The first cheque funds the Sprint.
UnitedPeoples is being built now, while building is still possible. The institutions we have were not designed for a hundred million people acting together, and UP is designed for exactly that. It is also designed to be funded in stages, with philanthropic funds, so that no stage is paid for until the one before it has passed its review.
Thirteen weeks
Six months, to D-Day at Month 9
Months 10 to 36
What the Sprint is
The Sprint begins once the first cheque lands. For thirteen weeks, a cohort of around twenty-two specialists, working in The Hague and remotely, turns the design into something builders can start on. It produces three things: a complete and tested design, the launch team in place, and the plan for the six-month Build. There are reviews at Week 4 and Week 8, and at Week 13 the Build decision is made.
What Week 13 decides
Every review has three outcomes: Go, No-Go or Refine. Go means the next stage begins, and No-Go means the programme pauses. Refine means the issues are named, a short revision window is set and a re-review date is fixed. Refine is the most common outcome, and it is the point of the review. A review that only ever says yes is a ceremony. Nothing beyond the Sprint is committed until the Sprint has passed.
What comes next
Build is six months and about €11.5 million. The leadership team is hired, UP HUB v1 and NAVi v1 are built, and the first three GlobalCircles open: Business & Social Economics, Government Politics & Public Sector, and Sustainability Climate & Food. The institution then launches publicly on D-Day, at the Peace Palace (TBC) in The Hague, nine months after the Sprint begins.
Deploy is the next twenty-seven months and about €174 million. All fifteen GlobalCircles go live by the end of Year 2, and the LocalCircles programme launches in Month 27. By the end of Year 3, the path to a hundred million members is in plain view.
This is founding capital for an institution, raised as philanthropic funds. It is not venture capital, because there is no return to an investor and the operating company’s profit covenant is binding. It is not a grant, because it is not a project to be reported on each year. It is the capital that stands an institution up, so that from the end of Year 3 its own economy can begin to carry it.
What UP asks of a venture philanthropist is what it asks of itself: commit to the mission, and accept that the way there will change as it is tested.
Where it leads
By 2035, UP is designed for a hundred million members, running millions of Projects a year, with an economy of its own. The Numbers page shows the model and every assumption behind it.
Talk to Bob.
R.J. (Bob) Westrope · Founder, Chairman, Acting CEO · The Hague
