{
    "type": "entry",
    "author": {
        "name": "#indieweb",
        "url": "https://mastodon.social/tags/indieweb",
        "photo": null
    },
    "url": "https://mastodon.de/@Marfey/114541830181527812",
    "content": {
        "html": "<p>Ich habe den Sprung geschafft. <br />Ich habe mir mein HomeLab verwirklicht. Zwar besteht der \"Server\" nur aus einem MicroPC mit wenig Wumms und mein DSL ist vmtl. Auch nicht f\u00fcr krasse Echtzeit-Gameserver geeignet, aber das Grundger\u00fcst steht. <br />Mein erster Dienst ist FreshRSS f\u00fcr mein Handy und PC, der mich jetzt rund um die Uhr mit den neusten Blogeintr\u00e4gen aus dem IndieWeb versorgt. <br /><a href=\"https://mastodon.de/tags/HomeLab\">#<span>HomeLab</span></a> <a href=\"https://mastodon.de/tags/selfhosting\">#<span>selfhosting</span></a> <a href=\"https://mastodon.de/tags/IndieWeb\">#<span>IndieWeb</span></a> <a href=\"https://mastodon.de/tags/RSS\">#<span>RSS</span></a> <a href=\"https://mastodon.de/tags/FreshRSS\">#<span>FreshRSS</span></a></p>",
        "text": "Ich habe den Sprung geschafft. \nIch habe mir mein HomeLab verwirklicht. Zwar besteht der \"Server\" nur aus einem MicroPC mit wenig Wumms und mein DSL ist vmtl. Auch nicht f\u00fcr krasse Echtzeit-Gameserver geeignet, aber das Grundger\u00fcst steht. \nMein erster Dienst ist FreshRSS f\u00fcr mein Handy und PC, der mich jetzt rund um die Uhr mit den neusten Blogeintr\u00e4gen aus dem IndieWeb versorgt. \n#HomeLab #selfhosting #IndieWeb #RSS #FreshRSS"
    },
    "published": "2025-05-20T19:33:45+00:00",
    "post-type": "note",
    "_id": "44864491",
    "_source": "8007",
    "_is_read": false
}

Let's fund the open social web

{
    "type": "entry",
    "published": "2025-05-20T13:33:09+00:00",
    "url": "https://werd.io/2025/lets-fund-the-open-social-web",
    "name": "Let's fund the open social web",
    "content": {
        "text": "If the open social web is going to grow and thrive, people need to be able to build new platforms and services sustainably. But that\u2019s not what the email I was reading was telling me.\n\nThe message in my inbox captured a persistent and problematic idea in open tech circles. It reminded me of one I\u2019d received years earlier, back when I was building my first platform.\u201cYou should be doing this for the love of it.\u201dThe author, a well-known blogger, was outraged that I was trying to make money from Elgg, the open source social networking platform I co-founded. Its users included Ivy League universities, Fortune 500 companies, international NGOs, and even governments at the national level, but how dare I make enough money from it to pay for rent and groceries?\n\nNow, deep into building my second open source social platform, the same sentiment had returned. Different person, same message:\u201cYou shouldn\u2019t try to make revenue. We need to abolish money.\u201dWith no hint of irony, I was being criticized for failing to establish a Star Trek post-financial utopia. Meanwhile, I was building new web software, which meant infrastructure, teammates, and bills to pay. And to do anything at all, I needed a place to live and a way to meet my basic needs. To be clear, I\u2019m all for imagining ways out of our current economic system. But asking individual underfunded founders to operate outside it isn\u2019t a viable strategy. These systemic changes are far outside the scope of a software platform or an underfunded founder.\n\nI wasn\u2019t independently wealthy. I didn\u2019t have a trust fund. I just wanted to build something good. How could anyone like me, with experience but without a financial safety net, possibly win? And if that\u2019s hard for me, imagine how much harder it is for builders from underrepresented or vulnerable communities, with even less access to capital.Supporting builders to create a strong ecosystemEven people with experience and a track record from those communities struggle to get funded. Recreating that inequality on the social web would be a disaster. Social media is a huge part of how we learn about the world and make our democratic decisions. If those perspectives are excluded, the platforms shaping public discourse will reflect only the interests of those who already hold privilege and power. In effect, only privileged perspectives will shape how our platforms work, what voices get heard, and how people come to understand the world around them.\n\nI believe in the promise of the open social web. It\u2019s a pro-social alternative to existing social media platforms, which has the potential to support communities and discourse rather than strip-mine them for value. But if we want it to survive, let alone thrive, we need to:Fund and support new pro-social platforms.\nBuild models that support a broad, representative set of builders, including those from communities most impacted by today\u2019s platforms.\nSupport community ownership models to reduce the risk of platforms being used as instruments of political manipulation, as we've seen with X and Facebook.\nIn previous posts, I\u2019ve discussed what I would do if I was running product at Bluesky, Mastodon, and my own platform. Those posts have focused on what sustainability looks like once a platform is up and running. But how do you get from an idea to a functioning platform and set it up for success?\n\nEstablishing a new open social web platform takes time, effort, and money to get right. So how do we fund that early stage in a way that\u2019s sustainable, and aligned with the values of the ecosystem we want to build?\n\nIn this post, I\u2019ll explore what I would do if I was funding open social web platforms. This is not designed to be universal advice. It\u2019s what I would do if I was setting out to solve the problem. Others will bring different ideas to the table, and I hope they do. We need all of them. Together, maybe we can spark a bigger conversation about what it would take to make the open social web truly viable.My experienceMy thinking here comes from experience across multiple sides of this problem as a builder, investor, and long-time participant in the ecosystem. When I think about how we can fund the next generation of platforms, I\u2019m drawing on five key experiences that span the full lifecycle, from hacking together early infrastructure to funding mission-driven teams at scale:I\u2019ve been a part of the open social web for decades. I\u2019m a board member at A New Social, a non-profit that aims to create a healthy ecosystem across protocols, have advised the Social Web Foundation and FediForum, have built my own platforms, and have owned my own single-user Mastodon instance for years. I know and respect folks working on Mastodon, Bluesky, Ghost, and many others, and think of myself as a friend to all of them.\nIn 2004, I co-founded Elgg, an open source social networking platform, in the UK. We won awards and grew a strong open source ecosystem: one version of the platform was translated into 80 languages. I also co-founded a startup to offer consulting and support services for it, which we successfully bootstrapped for years before receiving direct investment.\nIn 2014, I co-founded Known, a startup that produced an open source social publishing platform, in San Francisco. It was a part of the third cohort at Matter, an accelerator for startups with the potential to change media for good. Our customers included KQED, the public media organization, which won an award for its Known-powered site. Outside the startup, the software was used as part of the indieweb. (It still powers my site today.) We ultimately exited to Medium, but the open source platform remains available and in use.\nIn 2017, I became the west coast Director of Investments at Matter, the accelerator that had founded Known. We tweaked the mission to support startups with the potential to create \u201ca more informed, inclusive, and empathetic society\u201d. I was involved in directly investing in 24 startups and supporting a portfolio of 75. While I was there, I saw thousands of pitches from startups hoping to be funded, and got a strong sense of what makes a team succeed.\nI\u2019ve been the first employee at two venture-backed startups that are still alive and growing, and part of the leadership team at others, including a non-profit that raised significant support through individual and institutional giving. Outside of my employment, I\u2019ve given technology, product, and strategy advice to hundreds of startups and organizations.\nTogether, these experiences have shaped how I think about funding infrastructure that actually lasts, and who gets to build it.A theory of changeHow do we fund that early stage in a way that\u2019s sustainable, and aligned with the values of the ecosystem we want to build?\n\nThat\u2019s the question I\u2019ve been sitting with. Most funders have a thesis (if they\u2019re investors) or a theory of change (if they\u2019re philanthropists) that informs how they allocate capital. Here\u2019s mine:\n\nSocial media has failed us. Nowhere is this more visible than in Elon Musk\u2019s acquisition of X, where a platform with 335 million monthly active users is manipulated specifically according to its owner\u2019s point of view. It\u2019s also true on Facebook, where gutting its fact-checking policy and changing its algorithm has led to a degraded experience for many people.\n\nAs a result, many people have reduced their engagement with incumbent social platforms. And with growing disillusionment around privacy, algorithmic manipulation, and platform control, that trend is unlikely to slow.\n\nNotably, a significant subset is already exploring the open social web: a world of alternatives to traditional social media platforms that includes Bluesky and Mastodon, as well as a long tail of platforms that includes Farcaster, Nostr, and more. Each of these platforms is built on an open protocol that prevents them from falling under control by a single entity.\n\nBecause of their distinct architecture and reliance on open protocols, open social web platforms are more resilient to manipulation for political gain. They are more transparent and auditable, and either don\u2019t have a single point of control or allow for a credible exit from a platform owner if they make decisions that are unpalatable to its users. Some of them have even made forays into community governance.\n\nFrom a philanthropic standpoint, these platforms advance public discourse, media pluralism, and digital rights: some of the core pillars of healthy democracies. I believe providing alternatives to hard-right discourse is morally right. But they also represent a significant commercial opportunity. They have the potential to disrupt the entire incumbent social media landscape \u2014 a market worth over $250 billion. Even today, there is a serviceable available market of around $333 million, and growing quickly. (I\u2019ve estimated these numbers using existing social media user and revenue per user figures.) These platforms are better for democracy, but because the potential market size is enormous while the current one is small but growing fast, they also represent a rare window for significant investment gains. This is already playing out: Farcaster raised $150M last year, while Bluesky has raised $36M and is growing rapidly.\n\nI believe that teams who are focused on solving meaningful problems for real people rather than serving a rigid ideology, and who encompass technology, business, and design skills, are more likely to create platforms that find enough users who love them to become sustainable. These are teams with the willingness to pivot their platforms, sometimes multiple times, in order to make sure they\u2019re building something people want. I want to back teams with this mindset and mix of skills who are building open social web platforms with the potential to unseat today\u2019s incumbents.\n\nFunding is infrastructure. Without it, the ecosystem crumbles. I see this as a rare moment to shape the foundations of a better internet, before the next wave of social infrastructure calcifies. But for people who are primarily motivated by returns, there\u2019s also a solid reason to participate.\n\nSo what\u2019s the best way to fund them?Some common ways projects are fundedThere are a few different funding vehicles available to me if I want to support the open social web. Let\u2019s take some time to go through them in turn.\n\nThere\u2019s no one-size-fits-all answer. Each funding model brings different trade-offs, and different possibilities for the kinds of builders, communities, and outcomes it can support. Here\u2019s how I think about the options.\n\n(If you\u2019re familiar with funding models, you might want to skip this section. It\u2019s up to you.)Grants\u200cWhat it is: Grants are money given by an organization for a specific purpose, which don\u2019t need to be paid back and aren\u2019t given in exchange for equity in a business. They\u2019re made to further the grant-maker\u2019s goals. If the grant-maker is a non-profit foundation, that might be a social mission; if it\u2019s a software platform, it might be to encourage developers to adopt its APIs.\n\nOn the open social web, these might come from a few different sources. It might be a foundation that sees the impact current platforms have on the democratic process and wants to promote more democratic platforms. It might be a government that wants to promote alternatives to US-centric software hegemony. (See the United Nations open source principles, calls for the EU to promote technological autonomy, or initiatives like the Docs project.) Or it might be an already-funded vendor that wants more developers to use its protocol.\n\n\u200cWhen it works well: Grants work best when a project\u2019s goals align clearly with the funder\u2019s mission, and when the builders are able to focus on delivering outcomes without the pressure of immediate monetization. They\u2019re particularly valuable for early-stage infrastructure work, protocol development, accessibility improvements, and research-backed exploration that may not yet have a business model. Grants can help de-risk experimentation and support projects that serve the public good but aren\u2019t obviously profitable. In many cases, grants have been the difference between an idea staying in someone\u2019s head and a working prototype seeing daylight.\n\nRisks and trade-offs: Grants come with strings (even if they\u2019re not financial ones). Applying for them can take significant time and labor, and reporting requirements can be burdensome, especially for small teams. Funding cycles can be unpredictable, and priorities may shift with leadership changes or political winds. (At Matter, I discovered that an organization that was friendly under one leader became unresponsive after they handed the baton to someone else.)\n\nMost importantly, grants rarely support the long-term maintenance of a platform. They\u2019re great for getting something off the ground, but without a follow-on revenue model or sustained support, grant-funded projects risk becoming abandoned or fragile.\n\nExamples in the open social web: Many open social web platforms have been funded by the NLNet Foundation, which supports organizations and people \u201cwho contribute to an open internet for all.\u201d This includes multiple ActivityPub projects including Mastodon itself. The latter has also received grant funding from the European Commission, among others.Donations\u200cWhat it is: Donations are flexible gifts from individuals or organizations to support a cause. In contrast to grants, they aren\u2019t necessarily associated with a specific project, and come with fewer strings. They\u2019re most often given in smaller amounts (sometimes on a recurring basis) to non-profits, so that the donation can be written off of the giver\u2019s taxes.\n\n\u200cWhen it works well: Donations work best when a project has a clear mission that resonates with a broad audience, and when it can inspire sustained goodwill and trust. This is especially true when the project is visibly active, communicative with its supporters, and aligned with nonprofit values.\n\nRecurring donation models, whether directly via a dedicated fundraising platform, via check or transfer, or on platforms like Patreon, OpenCollective, or GitHub Sponsors, can provide a lightweight income stream to help cover operational costs or ongoing maintenance. Donations can also be powerful in moments of visibility (like a major release, news event, or crisis) that mobilize supporter enthusiasm.\n\nRisks and trade-offs: Donation income can be inconsistent and hard to predict, especially if it's reliant on public attention cycles or goodwill from a niche audience. It can also subtly shape a project\u2019s public narrative, nudging teams toward emotional or symbolic gestures rather than behind-the-scenes infrastructure work that\u2019s harder to explain to donors.\n\nUnless the organization is a 501(c)(3) or similar nonprofit, larger donations may be limited by the donor\u2019s ability to write them off. Typically, organizations that accept donations receive the majority from large foundations and very wealthy individuals, with a minority coming from regular people. It\u2019s very hard to raise enough money to support an organization from small donations alone, and if you look closer at successful projects that appear to be grassroots-funded, you\u2019ll often find that they\u2019re surprisingly top-heavy. Independence means increasing the dependence on smaller donors, but it\u2019s a steep hill to climb.\n\nFinally, running donation campaigns and managing supporters\u2019 expectations takes time. For small teams, that can compete with actually building the software.\n\nExamples in the open social web: Mastodon has long accepted individual donations via Patreon and other platforms; Pixelfed follows a similar pattern.Crowdfunding\u200cWhat it is: Crowdfunding collects small donations from a large number of people in order to raise money for a specific project. Whereas regular donations might be recurring on an ongoing basis, crowdfunding contributions are one-offs. Typically, each person who donates receives something in return for their donation: the product itself at higher levels, or even direct access to the team, and cheaper gifts like stickers and T-shirts at lower levels.\n\n\u200cWhen it works well: Crowdfunding works best when you have a clear, concrete offering, a deadline, and a story people can rally behind. It\u2019s particularly effective for launching new products, features, or major upgrades, especially when there\u2019s already an audience or community eager to support the work. Campaigns that feel urgent, personal, and exciting tend to perform better, especially when the creators are transparent and communicative.\n\nRisks and trade-offs: Even if a campaign succeeds, crowdfunding can create a false sense of sustainability. A single successful campaign might cover an initial build, but it doesn\u2019t provide a long-term revenue stream, unless it\u2019s tied to a larger strategy. The overhead is also larger than you might expect: running a campaign well involves marketing, community management, and often customer support. (Many campaigns hire an outside marketing agency, which can eat 20% or more of the final budget.) And if expectations aren\u2019t met, the backlash can be swift and public.\n\nAs with startups themselves, teams with design polish, storytelling chops, and access to online networks are more likely to succeed, perpetuating the same inequalities we\u2019ve seen elsewhere. These are traits that don\u2019t always correlate with technical merit or long-term resilience. As a result, important but unglamorous infrastructure projects may struggle to compete with flashier ideas.\n\nFinally, here\u2019s an open secret: successful crowdfunding campaigns often have a significant percentage of their funding committed ahead of time. That way the campaign looks like it\u2019s more organically successful than it actually was, which in turn attracts more contributors. The trick is that this only works for people who have the networks to find those initial committed participants to begin with, ensuring that people with established wealth and connections are more likely to succeed here too.\n\nExamples in the open social web: Micro.blog was originally funded with a crowdfunding campaign. It helps to have an existing following: Micro.blog succeeded in part because it already had an audience invested in Manton Reece\u2019s blog and podcast work, as well as because it offered a clear product vision people could imagine using.Venture investment\u200cWhat it is: Venture capital invests in businesses with the potential to be high-growth. Investors write checks to a portfolio of startup businesses in exchange for either equity (typically for more established businesses) or the promise of equity (for earlier-stage businesses that don\u2019t have an established valuation yet).\n\nA venture capital investment pays off in two main ways, which are colloquially known as an \u201cexit\u201d:If the startup grows to the point of making an Initial Public Offering, allowing shares in the company to be traded on a public stock market.\nIf the startup is bought by another company.\nVC investors can also make money by selling their holdings to other investors, for example if the startup raises another round of funding and a later-stage investor is willing to buy stock from an earlier-stage investor.\n\nThere are a few different kinds of venture investors that we should pay attention to in the context of funding the open social web:Venture capital funds raise money from \u201climited partner\u201d sources like endowments, pension funds, and family offices and invest based on a hypothesis. They tend to charge a 2% management fee on the total funds under management, and once the limited partners have made their money back, the fund managers tend to receive 20% of any further profits.\nCorporate VCs invest according to the interests of a corporate parent. For example, Google Ventures invests in startups that might strategically benefit Google; Salesforce Ventures invests in startups that might strategically benefit Salesforce.\nAngel investors are, essentially, rich people who invest on behalf of themselves. They tend to invest using a venture model and expect to receive a return in the same way. But because they don\u2019t have any commitments to limited partners or corporate parents, they can invest more or less any way they want. If they particularly want a startup to exist, or if one of their friends becomes the founder of a startup, they might cut it a check even if they\u2019re not sure it will work out.\n\u200cWhen it works well: Venture capital works best when a startup has the potential to scale rapidly, reach millions of users, and produce outsized financial returns. It\u2019s especially well-suited for commercial products that address huge markets and have strong network effects (where each new user increases the value for every other user). For open social web platforms that are aiming to replace incumbent social networks, this kind of growth trajectory can align with VC expectations, if there\u2019s a plausible business model.\n\nIt can also work when the investor deeply believes in the mission and is willing to be patient with the return timeline. Angel investors or mission-aligned VCs (such as purpose-driven funds) can be effective early partners if they share the founder\u2019s values.\n\nVC funding is most helpful when it allows a team to scale quickly to meet demand or secure talent, or when time-to-market is critical.\n\nRisks and trade-offs: Venture capital comes with heavy expectations: usually of a 10x return on investment within 7\u201310 years. This puts pressure on founders to prioritize rapid growth, which can lead to compromises on user safety, governance, or long-term sustainability. For social platforms, it can incentivize engagement-hacking and ad-driven models that run counter to community well-being.\n\nIt can also distort governance. Venture-backed platforms are typically structured as Delaware C-Corporations; many investors will refuse to make an investment if they aren\u2019t. This corporate structure comes with a fiduciary responsibility to maximize shareholder value. That makes it hard to implement democratic ownership, cooperative governance, or exit-to-community models, unless those are baked in early on a legal level (perhaps by incorporating as a Public Benefit Corporation instead of a C-Corp) and supported by investors. It\u2019s rare for this to happen, and the investors would need to be unusually progressive to accept it.\n\nOnce you\u2019ve taken VC investment, you\u2019ve effectively committed to a path: a high-growth company with an eventual exit. That\u2019s not necessarily bad, but it limits flexibility. Many founders who take early-stage VC find themselves building something quite different from what they set out to do.\n\nBecause you\u2019re moving at speed, and likely burning a lot of money in the process, a lot depends on being able to raise follow-on funding; even if a VC investor is willing to give an open social web platform a check at an early-stage level, it\u2019s not a given that another VC investor will be willing to give them a follow-on check later on. If that happens to your startup, you might be stuck.\n\nThat\u2019s if you can take VC investment at all. Many firms prefer \u201cwarm introductions\u201d, which means that they prefer to be introduced to founders by people they already know and trust. At its worst, that means that people from communities with stronger connections to funding \u2014 typically wealthy people from a narrow set of demographics \u2014 are much more likely to be funded. For example, black women founders received just 0.34% of VC funding in 2022. Some firms also look for \u201cfounder pedigree\u201d \u2014 assessing whether the founders went to universities like Stanford or have existing capital behind them \u2014 that further compound these inequalities.\n\nNot all VCs are created equally, however. There certainly are mission-driven and mission-aligned VCs who operate in a way that\u2019s more values-aligned with the open social web. Some, like Homebrew, even self-invest into their own funds, giving them far more flexibility in how they support startups. It would be a mistake to treat every firm in the space as being the same.\n\nExamples in the open social web: I mentioned the main examples earlier on: Bluesky raised at least $36M, including early funding from Twitter and later-stage investment from Benchmark Capital and others. Farcaster raised $150M from a16z and others in 2024, with a stated focus on building a decentralized protocol and app ecosystem.Revenue-based investment\u200cWhat it is: Revenue-based investments function similarly to venture capital: investors write checks to early-stage companies. If the company wants to remain independent, it can provide a fixed portion (10% or so) of monthly revenues to investors in order to pay off their investments. Usually payoffs are set to 2-5X the original investment for early-stage startups, but I\u2019ve seen as high as 15X. It\u2019s non-dilutive by default, but if the startup chooses to raise traditional VC funding, the revenue-based investment converts to equity.\n\nIndie VC was an early pioneer of this kind of investing. The Calm Company Fund was another. The former shut down its original model because its limited partners were unhappy with the arrangement; the latter because they found they didn\u2019t have enough money to operate well under the model. (Indie VC is back with a more traditional VC model.)\n\n\u200cWhen it works well: Revenue-based investment works well when a startup has a clear path to steady revenue, especially from subscription or recurring business models, but doesn\u2019t necessarily want to pursue the high growth strategies required by traditional venture capital. It\u2019s ideal for founders who want to stay independent, build profitably, and maintain control, and for investors who are comfortable trading equity upside for cash returns over time. It can also be a fit for mission-aligned platforms that aim to serve a specific community sustainably, rather than chase growth.\n\nRisks and trade-offs: This model assumes the startup will generate consistent revenue early enough to start repayments, which may not be realistic for infrastructure-heavy or slow-to-monetize platforms. The obligation to repay a multiple of the original investment can also create stress on cashflow if margins are thin or revenue is volatile. And while it's non-dilutive upfront, the conversion clause means equity is still in play if the company raises a future VC round, so it\u2019s not always as clean as it looks. Depending on how the terms are structured, founders may end up giving away more equity than they would have in a traditional VC seed round.\n\nIt\u2019s also notable that investors have had trouble maintaining this model. (It\u2019s not lost on me that both Indie VC and Calm Company Fund ran into choppy waters.) Limited partners have been trained to accept the VC model, so success for a fund depends on finding upstream investors who are comfortable with slower growth and less outsized returns. Theoretically these funds are less risky \u2014 more of their investments should lead to a return \u2014 but it\u2019s not clear that this is actually the case.\n\nExamples in the open social web: No major open social web platforms have publicly disclosed using revenue-based financing so far. I think the model could be a strong fit for these kinds of services; a major piece of my arguments for both Bluesky and Mastodon were revenue-based. But so far, most open social web projects haven\u2019t been charging money for services; there\u2019s a cultural resistance to money, which I discussed at the top of the piece, but many projects have preferred to set themselves up as non-profits and take donations.Bootstrapping\u200cWhat it is: When you bootstrap, you don\u2019t take investment at all, except perhaps from your savings. You then attempt to make the business grow using its own revenue, re-investing profits smartly.\n\n\u200cWhen it works well: Out of necessity, bootstrapping reduces the length of the feedback loop between you and your customers to almost nothing. You need them to pay you to keep the lights on (and for you to pay rent and buy food), so you\u2019re forced to be attentive to their needs. It can be fraught (I\u2019ve done it!) but when it works, you end up with a valuable business that you own outright, and can therefore run entirely on your own terms. Companies that have bootstrapped include Mailchimp until its acquisition by Intuit, and GitHub for its first four years.\n\nIt also helps if you\u2019re wealthy enough to feel comfortable spending your savings on a startup to begin with. Most people are not lucky enough to be in that position.\n\nRisks and trade-offs: Bootstrapping is financially conservative, but emotionally intense. You carry all the risk, and early mistakes can cost you months \u2014 or everything. Without funding, you may struggle to hire help, pay yourself, or scale infrastructure. And while you own 100% of the business, you also carry 100% of the stress.\n\nExamples in the open social web: Write.as, and its parent company Musing Studio, are bootstrapped.Structuring my fundSo if I were putting real money behind my theory of change, what would that look like in practice? What if we could design a fund that was specifically for the open social web?\n\nIn this thought experiment, I\u2019m founding an organization called Pro-Social to fund the open social web. The name Pro-Social is overtly about helping \u2014 but, of course, it also clearly name-checks social media.\n\nThis is a thought experiment \u2014 but it\u2019s one I believe someone should do.\n\nLet\u2019s return to my theory of change and break it down a little:Founders who are focused on solving problems for real people\nWho build representative teams and possess a mix of technical, business, and design skills\nWho are building open social web platforms with the potential to disrupt incumbent platforms\nThat are sustainable and community-aligned\nHave the potential to strengthen democracy\nAnd build generational organizations\nThat provide a real alternative to the status quo\nRegardless of whether they have wealth or existing startup connections.\nIts aim isn\u2019t just to foster the open social web: it\u2019s to support human-centered product thinking, and to help create consumer-grade platforms that real people want to use. In turn, I believe that will attract more people to the ecosystem, benefiting everybody involved and increasing its real-world impact.\n\nWhen you\u2019re doing something good, you owe it to the people you\u2019re helping to be able to keep doing it. Not only do I want the projects I fund to be sustainable, but I want my own funding model to be sustainable. In other words, not only do I want to invest in a batch of open social web projects, but I want to be able to do it again, and again, in perpetuity.\n\nI\u2019ve broken down the various funding options, as well as my principles and experience. While this is informed by all of my experiences, I owe a particular debt of gratitude to Matter Ventures, whose influence is strong here. Some of these ideas are directly inspired by practices at Matter; some others are things I wished we could have put into place.\n\nIt\u2019s not the only funding that I think should exist. Organizations like NLNet and Sovereign Tech Agency are doing great work. And I strongly believe that the EU and other governments should be funding the open social web. My intent is to describe something that sits alongside these efforts.\n\nHere\u2019s how I think it would work.A dual structureHaving seen the strengths and limits of each model up close \u2014 and knowing the kind of ecosystem we actually need \u2014 I don\u2019t think we can rely on just one. So here\u2019s what I\u2019d do instead.\n\nPro-Social is built on the belief that different types of projects require different types of funding. Nonprofit tools that strengthen the ecosystem shouldn\u2019t be forced into a for-profit path, and promising commercial products shouldn\u2019t have to apply for grants. That\u2019s why Pro-Social has two complementary arms:The Pro-Social Foundation funds non-profit projects through directed grants.\nPro-Social Ventures makes values-aligned investments into for-profit startups.\nEach tackles a different part of the ecosystem and ensures we\u2019re not forcing every project into the same mold.\n\nWe\u2019ll talk more about deal structure further down. For now, let\u2019s start, as all funders should, with the founders.To select founders, we must first select ourselvesBoth the Pro-Social Foundation and Pro-Social Ventures support diverse teams with a mix of skills and a human-centered mindset, as we\u2019ve previously discussed.\n\nIn order to achieve a more equitable, representative portfolio, the organization must bake equity and inclusion into its DNA. That means a representative team, inclusive selection criteria, and shared decision-making on investment committees, as well as the following core concepts:\n\nAn open application process. Not only is there no need for warm introductions, but they are explicitly disallowed. Every project that applies for funding has to go through the same process from the beginning, starting with filling in a web form.\n\nA clear rubric for evaluation. Regardless of the funding type, projects are evaluated using the same rubric and peer-reviewed, and the answers are made available to all staff with decision-making ability.\n\nFund the founders, not the project. I believe that long-term success is tied more to founder mindset than to initial product ideas. A project might seem unpromising, but if its founder is smart, willing to test their assumptions, and pivot based on what they find, it should still be considered for funding. In contrast, if a project initially seems promising but the founder is unwilling to waver from their vision even in the face of evidence that it doesn\u2019t work, that should be a mark against them.\n\nGrow a community of founders. Every founder who is funded by Pro-Social joins a community that grows over time. The network effects of this are important: each new founder can draw on the expertise of the existing ones, so the power of the community to effect change becomes greater over time. Not only must funding recipients be great founders, but they also need to be great community participants, with strong personal integrity. There should be a strict \u201cno asshole\u201d rule that particularly guards for the safety of diverse founders, and a collaborative mindset is vital.\n\nProvide free help ahead of time. Pro-Social should design and make available a free, asynchronous course akin to Y Combinator\u2019s Startup School. This would help project founders hone their human-centered thinking, evaluate their core assumptions, and ensure they\u2019re aligned with making their project successful instead of just writing code. Unlike most founder courses, it would also contain lessons about the open social web itself, including its underlying protocols and existing models. At the end of the course there would be an easy on-ramp to applying for funding if founders are ready to take the next step. Even if founders don\u2019t want funding from Pro-Social, hopefully the course would help all open social web founders.\n\nHere\u2019s what each arm would do, starting with the foundation.The Pro-Social FoundationThe Pro-Social Foundation offers structured grants at three levels:\nFlash grants for user research. A small ($5,000) grant that helps a project team validate the core assumptions underlying their product vision, with the express intent of testing whether it is building something that real people will use. Recipients are expected to follow a set process to conduct user research, validate their assumptions, and present a modified version of their product vision that takes these findings into account. These grants are specifically not intended for implementation; they\u2019re just for testing whether the work is worth building at all. Founders who have demonstrated that they follow this process \u2014 whether supported by a grant or not \u2014 are more likely to receive funding from Pro-Social.\n\nProject grants. A larger ($50-100K) grant for non-profit projects that have demonstrated they will build something that is desirable for real users, viable financially, and feasible to build using the time, team, and resources potentially at its disposal. This grant can be used to write code, but is also expected to be used to establish the organization to support it.\n\nEcosystem grants. A larger-still ($100-250K) grant for non-profit projects that have established themselves and have both real-world users and a working strategy for sustainability.\nThe Foundation does not fund protocol-level work unless it directly connects to an end-user experience. That\u2019s not because protocol work isn\u2019t important, but there are other organizations in the ecosystem who will already help fund it. I see the biggest gap as being human-centered end-user products that are anchored directly in user needs, so that\u2019s what I would want to fund.\n\nBecause sustainability of the fund is a core value, it\u2019s important to consider where the money would come from. The Pro-Social Foundation would be funded in two ways: through donations from foundations and individuals who care about the ecosystem, and from profits from Pro-Social Ventures, the for-profit arm.\n\nWhich brings us to the other half of the equation.Pro-Social VenturesPro-Social Ventures makes investments into for-profit open social web startups using a hybrid between VC and revenue-based financing: a revenue share with an equity conversion.\n\nIt aims to conform to the principles set out by the Zebra movement: profitable but values-driven companies that prioritize cooperation over competition, community over monopoly, and long-term resilience over short-term growth. Of course, each company must be a participant in, and supporter of, the open social web.\n\nHere\u2019s how it works:\n\nPre-seed: These startups are going from idea to execution. The team almost certainly just consists of the founders. These are the teams Pro-Social spends most of its time supporting.\n\nFor these founders, Pro-Social Ventures writes $100,000 checks. After the startup has made its first $200,000 in revenue, this is paid back through a 10% gross revenue share with a 3X cap. It can also convert to equity at 7% of the company with a $4 million valuation cap if the founders raise a traditional VC round instead (in other words, it will automatically convert if a priced round is raised).\n\n(A quick terminology primer: a valuation cap sets the maximum company valuation at which an investor's money converts to equity.)\n\nIf the startup is promising, has validated its assumptions, and is not just gaining real users but is beginning to get traction on a business model, it can ask for a follow-on check from Pro-Social. For these startups, Pro-Social Ventures will write a $150,000 follow-on check, which again is paid back through a 10% gross revenue share, this time with a 2X cap and no delay on repayment. It will convert to equity at 4% with a $6 million valuation cap if the founders subsequently choose to raise a traditional VC round.\n\nSeed: These startups have traction, likely have a larger team, and have shown that their product and business model works. They\u2019re growing but need more support. Because Pro-Social Ventures focuses on helping founders move from idea to execution on user-friendly open social web products, it will only cut this deal if there is also a clear gain for the open social web ecosystem.\n\nIf the startup hasn\u2019t raised an equity round, Pro-Social will cut a check for $400,000, paid back immediately through a 10% gross revenue share with a 3X cap. This check can convert to equity at 5%, at around a $10 million valuation cap.\n\nIf the startup has raised an equity round, or if such a round is currently being raised, Pro-Social Ventures will do a standard equity investment at the same terms as other investors. These checks vary between $250-400K.\n\nExit to community: Exit to community is a way for ventures to transition into ownership by its community of stakeholders instead of an acquirer or an IPO. This is such an obviously values-aligned idea for the open social web. How this works specifically varies from company to company, but it often looks something like transitioning to becoming a worker-owned cooperative, a community trust, or a decentralized autonomous organization. The Exit to Community site is a great starting point.\n\nExiting to community needs to be the founders\u2019 choice, but it\u2019s heavily encouraged and institutionally supported. It aligns long-term platform governance with the communities it serves, and reduces the risk of extractive exit outcomes.\n\nFor ventures that choose to exit to community, Pro-Social Ventures will reduce its stake at the time of the exit. The original repayment cap is reduced by 40% (pro rata, or reducing to 0 if repayments have already exceeded the new threshold); the conversion percentage is reduced by 25%. For example, a 7% conversion would become 5.25%. Pro-Social will also explicitly not influence governance structure in the new entity. It will also actively facilitate introductions to experts in the process \u2014 and those same experts will confirm if a venture\u2019s actions qualify as an exit to community.\n\nTerms: Pro-Social Ventures never takes a board seat, but is always available for help and support if founders want it. It doesn\u2019t demand special preferences or control rights.\n\nThe deal is structured like a SAFE note: there\u2019s no maturity date, no rate of interest, and there\u2019s always both a valuation cap and a cap on revenue share repayments. (I\u2019ve omitted valuation caps from the descriptions above, but they should be present.)\n\nIf the startup is acquired and there hasn\u2019t been a priced round, but there are proceeds for investors, Pro-Social will receive the greater of (a) 1X its original investment or (b) the amount it would have received had it converted to equity at the agreed percentage. Of course, if the venture fails and is closed, the investment is annulled and founders are still prized members of the community. The effort was worthwhile, and the hope is that everyone can learn from it.\n\nOverall, revenue-based investment is a choice that hopes to overcome a potential lack of traditional venture investors who are willing to put money into open social web platforms. Over time, as more of these platforms become sustainable and valuable, I assume that more traditional investors will be willing to put money in, but in the shorter term, it\u2019s important to get these projects to a self-sustaining state as quickly as possible. I believe that selecting for human-centered, cross-functional teams will overcome some of the problems revenue-based investment has experienced in the past.A supportive structureSo that\u2019s how projects are funded. But support doesn\u2019t just mean putting money in.\n\nPro-Social provides a light program for founding teams. It\u2019s not an accelerator, but it builds on some of the things accelerators do well without requiring founders to participate in a curriculum.\n\nCheck-ins: For the first six months after funding, the Pro-Social team checks in with the founding team every two weeks. This can just be a half hour call, but the team is available to help them with any challenges they might have. Feedback and advice are given, but nobody is required to follow it. After six months, this can drop to whatever cadence the founders prefer.\n\nIntroductions and other support: Like all funds and investment firms, the team works hard to provide useful introductions. Resources are also made available to assist with marketing, sales, design, and partnerships with other organizations.\n\nSummits: Every six months, there\u2019s an in-person summit over three days. The first day is just for founders who have been funded since the last one, and includes an introductory workshop on human-centered design. The following two days contain talks from outside speakers, workshops, and demos, and all funded founders are welcome. Dinners are held throughout. The idea is to ground everybody in the same fundamental ideas and make sure strong relationships can be built between all founders in the community.\n\nConference: Every year, Pro-Social puts on an in-person public conference about the open social web, which is open to all but free for all of its founders. This contains speakers and talks about the open social web; an open space unconference for everyone in the community to discuss issues that matter to them; and a showcase of Pro-Social-funded projects.How the foundation and venture arm are supported and support each otherRevenue shares are received earlier in a startup\u2019s life than a payout from an exit event would be. Some of these proceeds go into keeping the lights on at the fund; some are re-invested into the fund; some are donated to the foundation.\n\nThe project-validating flash grants are designed to keep the venture fund aligned with the foundation. It\u2019s far cheaper to test a venture\u2019s assumptions quickly using this process than to write a full investment check and find out later that the venture doesn\u2019t work, or that the founders don\u2019t want to deviate from their idea even in the face of obvious evidence that real people won\u2019t use it. In turn, some of the profits from for-profit ventures that have been the recipient of a flash grant are donated to allow the foundation to make grants to non-profit projects.\n\nInitial funding for Pro-Social might come from:Established companies that will gain if the open social web grows\nFoundations that believe in the open social web\u2019s potential to support democracy (or conversely, the potential of the existing social media ecosystem to erode democracy)\nWealthy individuals with an interest in the open social web for social, financial, or technical reasons, or some combination thereof\nLearning from the failure of revenue-based investment funds in the past, and because of the need to remain aligned with the principles of the open social web, I don\u2019t think it\u2019s wise to raise from traditional limited partners.What success looks likeTraditional venture firms measure their success using metrics like the total value of their investments vs the amount they put in, and the percentage return the firm receives from an average investment year on year. They also inevitably measure the management fees they receive compared to how expensive it is to run the firm.\n\nThese are also appropriate for Pro-Social. But success looks like more than that; this is a mission-driven fund that aims to promote a vibrant open social web. We also need to measure the following.\n\nEach metric should be measured in terms of projects funded by Pro-Social as well as in the open social web ecosystem overall, because Pro-Social\u2019s success should be determined in part by the overall success of the space. The aim is for each of them to grow a significant percentage (to be determined after an initial baseline analysis) each year.\nSustainability of projects. Are platforms still operating and growing after 2, 3, or 5 years? Have they found viable models that align with their values? What\u2019s the average lifetime?\n\nNumber of platforms exited to community. How many open social web platforms have exited to be under the control of their users?\n\nDiversity of open social web founders. What percentage of founders in the space self-report as being from traditionally underrepresented groups?\n\nCross-collaboration between founding teams. How many projects are directly sharing findings, outcomes, and code with each other?\nUltimately, if:The open social web is thriving, with platforms that last, communities that flourish, and founders who reflect the breadth of human experience\nPro-Social can continue to fund projects at a constant or growing rate, while supporting its own team\nPro-Social will consider itself to be succeeding.So now what?Pro-Social is a hypothetical fund. But it doesn\u2019t have to be.\n\nFunding the open social web doesn\u2019t have to start big. A handful of values-aligned funders, a couple of thoughtful pilot investments, and a real commitment to founder support could begin to model an ecosystem that works differently. I\u2019ve laid out a comprehensive blueprint, which would absolutely take a larger organization to implement in full. But it can also be a menu. Funders can pick and choose the pieces that align with their goals and resources.\n\nThe most important thing is to recognize that growing the open social web requires capital \u2014 and that doesn\u2019t need to be in conflict with its values. The ideas I\u2019ve proposed might not be completely right, and there are plenty of hard, unresolved questions to answer. There needs to be discussion, further exploration and testing, and lots and lots of trial and error. We won\u2019t get it right the first time, but the only way forward is to start.\n\nWe don\u2019t need to solve everything overnight. We just need to begin.\n\nHere are some ways we might:\n\nFor funders: Try out one of the structures I\u2019ve outlined \u2014 for example, a revenue-share investment \u2014 with a small open social project. Learn by doing.\n\nFor builders: Start a project aligned with these principles. What does it look like to found an explicitly human-centered open social web platform with a cross-functional team that elevates design and business to the same importance as technology?\n\nFor me: I mentioned a free course to help people grapple with human-centered principles when starting an open social web platform. I also implied a worksheet that helps people test their assumptions with respect to their existing projects. These are things that don\u2019t require much capital to produce; I can build them.\n\nFor all of us: Let\u2019s start a conversation about these principles. I\u2019d love to bring together mission-aligned funders, builders, and technologists to explore a real-world implementation of this model.\n\nThose are my ideas: what are yours? How might we begin?\n\nHowever we start, the exploration is worth it. The goal is to build a better internet: one where our platforms nurture communities instead of strip value from them, where we all enjoy privacy and safety, where diverse and vulnerable voices can find a home, and where nobody is locked into software produced by any particular vendor.\n\nThe open social web has enormous potential to reshape online discourse, but it can\u2019t thrive without sustainable, values-aligned funding. In this post, I\u2019ve proposed a dual-structure fund called Pro-Social, combining grants for nonprofits with flexible investment for startups, and designed to support diverse, human-centered founders. It\u2019s a thought experiment for now, but one I believe someone should build.\n\nIf we want a better web, we can\u2019t wait for someone else to build it. We have to fund it \u2014 and build the institutions to make that possible.",
        "html": "<p><img src=\"https://werd.io/file/682c83d9de8e5331b10d6312/thumb.jpg\" alt=\"A herd of zebras\" width=\"1024\" height=\"685\" /></p><p>If the open social web is going to grow and thrive, people need to be able to build new platforms and services sustainably. But that\u2019s not what the email I was reading was telling me.</p><p>The message in my inbox captured a persistent and problematic idea in open tech circles. It reminded me of one I\u2019d received years earlier, back when I was building my first platform.</p><blockquote><p>\u201cYou should be doing this for the love of it.\u201d</p></blockquote><p>The author, a well-known blogger, was outraged that I was trying to make money from Elgg, the open source social networking platform I co-founded. Its users included Ivy League universities, Fortune 500 companies, international NGOs, and even governments at the national level, but how <em>dare</em> I make enough money from it to pay for rent and groceries?</p><p>Now, deep into building my second open source social platform, the same sentiment had returned. Different person, same message:</p><blockquote><p>\u201cYou shouldn\u2019t try to make revenue. We need to abolish money.\u201d</p></blockquote><p>With no hint of irony, I was being criticized for failing to establish a <em>Star Trek</em> post-financial utopia. Meanwhile, I was building new web software, which meant infrastructure, teammates, and bills to pay. And to do anything at all, I needed a place to live and a way to meet my basic needs. To be clear, I\u2019m all for imagining ways out of our current economic system. But asking individual underfunded founders to operate outside it isn\u2019t a viable strategy. These systemic changes are far outside the scope of a software platform or an underfunded founder.</p><p>I wasn\u2019t independently wealthy. I didn\u2019t have a trust fund. I just wanted to build something good. How could anyone like me, with experience but without a financial safety net, possibly win? And if that\u2019s hard for me, imagine how much harder it is for builders from underrepresented or vulnerable communities, with even less access to capital.</p><h3>Supporting builders to create a strong ecosystem</h3><p>Even people with experience and a track record from those communities struggle to get funded. Recreating that inequality on the social web would be a disaster. Social media is a huge part of how we learn about the world and make our democratic decisions. If those perspectives are excluded, the platforms shaping public discourse will reflect only the interests of those who already hold privilege and power. In effect, only privileged perspectives will shape how our platforms work, what voices get heard, and how people come to understand the world around them.</p><p>I believe in the promise of the open social web. It\u2019s a pro-social alternative to existing social media platforms, which has the potential to support communities and discourse rather than strip-mine them for value. But if we want it to <em>survive</em>, let alone thrive, we need to:</p><ol><li>Fund and support new pro-social platforms.</li>\n<li>Build models that support a broad, representative set of builders, including those from communities most impacted by today\u2019s platforms.</li>\n<li>Support community ownership models to reduce the risk of platforms being used as instruments of political manipulation, as we've seen with X and Facebook.</li>\n</ol><p>In previous posts, I\u2019ve discussed what I would do if I was running product at <a href=\"https://werd.io/2025/if-i-ran-bluesky-product\">Bluesky</a>, <a href=\"https://werd.io/2025/if-i-ran-mastodon\">Mastodon</a>, and <a href=\"https://werd.io/2025/if-i-started-fresh\">my own platform</a>. Those posts have focused on what sustainability looks like once a platform is up and running. But how do you get from an idea to a functioning platform and set it up for success?</p><p>Establishing a new open social web platform takes time, effort, and money to get right. So how do we fund that early stage in a way that\u2019s sustainable, and aligned with the values of the ecosystem we want to build?</p><p>In this post, I\u2019ll explore what I would do if I was <em>funding</em> open social web platforms. This is not designed to be universal advice. It\u2019s what <em>I</em> would do if I was setting out to solve the problem. Others will bring different ideas to the table, and I hope they do. We need all of them. Together, maybe we can spark a bigger conversation about what it would take to make the open social web truly viable.</p><h3>My experience</h3><p>My thinking here comes from experience across multiple sides of this problem as a builder, investor, and long-time participant in the ecosystem. When I think about how we can fund the next generation of platforms, I\u2019m drawing on five key experiences that span the full lifecycle, from hacking together early infrastructure to funding mission-driven teams at scale:</p><ul><li>I\u2019ve been a part of the open social web for decades. I\u2019m a board member at <a href=\"https://www.anew.social/\">A New Social</a>, a non-profit that aims to create a healthy ecosystem across protocols, have advised <a href=\"https://socialwebfoundation.org/\">the Social Web Foundation</a> and <a href=\"https://fediforum.org/people/\">FediForum</a>, have built my own platforms, and have owned my own single-user Mastodon instance for years. I know and respect folks working on Mastodon, Bluesky, Ghost, and many others, and think of myself as a friend to all of them.</li>\n<li>In 2004, <a href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/education/2006/mar/07/elearning.technology13\">I co-founded Elgg</a>, an open source social networking platform, in the UK. We <a href=\"https://www.infoworld.com/article/2318757/best-of-open-source-software-awards-collaboration.html\">won awards</a> and grew a strong open source ecosystem: one version of the platform was translated into 80 languages. I also co-founded a startup to offer consulting and support services for it, which we successfully bootstrapped for years before receiving direct investment.</li>\n<li>In 2014, <a href=\"https://www.wired.com/2014/09/known/\">I co-founded Known</a>, a startup that produced an open source social publishing platform, in San Francisco. It was a part of the third cohort at Matter, an accelerator for startups with the potential to change media for good. Our customers included KQED, the public media organization, which <a href=\"https://www.kqed.org/pressroom/9726/namle\">won an award</a> for its Known-powered site. Outside the startup, the software was used as part of the <a href=\"https://indieweb.org\">indieweb</a>. (It still powers <a href=\"https://werd.io\">my site</a> today.) We ultimately exited to <a href=\"https://medium.com\">Medium</a>, but the open source platform remains available and in use.</li>\n<li>In 2017, I <a href=\"https://medium.com/matter-driven-narrative/meet-ben-3293ac936c69\">became the west coast Director of Investments at Matter</a>, the accelerator that had founded Known. We tweaked the mission to support startups with the potential to create \u201ca more informed, inclusive, and empathetic society\u201d. I was involved in <a href=\"https://medium.com/matter-driven-narrative/be-part-of-the-solution-69a035759339\">directly investing in</a> 24 startups and supporting a portfolio of 75. While I was there, I saw thousands of pitches from startups hoping to be funded, and got a strong sense of what makes a team succeed.</li>\n<li>I\u2019ve been the first employee at two venture-backed startups that are still alive and growing, and part of the leadership team at others, including a non-profit that raised significant support through individual and institutional giving. Outside of my employment, I\u2019ve given technology, product, and strategy advice to hundreds of startups and organizations.</li>\n</ul><p>Together, these experiences have shaped how I think about funding infrastructure that actually lasts, and who gets to build it.</p><h3>A theory of change</h3><p>How do we fund that early stage in a way that\u2019s sustainable, and aligned with the values of the ecosystem we want to build?</p><p>That\u2019s the question I\u2019ve been sitting with. Most funders have a <em>thesis</em> (if they\u2019re investors) or a <em>theory of change</em> (if they\u2019re philanthropists) that informs how they allocate capital. Here\u2019s mine:</p><p>Social media has failed us. Nowhere is this more visible than in Elon Musk\u2019s acquisition of X, where a platform with 335 million monthly active users is manipulated specifically according to its owner\u2019s point of view. It\u2019s also true on Facebook, where gutting its fact-checking policy and changing its algorithm has led to a degraded experience for many people.</p><p>As a result, many people have reduced their engagement with incumbent social platforms. And with growing disillusionment around privacy, algorithmic manipulation, and platform control, that trend is unlikely to slow.</p><p>Notably, a significant subset is already exploring the open social web: a world of alternatives to traditional social media platforms that includes Bluesky and Mastodon, as well as a long tail of platforms that includes Farcaster, Nostr, and more. Each of these platforms is built on an open protocol that prevents them from falling under control by a single entity.</p><p>Because of their distinct architecture and reliance on open protocols, open social web platforms are more resilient to manipulation for political gain. They are more transparent and auditable, and either don\u2019t have a single point of control or allow for a <em>credible exit</em> from a platform owner if they make decisions that are unpalatable to its users. Some of them have even made forays into community governance.</p><p>From a philanthropic standpoint, these platforms advance public discourse, media pluralism, and digital rights: some of the core pillars of healthy democracies. I believe providing alternatives to hard-right discourse is morally right. But they also represent a significant <em>commercial</em> opportunity. They have the potential to disrupt the entire incumbent social media landscape \u2014 a market worth over $250 billion. Even today, there is a serviceable available market of around $333 million, and growing quickly. (I\u2019ve estimated these numbers using existing social media user and revenue per user figures.) These platforms are better for democracy, but because the potential market size is enormous while the current one is small but growing fast, they also represent a rare window for significant investment gains. This is already playing out: <a href=\"https://techcrunch.com/2024/05/21/farcaster-a-crypto-based-social-network-raised-150m-with-just-80k-daily-users/\">Farcaster raised $150M last year</a>, while <a href=\"https://www.clay.com/dossier/bluesky-funding\">Bluesky has raised $36M</a> and is growing rapidly.</p><p>I believe that <a href=\"https://techcrunch.com/2011/05/28/what-makes-a-startup-successful-blackbox-report-aims-to-map-the-startup-genome/\">teams who are focused on solving meaningful problems for real people rather than serving a rigid ideology</a>, and who encompass technology, business, and design skills, are more likely to create platforms that find enough users who love them to become sustainable. These are teams with the willingness to pivot their platforms, sometimes multiple times, in order to make sure they\u2019re building something people want. I want to back teams with this mindset and mix of skills who are building open social web platforms with the potential to unseat today\u2019s incumbents.</p><p>Funding is infrastructure. Without it, the ecosystem crumbles. I see this as a rare moment to shape the foundations of a better internet, before the next wave of social infrastructure calcifies. But for people who are primarily motivated by returns, there\u2019s also a solid reason to participate.</p><p>So what\u2019s the best way to fund them?</p><h3>Some common ways projects are funded</h3><p>There are a few different funding vehicles available to me if I want to support the open social web. Let\u2019s take some time to go through them in turn.</p><p>There\u2019s no one-size-fits-all answer. Each funding model brings different trade-offs, and different possibilities for the kinds of builders, communities, and outcomes it can support. Here\u2019s how I think about the options.</p><p>(If you\u2019re familiar with funding models, you might want to skip this section. It\u2019s up to you.)</p><h4>Grants</h4><p><em>\u200cWhat it is:</em> Grants are money given by an organization for a specific purpose, which don\u2019t need to be paid back and aren\u2019t given in exchange for equity in a business. They\u2019re made to further the grant-maker\u2019s goals. If the grant-maker is a non-profit foundation, that might be a social mission; if it\u2019s a software platform, it might be to encourage developers to adopt its APIs.</p><p>On the open social web, these might come from a few different sources. It might be a foundation that sees the impact current platforms have on the democratic process and wants to promote more democratic platforms. It might be a government that wants to promote alternatives to US-centric software hegemony. (See <a href=\"https://unite.un.org/fr/news/france-becomes-first-government-endorse-un-open-source-principles-joined-19-organizations\">the United Nations open source principles</a>, <a href=\"https://carnegieendowment.org/europe/strategic-europe/2024/12/europes-wake-up-call-for-tech-leadership?lang=en\">calls for the EU to promote technological autonomy</a>, or initiatives like <a href=\"https://docs.numerique.gouv.fr/login/\">the Docs project</a>.) Or it might be an already-funded vendor that wants more developers to use its protocol.</p><p><em>\u200cWhen it works well:</em> Grants work best when a project\u2019s goals align clearly with the funder\u2019s mission, and when the builders are able to focus on delivering outcomes without the pressure of immediate monetization. They\u2019re particularly valuable for early-stage infrastructure work, protocol development, accessibility improvements, and research-backed exploration that may not yet have a business model. Grants can help de-risk experimentation and support projects that serve the public good but aren\u2019t obviously profitable. In many cases, grants have been the difference between an idea staying in someone\u2019s head and a working prototype seeing daylight.</p><p><em>Risks and trade-offs:</em> Grants come with strings (even if they\u2019re not financial ones). Applying for them can take significant time and labor, and reporting requirements can be burdensome, especially for small teams. Funding cycles can be unpredictable, and priorities may shift with leadership changes or political winds. (At Matter, I discovered that an organization that was friendly under one leader became unresponsive after they handed the baton to someone else.)</p><p>Most importantly, grants rarely support the long-term maintenance of a platform. They\u2019re great for getting something off the ground, but without a follow-on revenue model or sustained support, grant-funded projects risk becoming abandoned or fragile.</p><p><em>Examples in the open social web:</em> Many open social web platforms have been funded by <a href=\"https://nlnet.nl/\">the NLNet Foundation</a>, which supports organizations and people \u201cwho contribute to an open internet for all.\u201d This includes multiple ActivityPub projects including Mastodon itself. The latter has also received grant funding from the European Commission, among others.</p><h4>Donations</h4><p><em>\u200cWhat it is:</em> Donations are flexible gifts from individuals or organizations to support a cause. In contrast to grants, they aren\u2019t necessarily associated with a specific project, and come with fewer strings. They\u2019re most often given in smaller amounts (sometimes on a recurring basis) to non-profits, so that the donation can be written off of the giver\u2019s taxes.</p><p><em>\u200cWhen it works well:</em> Donations work best when a project has a clear mission that resonates with a broad audience, and when it can inspire sustained goodwill and trust. This is especially true when the project is visibly active, communicative with its supporters, and aligned with nonprofit values.</p><p>Recurring donation models, whether directly via a dedicated fundraising platform, via check or transfer, or on platforms like Patreon, OpenCollective, or GitHub Sponsors, can provide a lightweight income stream to help cover operational costs or ongoing maintenance. Donations can also be powerful in moments of visibility (like a major release, news event, or crisis) that mobilize supporter enthusiasm.</p><p><em>Risks and trade-offs:</em> Donation income can be inconsistent and hard to predict, especially if it's reliant on public attention cycles or goodwill from a niche audience. It can also subtly shape a project\u2019s public narrative, nudging teams toward emotional or symbolic gestures rather than behind-the-scenes infrastructure work that\u2019s harder to explain to donors.</p><p>Unless the organization is a 501(c)(3) or similar nonprofit, larger donations may be limited by the donor\u2019s ability to write them off. Typically, organizations that accept donations receive the majority from large foundations and very wealthy individuals, with a minority coming from regular people. It\u2019s very hard to raise enough money to support an organization from small donations alone, and if you look closer at successful projects that appear to be grassroots-funded, you\u2019ll often find that they\u2019re surprisingly top-heavy. Independence means increasing the dependence on smaller donors, but it\u2019s a steep hill to climb.</p><p>Finally, running donation campaigns and managing supporters\u2019 expectations takes time. For small teams, that can compete with actually building the software.</p><p><em>Examples in the open social web:</em> Mastodon has long accepted <a href=\"https://joinmastodon.org/sponsors\">individual donations via Patreon and other platforms</a>; Pixelfed follows a similar pattern.</p><h4>Crowdfunding</h4><p><em>\u200cWhat it is:</em> Crowdfunding collects small donations from a large number of people in order to raise money for a specific project. Whereas regular donations might be recurring on an ongoing basis, crowdfunding contributions are one-offs. Typically, each person who donates receives something in return for their donation: the product itself at higher levels, or even direct access to the team, and cheaper gifts like stickers and T-shirts at lower levels.</p><p><em>\u200cWhen it works well:</em> Crowdfunding works best when you have a clear, concrete offering, a deadline, and a story people can rally behind. It\u2019s particularly effective for launching new products, features, or major upgrades, especially when there\u2019s already an audience or community eager to support the work. Campaigns that feel urgent, personal, and exciting tend to perform better, especially when the creators are transparent and communicative.</p><p><em>Risks and trade-offs:</em> Even if a campaign succeeds, crowdfunding can create a false sense of sustainability. A single successful campaign might cover an initial build, but it doesn\u2019t provide a long-term revenue stream, unless it\u2019s tied to a larger strategy. The overhead is also larger than you might expect: running a campaign well involves marketing, community management, and often customer support. (Many campaigns hire an outside marketing agency, which can eat 20% or more of the final budget.) And if expectations aren\u2019t met, the backlash can be swift and public.</p><p>As with startups themselves, teams with design polish, storytelling chops, and access to online networks are more likely to succeed, perpetuating the same inequalities we\u2019ve seen elsewhere. These are traits that don\u2019t always correlate with technical merit or long-term resilience. As a result, important but unglamorous infrastructure projects may struggle to compete with flashier ideas.</p><p>Finally, here\u2019s an open secret: successful crowdfunding campaigns often have a significant percentage of their funding committed ahead of time. That way the campaign looks like it\u2019s more organically successful than it actually was, which in turn attracts more contributors. The trick is that this only works for people who have the networks to find those initial committed participants to begin with, ensuring that people with established wealth and connections are more likely to succeed here too.</p><p><em>Examples in the open social web:</em> <a href=\"https://Micro.blog\">Micro.blog</a> was originally funded <a href=\"https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/manton/indie-microblogging-owning-your-short-form-writing\">with a crowdfunding campaign</a>. It helps to have an existing following: <a href=\"https://Micro.blog\">Micro.blog</a> succeeded in part because it already had an audience invested in <a href=\"https://manton.org/\">Manton Reece\u2019s</a> blog and podcast work, as well as because it offered a clear product vision people could imagine using.</p><h4>Venture investment</h4><p><em>\u200cWhat it is:</em> Venture capital invests in businesses with the potential to be high-growth. Investors write checks to a portfolio of startup businesses in exchange for either equity (typically for more established businesses) or the <em>promise</em> of equity (for earlier-stage businesses that don\u2019t have an established valuation yet).</p><p>A venture capital investment pays off in two main ways, which are colloquially known as an \u201cexit\u201d:</p><ul><li>If the startup grows to the point of making an Initial Public Offering, allowing shares in the company to be traded on a public stock market.</li>\n<li>If the startup is bought by another company.</li>\n</ul><p>VC investors can also make money by selling their holdings to other investors, for example if the startup raises another round of funding and a later-stage investor is willing to buy stock from an earlier-stage investor.</p><p>There are a few different kinds of venture investors that we should pay attention to in the context of funding the open social web:</p><ul><li>Venture capital funds raise money from \u201climited partner\u201d sources like endowments, pension funds, and family offices and invest based on a hypothesis. They tend to charge a 2% management fee on the total funds under management, and once the limited partners have made their money back, the fund managers tend to receive 20% of any further profits.</li>\n<li>Corporate VCs invest according to the interests of a corporate parent. For example, Google Ventures invests in startups that might strategically benefit Google; Salesforce Ventures invests in startups that might strategically benefit Salesforce.</li>\n<li>Angel investors are, essentially, rich people who invest on behalf of themselves. They tend to invest using a venture model and expect to receive a return in the same way. But because they don\u2019t have any commitments to limited partners or corporate parents, they can invest more or less any way they want. If they particularly want a startup to exist, or if one of their friends becomes the founder of a startup, they might cut it a check even if they\u2019re not sure it will work out.</li>\n</ul><p><em>\u200cWhen it works well:</em> Venture capital works best when a startup has the potential to scale rapidly, reach millions of users, and produce outsized financial returns. It\u2019s especially well-suited for commercial products that address huge markets and have strong network effects (where each new user increases the value for every other user). For open social web platforms that are aiming to replace incumbent social networks, this kind of growth trajectory can align with VC expectations, if there\u2019s a plausible business model.</p><p>It can also work when the investor deeply believes in the mission and is willing to be patient with the return timeline. Angel investors or mission-aligned VCs (such as purpose-driven funds) can be effective early partners if they share the founder\u2019s values.</p><p>VC funding is most helpful when it allows a team to scale quickly to meet demand or secure talent, or when time-to-market is critical.</p><p><em>Risks and trade-offs:</em> Venture capital comes with heavy expectations: usually of a 10x return on investment within 7\u201310 years. This puts pressure on founders to prioritize rapid growth, which can lead to compromises on user safety, governance, or long-term sustainability. For social platforms, it can incentivize engagement-hacking and ad-driven models that run counter to community well-being.</p><p>It can also distort governance. Venture-backed platforms are typically structured as Delaware C-Corporations; many investors will refuse to make an investment if they aren\u2019t. This corporate structure comes with a fiduciary responsibility to maximize shareholder value. That makes it hard to implement democratic ownership, cooperative governance, or exit-to-community models, unless those are baked in early on a legal level (perhaps by incorporating as a Public Benefit Corporation instead of a C-Corp) and supported by investors. It\u2019s rare for this to happen, and the investors would need to be unusually progressive to accept it.</p><p>Once you\u2019ve taken VC investment, you\u2019ve effectively committed to a path: a high-growth company with an eventual exit. That\u2019s not necessarily bad, but it limits flexibility. Many founders who take early-stage VC find themselves building something quite different from what they set out to do.</p><p>Because you\u2019re moving at speed, and likely burning a lot of money in the process, a lot depends on being able to raise follow-on funding; even if a VC investor is willing to give an open social web platform a check at an early-stage level, it\u2019s not a given that another VC investor will be willing to give them a follow-on check later on. If that happens to your startup, you might be stuck.</p><p>That\u2019s if you can take VC investment at all. Many firms prefer \u201cwarm introductions\u201d, which means that they prefer to be introduced to founders by people they already know and trust. At its worst, that means that people from communities with stronger connections to funding \u2014 typically wealthy people from a narrow set of demographics \u2014 are much more likely to be funded. For example, <a href=\"https://www.forbes.com/sites/asiaalexander/2024/06/24/black-founders-still-struggle-for-their-share-of-venture-capital-funding/\">black women founders received just 0.34% of VC funding in 2022</a>. Some firms also look for \u201cfounder pedigree\u201d \u2014 assessing whether the founders went to universities like Stanford or have existing capital behind them \u2014 that further compound these inequalities.</p><p>Not all VCs are created equally, however. There certainly are mission-driven and mission-aligned VCs who operate in a way that\u2019s more values-aligned with the open social web. Some, like <a href=\"https://homebrew.co/blog/2022/02/28/homebrew-forever-same-mission-our-capital\">Homebrew</a>, even self-invest into their own funds, giving them far more flexibility in how they support startups. It would be a mistake to treat every firm in the space as being the same.</p><p><em>Examples in the open social web:</em> I mentioned the main examples earlier on: Bluesky raised at least $36M, including early funding from Twitter and later-stage investment from Benchmark Capital and others. Farcaster raised $150M from a16z and others in 2024, with a stated focus on building a decentralized protocol and app ecosystem.</p><h4>Revenue-based investment</h4><p><em>\u200cWhat it is:</em> Revenue-based investments function similarly to venture capital: investors write checks to early-stage companies. If the company wants to remain independent, it can provide a fixed portion (10% or so) of monthly revenues to investors in order to pay off their investments. Usually payoffs are set to 2-5X the original investment for early-stage startups, but I\u2019ve seen as high as 15X. It\u2019s non-dilutive by default, but if the startup chooses to raise traditional VC funding, the revenue-based investment converts to equity.</p><p>Indie VC was an early pioneer of this kind of investing. The Calm Company Fund was another. The former shut down its original model because <a href=\"https://www.axios.com/2021/03/03/indievc-venture-capital-investment-shut-down\">its limited partners were unhappy with the arrangement</a>; the latter because <a href=\"https://calmfund.com/writing/pause\">they found they didn\u2019t have enough money to operate well under the model</a>. (Indie VC <a href=\"https://bryce.medium.com/the-indie-era-of-startups-c92704a75ed2\">is back with a more traditional VC model</a>.)</p><p><em>\u200cWhen it works well:</em> Revenue-based investment works well when a startup has a clear path to steady revenue, especially from subscription or recurring business models, but doesn\u2019t necessarily want to pursue the high growth strategies required by traditional venture capital. It\u2019s ideal for founders who want to stay independent, build profitably, and maintain control, and for investors who are comfortable trading equity upside for cash returns over time. It can also be a fit for mission-aligned platforms that aim to serve a specific community sustainably, rather than chase growth.</p><p><em>Risks and trade-offs:</em> This model assumes the startup will generate consistent revenue early enough to start repayments, which may not be realistic for infrastructure-heavy or slow-to-monetize platforms. The obligation to repay a multiple of the original investment can also create stress on cashflow if margins are thin or revenue is volatile. And while it's non-dilutive upfront, the conversion clause means equity is still in play if the company raises a future VC round, so it\u2019s not always as clean as it looks. Depending on how the terms are structured, founders may end up giving away more equity than they would have in a traditional VC seed round.</p><p>It\u2019s also notable that investors have had trouble maintaining this model. (It\u2019s not lost on me that both Indie VC and Calm Company Fund ran into choppy waters.) Limited partners have been trained to accept the VC model, so success for a fund depends on finding upstream investors who are comfortable with slower growth and less outsized returns. Theoretically these funds are less risky \u2014 more of their investments should lead to a return \u2014 but it\u2019s not clear that this is actually the case.</p><p><em>Examples in the open social web:</em> No major open social web platforms have publicly disclosed using revenue-based financing so far. I think the model could be a strong fit for these kinds of services; a major piece of my arguments for both Bluesky and Mastodon were revenue-based. But so far, most open social web projects haven\u2019t been charging money for services; there\u2019s a cultural resistance to money, which I discussed at the top of the piece, but many projects have preferred to set themselves up as non-profits and take donations.</p><h4>Bootstrapping</h4><p><em>\u200cWhat it is:</em> When you bootstrap, you don\u2019t take investment at all, except perhaps from your savings. You then attempt to make the business grow using its own revenue, re-investing profits smartly.</p><p><em>\u200cWhen it works well:</em> Out of necessity, bootstrapping reduces the length of the feedback loop between you and your customers to almost nothing. You need them to pay you to keep the lights on (and for you to pay rent and buy food), so you\u2019re forced to be attentive to their needs. It can be fraught (I\u2019ve done it!) but when it works, you end up with a valuable business that you own outright, and can therefore run entirely on your own terms. Companies that have bootstrapped include <a href=\"https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/13/mailchimps-ben-chestnut-on-bootstrapping-a-startup-to-700m-in-revenue/\">Mailchimp until its acquisition by Intuit</a>, and GitHub <a href=\"https://venturebeat.com/business/github-funding-say-what/\">for its first four years</a>.</p><p>It also helps if you\u2019re wealthy enough to feel comfortable spending your savings on a startup to begin with. Most people are not lucky enough to be in that position.</p><p><em>Risks and trade-offs:</em> Bootstrapping is financially conservative, but emotionally intense. You carry all the risk, and early mistakes can cost you months \u2014 or <em>everything</em>. Without funding, you may struggle to hire help, pay yourself, or scale infrastructure. And while you own 100% of the business, you also carry 100% of the stress.</p><p><em>Examples in the open social web:</em> <a href=\"https://write.as\">Write.as</a>, and its parent company <a href=\"https://musing.studio/\">Musing Studio</a>, are bootstrapped.</p><h3>Structuring my fund</h3><p>So if I were putting real money behind my theory of change, what would that look like in practice? What if we could design a fund that was specifically for the open social web?</p><p>In this thought experiment, I\u2019m founding an organization called <em>Pro-Social</em> to fund the open social web. The name Pro-Social is overtly about helping \u2014 but, of course, it also clearly name-checks social media.</p><p>This is a thought experiment \u2014 but it\u2019s one I believe someone should do.</p><p>Let\u2019s return to my theory of change and break it down a little:</p><ul><li>Founders who are focused on solving problems for real people</li>\n<li>Who build representative teams and possess a mix of technical, business, and design skills</li>\n<li>Who are building open social web platforms with the potential to disrupt incumbent platforms</li>\n<li>That are sustainable and community-aligned</li>\n<li>Have the potential to strengthen democracy</li>\n<li>And build generational organizations</li>\n<li>That provide a real alternative to the status quo</li>\n<li>Regardless of whether they have wealth or existing startup connections.</li>\n</ul><p>Its aim isn\u2019t just to foster the open social web: it\u2019s to support human-centered product thinking, and to help create consumer-grade platforms that real people want to use. In turn, I believe that will attract more people to the ecosystem, benefiting everybody involved and increasing its real-world impact.</p><p>When you\u2019re doing something good, you owe it to the people you\u2019re helping to be able to <em>keep</em> doing it. Not only do I want the projects I fund to be sustainable, but I want my <em>own</em> funding model to be sustainable. In other words, not only do I want to invest in a batch of open social web projects, but I want to be able to do it again, and again, in perpetuity.</p><p>I\u2019ve broken down the various funding options, as well as my principles and experience. While this is informed by all of my experiences, I owe a particular debt of gratitude to Matter Ventures, whose influence is strong here. Some of these ideas are directly inspired by practices at Matter; some others are things I wished we could have put into place.</p><p>It\u2019s not the <em>only</em> funding that I think should exist. Organizations like <a href=\"https://nlnet.nl/\">NLNet</a> and <a href=\"https://www.sovereign.tech/\">Sovereign Tech Agency</a> are doing great work. And I strongly believe that the EU and other governments should be funding the open social web. My intent is to describe something that sits alongside these efforts.</p><p>Here\u2019s how I think it would work.</p><h4>A dual structure</h4><p>Having seen the strengths and limits of each model up close \u2014 and knowing the kind of ecosystem we actually need \u2014 I don\u2019t think we can rely on just one. So here\u2019s what I\u2019d do instead.</p><p>Pro-Social is built on the belief that different types of projects require different types of funding. Nonprofit tools that strengthen the ecosystem shouldn\u2019t be forced into a for-profit path, and promising commercial products shouldn\u2019t have to apply for grants. That\u2019s why Pro-Social has two complementary arms:</p><ul><li>The Pro-Social Foundation funds non-profit projects through directed grants.</li>\n<li>Pro-Social Ventures makes values-aligned investments into for-profit startups.</li>\n</ul><p>Each tackles a different part of the ecosystem and ensures we\u2019re not forcing every project into the same mold.</p><p>We\u2019ll talk more about deal structure further down. For now, let\u2019s start, as all funders should, with the founders.</p><h4>To select founders, we must first select ourselves</h4><p>Both the Pro-Social Foundation and Pro-Social Ventures support diverse teams with a mix of skills and a human-centered mindset, as we\u2019ve previously discussed.</p><p>In order to achieve a more equitable, representative portfolio, the organization must bake equity and inclusion into its DNA. That means a representative team, inclusive selection criteria, and shared decision-making on investment committees, as well as the following core concepts:</p><p><strong>An open application process.</strong> Not only is there no need for warm introductions, but they are explicitly disallowed. Every project that applies for funding has to go through the same process from the beginning, starting with filling in a web form.</p><p><strong>A clear rubric for evaluation.</strong> Regardless of the funding type, projects are evaluated using the same rubric and peer-reviewed, and the answers are made available to all staff with decision-making ability.</p><p><strong>Fund the founders, not the project.</strong> I believe that long-term success is tied more to founder mindset than to initial product ideas. A project might seem unpromising, but if its founder is smart, willing to test their assumptions, and pivot based on what they find, it should still be considered for funding. In contrast, if a project initially seems promising but the founder is unwilling to waver from their vision even in the face of evidence that it doesn\u2019t work, that should be a mark against them.</p><p><strong>Grow a community of founders.</strong> Every founder who is funded by Pro-Social joins a community that grows over time. The network effects of this are important: each new founder can draw on the expertise of the existing ones, so the power of the community to effect change becomes greater over time. Not only must funding recipients be great founders, but they also need to be great community participants, with strong personal integrity. There should be a strict \u201cno asshole\u201d rule that particularly guards for the safety of diverse founders, and a collaborative mindset is vital.</p><p><strong>Provide free help ahead of time.</strong> Pro-Social should design and make available a free, asynchronous course akin to Y Combinator\u2019s <a href=\"https://www.startupschool.org/\">Startup School</a>. This would help project founders hone their human-centered thinking, evaluate their core assumptions, and ensure they\u2019re aligned with making their project successful instead of just writing code. Unlike most founder courses, it would also contain lessons about the open social web itself, including its underlying protocols and existing models. At the end of the course there would be an easy on-ramp to applying for funding if founders are ready to take the next step. Even if founders don\u2019t want funding from Pro-Social, hopefully the course would help <em>all</em> open social web founders.</p><p>Here\u2019s what each arm would do, starting with the foundation.</p><h4>The Pro-Social Foundation</h4><p>The Pro-Social Foundation offers structured grants at three levels:</p><ol><li>\n<strong>Flash grants for user research.</strong> A small ($5,000) grant that helps a project team validate the core assumptions underlying their product vision, with the express intent of testing whether it is building something that real people will use. Recipients are expected to follow a set process to conduct user research, validate their assumptions, and present a modified version of their product vision that takes these findings into account. These grants are specifically not intended for implementation; they\u2019re just for testing whether the work is worth building at all. Founders who have demonstrated that they follow this process \u2014 whether supported by a grant or not \u2014 are more likely to receive funding from Pro-Social.</li>\n<li>\n<strong>Project grants.</strong> A larger ($50-100K) grant for non-profit projects that have demonstrated they will build something that is <em>desirable</em> for real users, <em>viable</em> financially, and <em>feasible</em> to build using the time, team, and resources potentially at its disposal. This grant can be used to write code, but is also expected to be used to establish the organization to support it.</li>\n<li>\n<strong>Ecosystem grants.</strong> A larger-still ($100-250K) grant for non-profit projects that have established themselves and have both real-world users and a working strategy for sustainability.</li>\n</ol><p>The Foundation does not fund protocol-level work unless it directly connects to an end-user experience. That\u2019s not because protocol work isn\u2019t important, but there are other organizations in the ecosystem who will already help fund it. I see the biggest gap as being human-centered end-user products that are anchored directly in user needs, so that\u2019s what I would want to fund.</p><p>Because sustainability of the fund is a core value, it\u2019s important to consider where the money would come from. The Pro-Social Foundation would be funded in two ways: through donations from foundations and individuals who care about the ecosystem, and from profits from Pro-Social Ventures, the for-profit arm.</p><p>Which brings us to the other half of the equation.</p><h4>Pro-Social Ventures</h4><p>Pro-Social Ventures makes investments into for-profit open social web startups using a hybrid between VC and revenue-based financing: a revenue share with an equity conversion.</p><p>It aims to conform to the principles set out by <a href=\"https://www.zebrasunite.org/\">the Zebra movement</a>: profitable but values-driven companies that prioritize cooperation over competition, community over monopoly, and long-term resilience over short-term growth. Of course, each company must be a participant in, and supporter of, the open social web.</p><p>Here\u2019s how it works:</p><p><strong>Pre-seed:</strong> These startups are going from idea to execution. The team almost certainly just consists of the founders. These are the teams Pro-Social spends most of its time supporting.</p><p>For these founders, Pro-Social Ventures writes $100,000 checks. After the startup has made its first $200,000 in revenue, this is paid back through a 10% gross revenue share with a 3X cap. It can also convert to equity at 7% of the company with a $4 million valuation cap if the founders raise a traditional VC round instead (in other words, it will automatically convert if a priced round is raised).</p><p>(A quick terminology primer: a <em>valuation cap</em> sets the maximum company valuation at which an investor's money converts to equity.)</p><p>If the startup is promising, has validated its assumptions, and is not just gaining real users but is beginning to get traction on a business model, it can ask for a follow-on check from Pro-Social. For these startups, Pro-Social Ventures will write a $150,000 follow-on check, which again is paid back through a 10% gross revenue share, this time with a 2X cap and no delay on repayment. It will convert to equity at 4% with a $6 million valuation cap if the founders subsequently choose to raise a traditional VC round.</p><p><strong>Seed:</strong> These startups have traction, likely have a larger team, and have shown that their product and business model works. They\u2019re growing but need more support. Because Pro-Social Ventures focuses on helping founders move from idea to execution on user-friendly open social web products, it will only cut this deal if there is also a clear gain for the open social web ecosystem.</p><p>If the startup hasn\u2019t raised an equity round, Pro-Social will cut a check for $400,000, paid back immediately through a 10% gross revenue share with a 3X cap. This check can convert to equity at 5%, at around a $10 million valuation cap.</p><p>If the startup <em>has</em> raised an equity round, or if such a round is currently being raised, Pro-Social Ventures will do a standard equity investment at the same terms as other investors. These checks vary between $250-400K.</p><p><strong>Exit to community:</strong> <a href=\"https://www.colorado.edu/lab/medlab/exit-to-community\">Exit to community</a> is a way for ventures to transition into ownership by its community of stakeholders instead of an acquirer or an IPO. This is such an obviously values-aligned idea for the open social web. How this works specifically varies from company to company, but it often looks something like transitioning to becoming a worker-owned cooperative, a community trust, or a <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decentralized_autonomous_organization\">decentralized autonomous organization</a>. <a href=\"https://e2c.how/\">The Exit to Community site</a> is a great starting point.</p><p>Exiting to community needs to be the founders\u2019 choice, but it\u2019s heavily encouraged and institutionally supported. It aligns long-term platform governance with the communities it serves, and reduces the risk of extractive exit outcomes.</p><p>For ventures that choose to exit to community, Pro-Social Ventures will reduce its stake at the time of the exit. The original repayment cap is reduced by 40% (pro rata, or reducing to 0 if repayments have already exceeded the new threshold); the conversion percentage is reduced by 25%. For example, a 7% conversion would become 5.25%. Pro-Social will also explicitly not influence governance structure in the new entity. It will also actively facilitate introductions to experts in the process \u2014 and those same experts will confirm if a venture\u2019s actions qualify as an exit to community.</p><p><strong>Terms:</strong> Pro-Social Ventures never takes a board seat, but is always available for help and support if founders want it. It doesn\u2019t demand special preferences or control rights.</p><p>The deal is structured like <a href=\"https://www.angellist.com/learn/safe-note\">a SAFE note</a>: there\u2019s no maturity date, no rate of interest, and there\u2019s always both a valuation cap and a cap on revenue share repayments. (I\u2019ve omitted valuation caps from the descriptions above, but they should be present.)</p><p>If the startup is acquired and there hasn\u2019t been a priced round, but there are proceeds for investors, Pro-Social will receive the greater of (a) 1X its original investment or (b) the amount it would have received had it converted to equity at the agreed percentage. Of course, if the venture fails and is closed, the investment is annulled and founders are still prized members of the community. The effort was worthwhile, and the hope is that everyone can learn from it.</p><p>Overall, revenue-based investment is a choice that hopes to overcome a potential lack of traditional venture investors who are willing to put money into open social web platforms. Over time, as more of these platforms become sustainable and valuable, I assume that more traditional investors will be willing to put money in, but in the shorter term, it\u2019s important to get these projects to a self-sustaining state as quickly as possible. I believe that selecting for human-centered, cross-functional teams will overcome some of the problems revenue-based investment has experienced in the past.</p><h4>A supportive structure</h4><p>So that\u2019s how projects are <em>funded</em>. But support doesn\u2019t just mean putting money in.</p><p>Pro-Social provides a light program for founding teams. It\u2019s not an accelerator, but it builds on some of the things accelerators do well without requiring founders to participate in a curriculum.</p><p><strong>Check-ins:</strong> For the first six months after funding, the Pro-Social team checks in with the founding team every two weeks. This can just be a half hour call, but the team is available to help them with any challenges they might have. Feedback and advice are given, but nobody is required to follow it. After six months, this can drop to whatever cadence the founders prefer.</p><p><strong>Introductions and other support:</strong> Like all funds and investment firms, the team works hard to provide useful introductions. Resources are also made available to assist with marketing, sales, design, and partnerships with other organizations.</p><p><strong>Summits:</strong> Every six months, there\u2019s an in-person summit over three days. The first day is just for founders who have been funded since the last one, and includes an introductory workshop on human-centered design. The following two days contain talks from outside speakers, workshops, and demos, and all funded founders are welcome. Dinners are held throughout. The idea is to ground everybody in the same fundamental ideas and make sure strong relationships can be built between all founders in the community.</p><p><strong>Conference:</strong> Every year, Pro-Social puts on an in-person public conference about the open social web, which is open to all but free for all of its founders. This contains speakers and talks about the open social web; an <a href=\"https://www.jcrete.org/what-is-an-unconference_/\">open space unconference</a> for everyone in the community to discuss issues that matter to them; and a showcase of Pro-Social-funded projects.</p><h4>How the foundation and venture arm are supported and support each other</h4><p>Revenue shares are received earlier in a startup\u2019s life than a payout from an exit event would be. Some of these proceeds go into keeping the lights on at the fund; some are re-invested into the fund; some are donated to the foundation.</p><p>The project-validating flash grants are designed to keep the venture fund aligned with the foundation. It\u2019s far cheaper to test a venture\u2019s assumptions quickly using this process than to write a full investment check and find out later that the venture doesn\u2019t work, or that the founders don\u2019t want to deviate from their idea even in the face of obvious evidence that real people won\u2019t use it. In turn, some of the profits from for-profit ventures that have been the recipient of a flash grant are donated to allow the foundation to make grants to non-profit projects.</p><p>Initial funding for Pro-Social might come from:</p><ul><li>Established companies that will gain if the open social web grows</li>\n<li>Foundations that believe in the open social web\u2019s potential to support democracy (or conversely, the potential of the existing social media ecosystem to <em>erode</em> democracy)</li>\n<li>Wealthy individuals with an interest in the open social web for social, financial, or technical reasons, or some combination thereof</li>\n</ul><p>Learning from the failure of revenue-based investment funds in the past, and because of the need to remain aligned with the principles of the open social web, I don\u2019t think it\u2019s wise to raise from traditional limited partners.</p><h4>What success looks like</h4><p>Traditional venture firms measure their success using metrics like the total value of their investments vs the amount they put in, and the percentage return the firm receives from an average investment year on year. They also inevitably measure the management fees they receive compared to how expensive it is to run the firm.</p><p>These are also appropriate for Pro-Social. But success looks like more than that; this is a mission-driven fund that aims to promote a vibrant open social web. We also need to measure the following.</p><p>Each metric should be measured in terms of <em>projects funded by Pro-Social</em> as well as <em>in the open social web ecosystem overall</em>, because Pro-Social\u2019s success should be determined in part by the overall success of the space. The aim is for each of them to grow a significant percentage (to be determined after an initial baseline analysis) each year.</p><ul><li>\n<strong>Sustainability of projects.</strong> Are platforms still operating and growing after 2, 3, or 5 years? Have they found viable models that align with their values? What\u2019s the average lifetime?</li>\n<li>\n<strong>Number of platforms exited to community.</strong> How many open social web platforms have exited to be under the control of their users?</li>\n<li>\n<strong>Diversity of open social web founders.</strong> What percentage of founders in the space self-report as being from traditionally underrepresented groups?</li>\n<li>\n<strong>Cross-collaboration between founding teams.</strong> How many projects are directly sharing findings, outcomes, and code with each other?</li>\n</ul><p>Ultimately, if:</p><ol><li>The open social web is thriving, with platforms that last, communities that flourish, and founders who reflect the breadth of human experience</li>\n<li>Pro-Social can continue to fund projects at a constant or growing rate, while supporting its own team</li>\n</ol><p>Pro-Social will consider itself to be succeeding.</p><h3>So now what?</h3><p>Pro-Social is a hypothetical fund. But it doesn\u2019t have to be.</p><p>Funding the open social web doesn\u2019t have to start big. A handful of values-aligned funders, a couple of thoughtful pilot investments, and a real commitment to founder support could begin to model an ecosystem that works differently. I\u2019ve laid out a comprehensive blueprint, which would absolutely take a larger organization to implement in full. But it can also be a menu. Funders can pick and choose the pieces that align with their goals and resources.</p><p>The most important thing is to recognize that growing the open social web requires capital \u2014 and that doesn\u2019t need to be in conflict with its values. The ideas I\u2019ve proposed might not be completely right, and there are plenty of hard, unresolved questions to answer. There needs to be discussion, further exploration and testing, and lots and lots of trial and error. We won\u2019t get it right the first time, but the only way forward is to start.</p><p>We don\u2019t need to solve everything overnight. We just need to begin.</p><p>Here are some ways we might:</p><p><strong>For funders:</strong> Try out one of the structures I\u2019ve outlined \u2014 for example, a revenue-share investment \u2014 with a small open social project. Learn by doing.</p><p><strong>For builders:</strong> Start a project aligned with these principles. What does it look like to found an explicitly human-centered open social web platform with a cross-functional team that elevates design and business to the same importance as technology?</p><p><strong>For me:</strong> I mentioned a free course to help people grapple with human-centered principles when starting an open social web platform. I also implied a worksheet that helps people test their assumptions with respect to their existing projects. These are things that don\u2019t require much capital to produce; I can build them.</p><p><strong>For all of us:</strong> Let\u2019s start a conversation about these principles. I\u2019d love to bring together mission-aligned funders, builders, and technologists to explore a real-world implementation of this model.</p><p>Those are my ideas: what are yours? How might we begin?</p><p>However we start, the exploration is worth it. The goal is to build a better internet: one where our platforms nurture communities instead of strip value from them, where we all enjoy privacy and safety, where diverse and vulnerable voices can find a home, and where nobody is locked into software produced by any particular vendor.</p><p>The open social web has enormous potential to reshape online discourse, but it can\u2019t thrive without sustainable, values-aligned funding. In this post, I\u2019ve proposed a dual-structure fund called <em>Pro-Social</em>, combining grants for nonprofits with flexible investment for startups, and designed to support diverse, human-centered founders. It\u2019s a thought experiment for now, but one I believe someone should build.</p><p>If we want a better web, we can\u2019t wait for someone else to build it. We have to fund it \u2014 and build the institutions to make that possible.</p>"
    },
    "author": {
        "type": "card",
        "name": "Ben Werdmuller",
        "url": "https://werd.io/profile/benwerd",
        "photo": "https://werd.io/file/5d388c5fb16ea14aac640912/thumb.jpg"
    },
    "post-type": "article",
    "_id": "44862653",
    "_source": "191",
    "_is_read": false
}

{
    "type": "entry",
    "author": {
        "name": "#webmention",
        "url": "https://mastodon.social/tags/webmention",
        "photo": null
    },
    "url": "https://mastodon.social/@fundor333/114540920358132938",
    "content": {
        "html": "<p>Adding new code for better control Brid.gy for post and micro stuffs.</p><p>This one is a test for the new code</p><p><a href=\"https://mastodon.social/tags/webmention\">#<span>webmention</span></a> <a href=\"https://mastodon.social/tags/bridgy\">#<span>bridgy</span></a></p>",
        "text": "Adding new code for better control Brid.gy for post and micro stuffs.\n\nThis one is a test for the new code\n\n#webmention #bridgy"
    },
    "published": "2025-05-20T15:42:22+00:00",
    "post-type": "note",
    "_id": "44862122",
    "_source": "8007",
    "_is_read": false
}

{
    "type": "entry",
    "author": {
        "name": "#indieweb",
        "url": "https://mastodon.social/tags/indieweb",
        "photo": null
    },
    "url": "https://social.lol/@digitalsnow/114540051059726118",
    "content": {
        "html": "<p>Meditations on Death | So It Goes...<br /><a href=\"https://notes.krueger.ink/meditations-on-death/\"><span>https://</span><span>notes.krueger.ink/meditations-</span><span>on-death/</span></a></p><p><a href=\"https://social.lol/tags/Meditations\">#<span>Meditations</span></a> <a href=\"https://social.lol/tags/Blogging\">#<span>Blogging</span></a> <a href=\"https://social.lol/tags/IndieWeb\">#<span>IndieWeb</span></a></p>",
        "text": "Meditations on Death | So It Goes...\nhttps://notes.krueger.ink/meditations-on-death/\n\n#Meditations #Blogging #IndieWeb"
    },
    "published": "2025-05-20T12:01:18+00:00",
    "post-type": "note",
    "_id": "44859940",
    "_source": "8007",
    "_is_read": false
}

{
    "type": "entry",
    "author": {
        "name": "#indieweb",
        "url": "https://mastodon.social/tags/indieweb",
        "photo": null
    },
    "url": "https://mstdn.io/@raffomania/114539329803953631",
    "content": {
        "html": "<p>Idea for a small web tool: a scanner that saves urls of every page it can find on your website and alerts you when some of the pages go missing (e.g. when a post is renamed). <br />The historic urls could be stored in version control, making the check a part of the normal build process.</p><p><a href=\"https://mstdn.io/tags/SmallWeb\">#<span>SmallWeb</span></a> <a href=\"https://mstdn.io/tags/blog\">#<span>blog</span></a> <a href=\"https://mstdn.io/tags/indieweb\">#<span>indieweb</span></a></p>",
        "text": "Idea for a small web tool: a scanner that saves urls of every page it can find on your website and alerts you when some of the pages go missing (e.g. when a post is renamed). \nThe historic urls could be stored in version control, making the check a part of the normal build process.\n\n#SmallWeb #blog #indieweb"
    },
    "published": "2025-05-20T08:57:52+00:00",
    "post-type": "note",
    "_id": "44858619",
    "_source": "8007",
    "_is_read": false
}

{
    "type": "entry",
    "author": {
        "name": "#indieweb",
        "url": "https://mastodon.social/tags/indieweb",
        "photo": null
    },
    "url": "https://mastodon.social/@inlinestyle/114536755725367696",
    "content": {
        "html": "<p>We wanted to play with <a href=\"https://mastodon.social/tags/framameme\">#<span>framameme</span></a> too, and decided to launch a super secret trial offer at 1\u20ac to celebrate <span class=\"h-card\"><a class=\"u-url\" href=\"https://framapiaf.org/@Framasoft\">@<span>Framasoft</span></a></span> great work.</p><p><a href=\"https://ko-fi.com/s/a4b9fc19bf\"><span>https://</span><span>ko-fi.com/s/a4b9fc19bf</span><span></span></a></p><p>Take the opportunity to <a href=\"https://mastodon.social/tags/degoogle\">#<span>degoogle</span></a> yourself and enjoy <a href=\"https://mastodon.social/tags/fediverse\">#<span>fediverse</span></a> services without any commitment, just a one time payment.</p><p><a href=\"https://mastodon.social/tags/buyeuropean\">#<span>buyeuropean</span></a> <a href=\"https://mastodon.social/tags/BuyEU\">#<span>BuyEU</span></a> <a href=\"https://mastodon.social/tags/email\">#<span>email</span></a> <a href=\"https://mastodon.social/tags/gaming\">#<span>gaming</span></a> <a href=\"https://mastodon.social/tags/peertube\">#<span>peertube</span></a> <a href=\"https://mastodon.social/tags/funkwhale\">#<span>funkwhale</span></a> <a href=\"https://mastodon.social/tags/music\">#<span>music</span></a> <a href=\"https://mastodon.social/tags/video\">#<span>video</span></a> <a href=\"https://mastodon.social/tags/nextcloud\">#<span>nextcloud</span></a> <a href=\"https://mastodon.social/tags/photos\">#<span>photos</span></a> <a href=\"https://mastodon.social/tags/storage\">#<span>storage</span></a> <a href=\"https://mastodon.social/tags/docs\">#<span>docs</span></a> <a href=\"https://mastodon.social/tags/IndieWeb\">#<span>IndieWeb</span></a></p>\n<a class=\"u-mention\" href=\"https://framapiaf.org/@Framasoft\"></a>",
        "text": "We wanted to play with #framameme too, and decided to launch a super secret trial offer at 1\u20ac to celebrate @Framasoft great work.\n\nhttps://ko-fi.com/s/a4b9fc19bf\n\nTake the opportunity to #degoogle yourself and enjoy #fediverse services without any commitment, just a one time payment.\n\n#buyeuropean #BuyEU #email #gaming #peertube #funkwhale #music #video #nextcloud #photos #storage #docs #IndieWeb"
    },
    "published": "2025-05-19T22:03:15+00:00",
    "photo": [
        "https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/114/538/706/639/528/118/original/0df642f0fe556c78.png"
    ],
    "post-type": "photo",
    "_id": "44857825",
    "_source": "8007",
    "_is_read": false
}

{
    "type": "entry",
    "author": {
        "name": "#indieweb",
        "url": "https://mastodon.social/tags/indieweb",
        "photo": null
    },
    "url": "https://caneandable.social/@WeirdWriter/114538245914542395",
    "content": {
        "html": "<p>If you liked Into a Memory, my feed URL is <a href=\"https://sightlessscribbles.com/feed.xml\"><span>https://</span><span>sightlessscribbles.com/feed.xm</span><span>l</span></a> <a href=\"https://caneandable.social/tags/RSS\">#<span>RSS</span></a> <a href=\"https://caneandable.social/tags/IndieWeb\">#<span>IndieWeb</span></a></p>",
        "text": "If you liked Into a Memory, my feed URL is https://sightlessscribbles.com/feed.xml #RSS #IndieWeb"
    },
    "published": "2025-05-20T04:22:13+00:00",
    "post-type": "note",
    "_id": "44857312",
    "_source": "8007",
    "_is_read": false
}

{
    "type": "entry",
    "author": {
        "name": "#indieweb",
        "url": "https://mastodon.social/tags/indieweb",
        "photo": null
    },
    "url": "https://caneandable.social/@WeirdWriter/114537537901465937",
    "content": {
        "html": "<p>Into a Memory <a href=\"https://sightlessscribbles.com/writing/nonfiction/20250514/\"><span>https://</span><span>sightlessscribbles.com/writing</span><span>/nonfiction/20250514/</span></a> <a href=\"https://caneandable.social/tags/IndieWeb\">#<span>IndieWeb</span></a> <a href=\"https://caneandable.social/tags/Blog\">#<span>Blog</span></a> <a href=\"https://caneandable.social/tags/Blogging\">#<span>Blogging</span></a> <a href=\"https://caneandable.social/tags/Blogs\">#<span>Blogs</span></a></p>",
        "text": "Into a Memory https://sightlessscribbles.com/writing/nonfiction/20250514/ #IndieWeb #Blog #Blogging #Blogs"
    },
    "published": "2025-05-20T01:22:10+00:00",
    "post-type": "note",
    "_id": "44856565",
    "_source": "8007",
    "_is_read": false
}

{
    "type": "entry",
    "author": {
        "name": "#indieweb",
        "url": "https://mastodon.social/tags/indieweb",
        "photo": null
    },
    "url": "https://social.lol/@digitalsnow/114537322305774521",
    "content": {
        "html": "<p>How I Use the Forever \u2731 Notes System in Obsidian</p><p><a href=\"https://notes.krueger.ink/how-i-use-the-forever-notes-system-in-obsidian/\"><span>https://</span><span>notes.krueger.ink/how-i-use-th</span><span>e-forever-notes-system-in-obsidian/</span></a></p><p><a href=\"https://social.lol/tags/ForeverNotes\">#<span>ForeverNotes</span></a> <a href=\"https://social.lol/tags/Obsidian\">#<span>Obsidian</span></a> <a href=\"https://social.lol/tags/IndieWeb\">#<span>IndieWeb</span></a></p>",
        "text": "How I Use the Forever \u2731 Notes System in Obsidian\n\nhttps://notes.krueger.ink/how-i-use-the-forever-notes-system-in-obsidian/\n\n#ForeverNotes #Obsidian #IndieWeb"
    },
    "published": "2025-05-20T00:27:20+00:00",
    "post-type": "note",
    "_id": "44856302",
    "_source": "8007",
    "_is_read": false
}

{
    "type": "entry",
    "author": {
        "name": "#indieweb",
        "url": "https://mastodon.social/tags/indieweb",
        "photo": null
    },
    "url": "https://xoxo.zone/@artlung/114536800066116844",
    "content": {
        "html": "<p><span class=\"h-card\"><a class=\"u-url\" href=\"https://social.lol/@mandaris\">@<span>mandaris</span></a></span> was seeing how straightforward it would be to replace the filter() based shadows on your site with box-shadow: seems good! You have mentioned it a few times in <a href=\"https://xoxo.zone/tags/IndieWeb\">#<span>IndieWeb</span></a> meetings. <a href=\"https://codepen.io/artlung/pen/MYYdQjR\"><span>https://</span><span>codepen.io/artlung/pen/MYYdQjR</span><span></span></a></p>\n<a class=\"u-mention\" href=\"https://social.lol/@mandaris\"></a>",
        "text": "@mandaris was seeing how straightforward it would be to replace the filter() based shadows on your site with box-shadow: seems good! You have mentioned it a few times in #IndieWeb meetings. https://codepen.io/artlung/pen/MYYdQjR"
    },
    "published": "2025-05-19T22:14:32+00:00",
    "post-type": "note",
    "_id": "44855491",
    "_source": "8007",
    "_is_read": false
}

{
    "type": "entry",
    "author": {
        "name": "#indieweb",
        "url": "https://mastodon.social/tags/indieweb",
        "photo": null
    },
    "url": "https://mastodon.social/@klausblog/114536044973776525",
    "content": {
        "html": "<p>Be a rebel, use RSS.</p><p><a href=\"https://mastodon.social/tags/Internet\">#<span>Internet</span></a> <a href=\"https://mastodon.social/tags/IndieWeb\">#<span>IndieWeb</span></a> <a href=\"https://mastodon.social/tags/RSS\">#<span>RSS</span></a> <a href=\"https://mastodon.social/tags/SmallWeb\">#<span>SmallWeb</span></a> <a href=\"https://mastodon.social/tags/Tech\">#<span>Tech</span></a></p>",
        "text": "Be a rebel, use RSS.\n\n#Internet #IndieWeb #RSS #SmallWeb #Tech"
    },
    "published": "2025-05-19T19:02:30+00:00",
    "post-type": "note",
    "_id": "44853832",
    "_source": "8007",
    "_is_read": false
}

{
    "type": "entry",
    "author": {
        "name": "#indieweb",
        "url": "https://mastodon.social/tags/indieweb",
        "photo": null
    },
    "url": "https://xoxo.zone/@artlung/114535849545537099",
    "content": {
        "html": "<p>I've taken some time on <span class=\"h-card\"><a class=\"u-url\" href=\"https://hachyderm.io/@reillypascal\">@<span>reillypascal</span></a></span>'s website navigation menu with no-JS challenge which we discussed not once, but twice at our <a href=\"https://xoxo.zone/tags/IndieWeb\">#<span>IndieWeb</span></a> Front End Study Hall and I think I have something worth considering. Includes a hamburger menu on mobile, and tab focusable links which can open the submenus. Uses :has and :focus-within along width zero-height menus. A solid first pass.</p><p>Also, the next <a href=\"https://xoxo.zone/tags/FrontEnd\">#<span>FrontEnd</span></a> Study Hall is tomorrow.</p><p>CodePen: <a href=\"https://codepen.io/artlung/full/raagwmm\"><span>https://</span><span>codepen.io/artlung/full/raagwm</span><span>m</span></a></p>\n<a class=\"u-mention\" href=\"https://hachyderm.io/@reillypascal\"></a>",
        "text": "I've taken some time on @reillypascal's website navigation menu with no-JS challenge which we discussed not once, but twice at our #IndieWeb Front End Study Hall and I think I have something worth considering. Includes a hamburger menu on mobile, and tab focusable links which can open the submenus. Uses :has and :focus-within along width zero-height menus. A solid first pass.\n\nAlso, the next #FrontEnd Study Hall is tomorrow.\n\nCodePen: https://codepen.io/artlung/full/raagwmm"
    },
    "published": "2025-05-19T18:12:48+00:00",
    "post-type": "note",
    "_id": "44853525",
    "_source": "8007",
    "_is_read": false
}

{
    "type": "entry",
    "author": {
        "name": "#indieweb",
        "url": "https://mastodon.social/tags/indieweb",
        "photo": null
    },
    "url": "https://xoxo.zone/@artlung/114535309350207962",
    "content": {
        "html": "<p>Make \u201cpersonal website\u201d a verb. <a href=\"https://xoxo.zone/tags/IndieWeb\">#<span>IndieWeb</span></a> <a href=\"https://xoxo.zone/tags/SmallWeb\">#<span>SmallWeb</span></a></p>",
        "text": "Make \u201cpersonal website\u201d a verb. #IndieWeb #SmallWeb"
    },
    "published": "2025-05-19T15:55:25+00:00",
    "post-type": "note",
    "_id": "44852117",
    "_source": "8007",
    "_is_read": false
}

{
    "type": "entry",
    "author": {
        "name": "#indieweb",
        "url": "https://mastodon.social/tags/indieweb",
        "photo": null
    },
    "url": "https://social.lol/@digitalsnow/114535025601155968",
    "content": {
        "html": "<p>\ud83d\udcdd Week Notes, No. 19.25 | So It Goes\u2026</p><p><a href=\"https://notes.krueger.ink/week-notes-no-1925-new/\"><span>https://</span><span>notes.krueger.ink/week-notes-n</span><span>o-1925-new/</span></a></p><p><a href=\"https://social.lol/tags/Blogging\">#<span>Blogging</span></a> <a href=\"https://social.lol/tags/WeekNotes\">#<span>WeekNotes</span></a> <a href=\"https://social.lol/tags/IndieWeb\">#<span>IndieWeb</span></a></p>",
        "text": "\ud83d\udcdd Week Notes, No. 19.25 | So It Goes\u2026\n\nhttps://notes.krueger.ink/week-notes-no-1925-new/\n\n#Blogging #WeekNotes #IndieWeb"
    },
    "published": "2025-05-19T14:43:15+00:00",
    "post-type": "note",
    "_id": "44851275",
    "_source": "8007",
    "_is_read": false
}

{
    "type": "entry",
    "author": {
        "name": "#indieweb",
        "url": "https://mastodon.social/tags/indieweb",
        "photo": null
    },
    "url": "https://kedara.social/@kedara_nl/statuses/01JVMB6AHB0DD1SP0D7YXS4Y7Q",
    "content": {
        "html": "<p>Ik vind het altijd erg leuk om verzamelingen van favoriete links van anderen te lezen. Daarom bij deze mijn verzameling \"knipsels\" van de afgelopen weken. Ik kwam erachter dat ik vooral veel Engelstalige blogs ken - als je een leuke tip hebt voor een Nederlandstalige site, dan hoor ik het graag!<br /><br /><a href=\"https://kedara.nl/knipsels/2025-04_05\">https://kedara.nl/knipsels/2025-04_05</a><br /><br />Onderwerpen: <a href=\"https://kedara.social/tags/persoonlijkweb\">#<span>PersoonlijkWeb</span></a> <a href=\"https://kedara.social/tags/filosofie\">#<span>Filosofie</span></a> <a href=\"https://kedara.social/tags/dao\">#<span>Dao</span></a> <a href=\"https://kedara.social/tags/gezondheid\">#<span>Gezondheid</span></a> <a href=\"https://kedara.social/tags/geschiedenis\">#<span>Geschiedenis</span></a> <a href=\"https://kedara.social/tags/taal\">#<span>Taal</span></a><br /><a href=\"https://kedara.social/tags/indieweb\">#<span>Indieweb</span></a> <a href=\"https://kedara.social/tags/blog\">#<span>Blog</span></a> <a href=\"https://kedara.social/tags/links\">#<span>Links</span></a></p>",
        "text": "Ik vind het altijd erg leuk om verzamelingen van favoriete links van anderen te lezen. Daarom bij deze mijn verzameling \"knipsels\" van de afgelopen weken. Ik kwam erachter dat ik vooral veel Engelstalige blogs ken - als je een leuke tip hebt voor een Nederlandstalige site, dan hoor ik het graag!\n\nhttps://kedara.nl/knipsels/2025-04_05\n\nOnderwerpen: #PersoonlijkWeb #Filosofie #Dao #Gezondheid #Geschiedenis #Taal\n#Indieweb #Blog #Links"
    },
    "published": "2025-05-19T13:19:38+00:00",
    "post-type": "note",
    "_id": "44850635",
    "_source": "8007",
    "_is_read": false
}

{
    "type": "entry",
    "author": {
        "name": "#indieweb",
        "url": "https://mastodon.social/tags/indieweb",
        "photo": null
    },
    "url": "https://indieweb.social/@thesmallweb/114534635821665346",
    "content": {
        "html": "<p>\u2764\ufe0f Monday Memes #10 \u2764\ufe0f </p><p>Making your own personal website is definitely cheaper, and WAY cooler than a little blue checkmark. Just sayin'. ;)</p><p>Happy Monday! \ud83e\udd2a</p><p>-<br /><span class=\"h-card\"><a class=\"u-url\" href=\"https://a.gup.pe/u/indieweb\">@<span>indieweb</span></a></span> <span class=\"h-card\"><a class=\"u-url\" href=\"https://a.gup.pe/u/smallweb\">@<span>smallweb</span></a></span> <span class=\"h-card\"><a class=\"u-url\" href=\"https://a.gup.pe/u/neocities\">@<span>neocities</span></a></span> #<a href=\"https://indieweb.social/tags/indieweb\">#<span>indieweb</span></a> #<a href=\"https://indieweb.social/tags/Memes\">#<span>Memes</span></a> #<a href=\"https://indieweb.social/tags/NekoWeb\">#<span>NekoWeb</span></a> #<a href=\"https://indieweb.social/tags/neocities\">#<span>neocities</span></a> #<a href=\"https://indieweb.social/tags/nostalgia\">#<span>nostalgia</span></a> #<a href=\"https://indieweb.social/tags/oldweb\">#<span>oldweb</span></a> #<a href=\"https://indieweb.social/tags/smallweb\">#<span>smallweb</span></a> #<a href=\"https://indieweb.social/tags/webdev\">#<span>webdev</span></a></p><p><a href=\"https://smallweb.thecozy.cat/blog/%E2%9D%A4%EF%B8%8F-monday-memes-10-%E2%9D%A4%EF%B8%8F/\"><span>https://</span><span>smallweb.thecozy.cat/blog/%e2%</span><span>9d%a4%ef%b8%8f-monday-memes-10-%e2%9d%a4%ef%b8%8f/</span></a></p>\n<a class=\"u-mention\" href=\"https://a.gup.pe/u/indieweb\"></a>\n<a class=\"u-mention\" href=\"https://a.gup.pe/u/neocities\"></a>\n<a class=\"u-mention\" href=\"https://a.gup.pe/u/smallweb\"></a>",
        "text": "\u2764\ufe0f Monday Memes #10 \u2764\ufe0f \n\nMaking your own personal website is definitely cheaper, and WAY cooler than a little blue checkmark. Just sayin'. ;)\n\nHappy Monday! \ud83e\udd2a\n\n-\n@indieweb @smallweb @neocities ##indieweb ##Memes ##NekoWeb ##neocities ##nostalgia ##oldweb ##smallweb ##webdev\n\nhttps://smallweb.thecozy.cat/blog/%e2%9d%a4%ef%b8%8f-monday-memes-10-%e2%9d%a4%ef%b8%8f/"
    },
    "published": "2025-05-19T13:04:08+00:00",
    "photo": [
        "https://files.mastodon.social/cache/media_attachments/files/114/534/635/876/903/667/original/a7e72658b4426e43.jpg"
    ],
    "post-type": "photo",
    "_id": "44850524",
    "_source": "8007",
    "_is_read": false
}

{
    "type": "entry",
    "author": {
        "name": "#indieweb",
        "url": "https://mastodon.social/tags/indieweb",
        "photo": null
    },
    "url": "https://mastodon.social/@arunkumargovinda/114534471465555832",
    "content": {
        "html": "<p>I have started to contribute to something larger: the IndieWeb. Read my new post on my blog about my journey to IndieWeb, and understanding the concepts of POSSE and Blogroll <a href=\"https://www.inkbalance.org/2025/05/some-stuff-on-blogging-indieweb-posse.html\"><span>https://www.</span><span>inkbalance.org/2025/05/some-st</span><span>uff-on-blogging-indieweb-posse.html</span></a><br /><a href=\"https://mastodon.social/tags/indieweb\">#<span>indieweb</span></a> <a href=\"https://mastodon.social/tags/POSSE\">#<span>POSSE</span></a> <a href=\"https://mastodon.social/tags/inkbalance\">#<span>inkbalance</span></a> <a href=\"https://mastodon.social/tags/blogger\">#<span>blogger</span></a></p>",
        "text": "I have started to contribute to something larger: the IndieWeb. Read my new post on my blog about my journey to IndieWeb, and understanding the concepts of POSSE and Blogroll https://www.inkbalance.org/2025/05/some-stuff-on-blogging-indieweb-posse.html\n#indieweb #POSSE #inkbalance #blogger"
    },
    "published": "2025-05-19T12:22:20+00:00",
    "post-type": "note",
    "_id": "44850079",
    "_source": "8007",
    "_is_read": false
}

Webfinger Reverse Discovery

{
    "type": "entry",
    "author": {
        "name": null,
        "url": "https://herestomwiththeweather.com/",
        "photo": null
    },
    "url": "https://herestomwiththeweather.com/2025/05/18/webfinger-reverse-discovery/",
    "published": "2025-05-18T14:49:22+00:00",
    "content": {
        "html": "<p>Activitypub addresses the problem of participating in a decentralized social network with a low barrier to entry. You participate through the server you have joined but often times the people you want to interact with reside on other servers. For instance, if you want to follow a friend, visiting that friend\u2019s url does not provide a simple follow button.  That simple follow button is on your own server but you need to navigate to your server\u2019s profile page for your friend who is on a remote server.  An easy way to do this is to perform a search on your friend\u2019s webfinger address which looks like an email address. Your server can make a <a href=\"https://www.w3.org/community/reports/socialcg/CG-FINAL-apwf-20240608/#forward-discovery\">forward discovery</a> request to ask for the url of your friend\u2019s actor document so that you can visit your server\u2019s profile page for your friend.</p>\n\n<p>Your server needs to do more than forward discovery to validate that the actor url actually belongs to the requested webfinger address in case the domain of the webfinger address is different than the domain of the actor url.  In this case, after fetching the actor url, your server needs to construct a 2nd webfinger address composed of the preferredUsername it found in the actor document followed by the domain of the actor url.  Your server can make a webfinger request to this 2nd address and use the response to verify that the subject matches the original webfinger address that you submitted in your search.  If they don\u2019t match, your server can display the profile associated with the 2nd address and ignore the original webfinger address since the validation failed.</p>\n\n<p>I wrote a <a href=\"https://github.com/herestomwiththeweather/irwin/commit/330765dc10054156cd26c397ed1973c93ed30760#diff-e66847e10576724ed355f062a794f1953374908bf08e248a62f3ccde6682de42R25-R34\">should use the custom domain</a> example spec to make sure the server can accommodate a custom domain different than the domain in the actor url.</p>\n\n<p>In the example spec, we are given bob@example.com whose webfinger points to an actor document at activitypub.test:</p>\n\n<pre><code>let(:bob_webfinger_info) { {\"subject\" =&gt; \"acct:bob@example.com\", \"links\"=&gt;[{\"rel\"=&gt;\"self\", \"type\"=&gt;\"application/activity+json\", \"href\"=&gt;\"https://activitypub.test/users/bob\" }]} }\n</code></pre>\n\n\n<p>It is not enough to fetch the actor document and assume bob is at activitypub.test.  Instead, <a href=\"https://docs.joinmastodon.org/spec/webfinger/#mastodons-requirements-for-webfinger\">as Mastodon does</a>, a reverse discovery should be performed by constructing a new WebFinger address by combining the preferredUsername from the actor document and the hostname of the id of the actor document.</p>\n\n<p>In the example spec, this new WebFinger address would be bob@activitypub.test and, in this case, the test host activitypub.test returns a webfinger response that confirms that the subject is bob@example.com that was requested with forward discovery.</p>\n\n<p>Another example spec <a href=\"https://github.com/herestomwiththeweather/irwin/commit/8f4b4f3abb8e47bd1c9d144439874f25ed6cf0c1#diff-e66847e10576724ed355f062a794f1953374908bf08e248a62f3ccde6682de42R61-R93\">should not use the custom domain if subject returned by activitypub server is different than the original subject</a> tests when george@example.com is not recognized by the host activitypub.test who george points his webfinger address to:</p>\n\n<pre><code>let(:george_webfinger_info) { {\"subject\" =&gt; \"acct:george@example.com\", \"links\"=&gt;[{\"rel\"=&gt;\"self\", \"type\"=&gt;\"application/activity+json\", \"href\"=&gt;\"https://activitypub.test/users/george\" }]} }\n</code></pre>\n\n\n<p>In this case, the validation fails because the host returns acct:george@activitypub.test in the 2nd webfinger request instead of acct:george@example.com so example.com is discarded and the domain of the account should fall back to activitypub.test.</p>",
        "text": "Activitypub addresses the problem of participating in a decentralized social network with a low barrier to entry. You participate through the server you have joined but often times the people you want to interact with reside on other servers. For instance, if you want to follow a friend, visiting that friend\u2019s url does not provide a simple follow button.  That simple follow button is on your own server but you need to navigate to your server\u2019s profile page for your friend who is on a remote server.  An easy way to do this is to perform a search on your friend\u2019s webfinger address which looks like an email address. Your server can make a forward discovery request to ask for the url of your friend\u2019s actor document so that you can visit your server\u2019s profile page for your friend.\n\nYour server needs to do more than forward discovery to validate that the actor url actually belongs to the requested webfinger address in case the domain of the webfinger address is different than the domain of the actor url.  In this case, after fetching the actor url, your server needs to construct a 2nd webfinger address composed of the preferredUsername it found in the actor document followed by the domain of the actor url.  Your server can make a webfinger request to this 2nd address and use the response to verify that the subject matches the original webfinger address that you submitted in your search.  If they don\u2019t match, your server can display the profile associated with the 2nd address and ignore the original webfinger address since the validation failed.\n\nI wrote a should use the custom domain example spec to make sure the server can accommodate a custom domain different than the domain in the actor url.\n\nIn the example spec, we are given bob@example.com whose webfinger points to an actor document at activitypub.test:\n\nlet(:bob_webfinger_info) { {\"subject\" => \"acct:bob@example.com\", \"links\"=>[{\"rel\"=>\"self\", \"type\"=>\"application/activity+json\", \"href\"=>\"https://activitypub.test/users/bob\" }]} }\n\n\n\nIt is not enough to fetch the actor document and assume bob is at activitypub.test.  Instead, as Mastodon does, a reverse discovery should be performed by constructing a new WebFinger address by combining the preferredUsername from the actor document and the hostname of the id of the actor document.\n\nIn the example spec, this new WebFinger address would be bob@activitypub.test and, in this case, the test host activitypub.test returns a webfinger response that confirms that the subject is bob@example.com that was requested with forward discovery.\n\nAnother example spec should not use the custom domain if subject returned by activitypub server is different than the original subject tests when george@example.com is not recognized by the host activitypub.test who george points his webfinger address to:\n\nlet(:george_webfinger_info) { {\"subject\" => \"acct:george@example.com\", \"links\"=>[{\"rel\"=>\"self\", \"type\"=>\"application/activity+json\", \"href\"=>\"https://activitypub.test/users/george\" }]} }\n\n\n\nIn this case, the validation fails because the host returns acct:george@activitypub.test in the 2nd webfinger request instead of acct:george@example.com so example.com is discarded and the domain of the account should fall back to activitypub.test."
    },
    "name": "Webfinger Reverse Discovery",
    "post-type": "article",
    "_id": "44847562",
    "_source": "246",
    "_is_read": false
}

{
    "type": "entry",
    "author": {
        "name": "#indieweb",
        "url": "https://mastodon.social/tags/indieweb",
        "photo": null
    },
    "url": "https://motley.club/display/d8230ed6-1768-2a77-f496-7d5623886247",
    "content": {
        "html": "<p>Do any <a href=\"https://motley.club/search?tag=Friendica\">#<span>Friendica</span></a> and <a href=\"https://motley.club/search?tag=Hugo\">#<span>Hugo</span></a> users have a strategy for automatically or semi-automatically cross-posting content from their site to Friendica?</p><p><a href=\"https://motley.club/search?tag=indieweb\">#<span>indieweb</span></a> <a href=\"https://motley.club/search?tag=POSSE\">#<span>POSSE</span></a> <a href=\"https://motley.club/search?tag=gohugo\">#<span>gohugo</span></a></p>",
        "text": "Do any #Friendica and #Hugo users have a strategy for automatically or semi-automatically cross-posting content from their site to Friendica?\n\n#indieweb #POSSE #gohugo"
    },
    "published": "2025-05-19T00:14:44+00:00",
    "post-type": "note",
    "_id": "44846321",
    "_source": "8007",
    "_is_read": false
}

{
    "type": "entry",
    "author": {
        "name": "#indieweb",
        "url": "https://mastodon.social/tags/indieweb",
        "photo": null
    },
    "url": "https://tilde.zone/@NeuroWinter/114531182396677746",
    "content": {
        "html": "<p>Pretty happy with how I\u2019m generating OG images for quotes on ArmitagesArchive.com.</p><p>I designed an SVG in Inkscape, swapped the text for HEEx vars, and used Elixir to render one SVG per highlight.</p><p>Then I convert them to PNGs using resvg (fast, handles fonts well), and rsync them to prod.</p><p>It\u2019s not fully automated yet \u2014 still thinking through how to make that part safe and clean. But overall, it works, and it looks the way I want: clean, no fluff, author credited.</p><p>PR: <a href=\"https://github.com/NeuroWinter/armitagesarchive/pull/21/files\"><span>https://</span><span>github.com/NeuroWinter/armitag</span><span>esarchive/pull/21/files</span></a><br /><a href=\"https://tilde.zone/tags/ElixirLang\">#<span>ElixirLang</span></a> <a href=\"https://tilde.zone/tags/OpenGraph\">#<span>OpenGraph</span></a> <a href=\"https://tilde.zone/tags/IndieWeb\">#<span>IndieWeb</span></a> <a href=\"https://tilde.zone/tags/SVG\">#<span>SVG</span></a> <a href=\"https://tilde.zone/tags/WebDev\">#<span>WebDev</span></a> <a href=\"https://tilde.zone/tags/SelfHosted\">#<span>SelfHosted</span></a> <a href=\"https://tilde.zone/tags/Typography\">#<span>Typography</span></a> <a href=\"https://tilde.zone/tags/Inkscape\">#<span>Inkscape</span></a></p>",
        "text": "Pretty happy with how I\u2019m generating OG images for quotes on ArmitagesArchive.com.\n\nI designed an SVG in Inkscape, swapped the text for HEEx vars, and used Elixir to render one SVG per highlight.\n\nThen I convert them to PNGs using resvg (fast, handles fonts well), and rsync them to prod.\n\nIt\u2019s not fully automated yet \u2014 still thinking through how to make that part safe and clean. But overall, it works, and it looks the way I want: clean, no fluff, author credited.\n\nPR: https://github.com/NeuroWinter/armitagesarchive/pull/21/files\n#ElixirLang #OpenGraph #IndieWeb #SVG #WebDev #SelfHosted #Typography #Inkscape"
    },
    "published": "2025-05-18T22:25:53+00:00",
    "post-type": "note",
    "_id": "44845810",
    "_source": "8007",
    "_is_read": false
}