing, and remembrance.
A New Sovereignty: Psychological Liberation from Financial Enslavement
Modern man is not free.
He is a debtor - not just to banks, but to illusions. Illusions of status, illusions of power, illusions that fulfillment is found in what can be owned. The ancients knew better. They taught that freedom begins with the recognition of what truly belongs to you: your mind, your presence, your capacity to love.
Just as Plato warned that property turns guardians into tyrants, we hold the line between utility and enslavement. Ownership at Hohm is collective. Exchange is sacred. And every act of giving is a mirror of the self that remembers it already has enough.
True wealth is not stored in ledgers, vaults, or on the blockchain. It is stored in the liberated nervous system, the coherence of a community, and the clarity of a heart at peace.
Hohm invites you not to escape the economy but to transcend its hypnosis, to step off the hamster wheel of status anxiety, and to rediscover the ancient truth whispered by philosophers and prophets alike:
"If you gain the whole world but lose your soul, what have you profited?"
[TRANSITION — philosophy back into corporate structure]
The Architecture
One Studio PBC is the apex, a Delaware C-corp Public Benefit Corporation. Its charter encodes the consciousness-aligned mission as its public benefit purpose, names strategically aligned non-profits as critical to its mission, includes binding language on long-term reinvestment.
Venture Founding & Investment - through the Founders' deep relationships, including amongst many aligned communities, networks and funds they are part of and collaborate with in NYC, SF, LA, Austin, Miami, Mexico City, Berlin, Lisbon, and London, a number of highly vetted, investable opportunities are in the pipeline, many of which our core team is already building, advising on, collaborating with and supporting in One's First physical node, The Old School.
One Sanctuary LLC is a wholly-owned operating subsidiary holding the future community-facing real estate and operating the physical and digital community spaces. Members of the One Studio community engage with the work primarily through Sanctuary - its programs, gatherings, and held spaces. Operating cash flow from membership dues and program fees sustains the operations and grows the asset base. High-signal, in-person connection, iteration, collaboration, reflection, and celebration are powerful magnets: in very high demand, and essential to sustainable growth. One Sanctuary is the earliest iteration of a community owned, operated, and activated Network State REIT.
The Convent and House of Blue Lotus are independently governed 501(c)(3) charities. They are named in the One Studio charter as integral mission partners. Annual charitable allocations (including equity stakes through warrants) flow from One Studio through a Donor-Advised Fund to both. Each has its own board, its own donor base, and its own programming.
Equity Philosophy and Cap Table
The structural trade at the heart of One Studio: the founding team gives up liquidity and economic concentration in exchange for shared upside in community ventures. We designed our cap table to distribute upside widely and deeply: to those whose contributions are earnest, substantive, and sustained over time. Specifically this means: a very large (30%) options pool for early employees and contributors, as well as, a sizable stake (10%) for the non-profits named in our charter.
Founder equity alienation is intentionally restrictive. Stewardship over wealth maximization is structurally enforced.
Every portfolio company, whether invested in by One Studio or incubated inside it, receives warrants to acquire shares of One Studio at a low strike, vesting against company-level milestones. The mirror of the standard arrangement: One Studio takes equity in them; they get warrants in One Studio.
The effect is mutual alignment across the network. Every portfolio company's success raises the value of every other portfolio company's warrants. Founders are members of the broader endeavor, not just operators of their own. The portfolio compounds as a network, not a logo page.
The Investment Thesis: Eleven Sectors, Sequenced
We invest at the intersections of three domains: Body, Mind, and Spirit.
The most consequential work of the next twenty years will not happen inside any one of them, but at their convergence.
Eleven sectors define our investment landscape. Each represents an area that must be redesigned and rebuilt for civilization to meaningfully improve over the coming decades, and each one directly serves the community we are already growing. We underwrite what our own people need and use, now and in the future. Our conviction is lived. The breadth reflects the scope of the work in which we are already engaged.
Underneath all eleven is a single bet about who is building. Founders who operate at these intersections, who have done their inner work, backed by aligned capital and a real community, will produce both outsized financial returns and durable cultural value. We have proof and therefore high conviction that the founders capable of building inside this configuration outperform the founders capable of building inside the conventional one - and we have proven both unprecedented access to them, and the unique ability to add tangible and ineffable value to these rare people and their processes.
Capital does not spread evenly, nor do the eleven land at once. They follow the order in which our own work creates them. We lead where conviction is already lived and pipeline already exists, expand into what that work pulls toward us, and build the heaviest infrastructure as the community comes online to need it.
Now
Consciousness Technology (Body · Mind · Spirit). The machine that builds the machine, and the engine behind everything downstream of it. We underwrite legal pathways to psychedelic access, established protocols, integration support, and the full technology stack around them, on the position that this is the most consequential health and consciousness shift of the century. It is our core at Sound Temple and in its core products. Inspired by James Fadiman and in partnership with the Center for Minds, we research and pilot at the frontiers of consciousness and creation.
Aligned AI (Mind · Spirit). The frontier tooling we are building and dogfooding now to make our own operation faster and sharper. The interesting risk in AI is discernment, not capability, so we back models, agents, and applications from founders whose relationship to their own consciousness governs what they will let their software do. The tooling travels in two directions from there. It becomes the infrastructure every founder in our network can use to run, launch, and scale, and it becomes the engine for ethical rollups: we acquire stakes in or partner with healthy, profitable cash-flow businesses and make them dramatically better with internally tuned agents, workflows, and models. Where conventional capital buys a good business and degrades the product to widen margins, we use technology only to make a product people already love more valuable and efficient, while minimizing negative economic impact.
Experience, Immersion and Transformation (Body · Spirit). Retreats, ceremonies, performances, and rituals as transformation technology. This is what we already build for ourselves and our community, now open to the founders, operators, funders, and creatives entering the network, and increasingly offered to outside businesses that want this support. The demand is going to be enormous, and we are positioned to meet it before the wave arrives. Discerning capital is what keeps this work stewardship of wisdom rather than exploitation or extraction.
Media and Curation (Mind · Spirit). Editorial sensibility, criticism, and cultural curation by people whose taste shapes how a generation comes to experience itself. What we are building leads into media operations on its own momentum, including partnerships with outlets like The Lot Radio.
Soon
These are the adjacencies the current work pulls into being. The founders are largely already in our pipeline, and the demand grows organically out of what we are doing now.
Longevity and Healthspan (Body · Mind). Diagnostics, protocols, and therapeutics that extend not lifespan in the abstract but capacity, energy, and clarity across the full arc of a life. The next generation of longevity is medicine that meets people where they live, integrates with daily practice, and operates outside the clinic. We hold rare access to the founders in this space across the entire chain, from research to production to distribution to the integration of these protocols into how people actually live.
Consumer Products (Body · Mind). Physical goods built with supply chain intelligence and AI-improved distribution, where the artifact itself reflects sustained attention to material, taste, and craft. The brands that compound over decades are the ones whose products carry the marks of slow making, and the founders we back refuse to compress that work for premature scale. Aligned founders are already in the pipeline, and this one grows organically.
Network State Infrastructure (Mind · Spirit). The legal, financial, and governance scaffolding for new forms of operating and belonging at scale, including the web3 and decentralized-ownership primitives, tokens, on-chain governance, and programmable, member-owned equity, that let communities own and steward what they build rather than rent it from incumbent platforms. Founders are in the pipeline, the sweet spot is sharpening, and the network of builders and funders here is deep. A long-term goal we begin building toward soon.
Later
The foundational, land- and capital-heavy work. These are not lower in conviction, only longer in horizon, and they come online as the community takes physical form and grows into needing them.
Transformational Education (Mind · Spirit). Programs, institutions, and platforms that develop human beings rather than process them.
Eco-Community Land Development (Body · Spirit). Stewardship of land, eco-villages, intentional communities, and the built environments that make a different way of life possible.
Sovereignty Infrastructure (Body · Spirit). Water, energy, soil, and regenerative agriculture: the material substrates of a community capable of taking care of itself. Resilience is built before it is needed, not synthesized from software at the moment of crisis.
Conscious Life Cycle (Body · Spirit). Fertility, birth, parenting, eldercare, and dying. The full arc of a human life rebuilt around presence, ritual, and the people who actually show up.
The Membership Community
We operate a four-tier membership program. Founding Stewards (the inaugural community, capped and named), Patrons (deep annual commitment, board-of-advisors-style influence), Resident Members (regular access to spaces and programs), and Companions (lighter participation, gateway tier).
Access can be earned through financial contribution or through substantive in-kind contribution to the community. A medicine woman who leads ceremony, an artist whose work animates the spaces, a teacher running programs - these contributions count toward membership in the same currency as dues, disintermediating non-Convent currency where possible should be an ongoing goal. The community is organized to be accessible to its essential contributors, not gated by financial means alone.
The community is also the funnel through which all aligned capital eventually arrives.
Charitable Allocation
The One Studio charter affirms unambiguous support for the missions of House of Blue Lotus Foundation and the Convent and identifies both as critical to the company's own public benefit mission. The board sets annual DAF allocations based on operating capacity and mission needs. There is no fixed percentage floor: when there is distributable cash, it flows generously; when there is not, the company does not strain to honor an arbitrary number. The naming in the charter is what makes the commitment real.
The First Raise
$22M, at increasing multiples post-money - $4-7M in 90 days, the rest in tranches within following 6-12 months. Earlier investors get better valuation. ULPs are highly curated and vetted. The capital deploys across the studio's operating activities - investments and incubations, community assets and sanctuary, brand and program infrastructure. Subsequent raises flow organically as additional aligned member-investors emerge and the capital base justifies the next round. We aim to only raise capital in the future for scale, not for solvency.
[CLOSING — if desired]
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