Rafe Furst | accelerating possibilites

Cancer Cure
Black Swan
Short List

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It’s cancer’s inconvenient truth that despite the trillions (with a “t”) of dollars spent trying to cure it, there has been no statistical progress on that goal over the last 60 years. During the same period, heart disease mortality has gone down by two thirds.

Barack Obama at rally in Charlotte, North Carolina talking about the death of his grandmother after battling cancer. NOV 08 | AP PHOTO

Age-adjusted deaths chart per 100,000 population.

This is unacceptable. We should be doing better. We need to be doing better. So what’s the problem? And more importantly, how can we fix it?

The main barrier to progress is a downstream effect of our antiquated education system, which insists on segmenting the world into smaller and more narrow disciplines with no regard to the way the pieces fit together. Another barrier is the natural human tendency to oversimplify the complexity that is inherent in the real world.

I’m working on a documentary to galvanize a shift in the cancer research and funding communities by reaching a general audience and educating them about the lack of progress we’ve made on curing cancer, and bring to light insights from the fringes of cancer research that need to be incorporated into the mainstream.

Related Posts and Information

The Black Swan, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Taleb posits that Black Swan Events are impossible to predict, so we must build systems to cope with their inherent randomness. This lack of predictability inspired me to develop investing models to maximize the number of investments in order to capture an elusive Black Swan.
Black Swan Fund: Advice of Counsel

The attorney for my new company advised me that I should be careful about what I disclose to the public about the company’s activities. The company operates in a highly regulated field. Evidently, any open discussion of what the company does, especially of any offerings it may or may not hypothetically be considering, could be construed as a solicitation.
Investing in Superstars

Imagine you are in your early twenties, out of college several years and your best friend, who recently came into an inheritance of $300K cash told you they could think of no better way to invest the money than to invest it in you. Not the company you started, not as a loan, but invest it in YOU, as if you were a startup. In return your friend said all they wanted was 3% of your gross income for the rest of your life. Do you think you would take it?
Equity Micro/Nano Investing

There is a gap that exists between two groups: 1) People of my generation (40 and older) who have capital they want to invest in innovation but only know the VC for-profit-only value model and don’t have any true view into or understanding of social entrepreneurship business models; and 2) People coming out of college today (27 and younger) who are actually creating untold value for the world without taking on investors because they don’t (a) know how to attract them, and (b) have heard too many horror stories. This gap represents a very real (and lucrative) investment opportunity if it can be closed properly.

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Inspired by Nassim Nicholas Taleb's book The Black Swan, some friends and I have begun to rethink how to most effectively fund innovation, whether it be purely for profit, not-for-profit or social entrepreneurship.more

17^th century Europeans believed all swans were white. A "black swan" denoted something that couldn’t possibly exist. The subsequent discovery of black swans shifted the meaning to a presumed impossibility that may actually happen.

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I help make good things happen faster by making connections between people, ideas and resources.

For entrepreneurial ventures, I help startups reach their potential faster through technology consulting, strategic consulting and sometimes angel investing.

For social and philanthropic efforts, I help bring business principles and practices into play to achieve the best of both worlds.

As a scientist, I follow my intellectual curiosity and challenge orthodoxies to help remove roadblocks for primary researchers, regardless of the particular field they are studying.

Featured Projects

BugleMe

BugleMe is a creating a new media revolution by connecting celebrities with their fans like never before. BugleMe empowers celebrities to create and deliver audio messages to all of their fans instantly. Fans can interact with celebrities through text, audio, chat and by uploading videos.
iTripTV

iTripTV is a full-service interactive marketing company that helps destinations engage with consumers across all digital media platforms. As partners with many of the world’s premiere destinations, iTripTV combines interactive marketing expertise with a data-driven understanding of consumer travel trends to leverage the latest customized technology to help destinations maximize their return on investment.

Cancer
I became interested in cancer as a worthy philanthropic cause through the Ultimate Sports Adventure. Via my work with Prevent Cancer Foundation I also became fascinated with the science of cancer as well as the sociological, political and economic forces surrounding that science.

Prevent Cancer Foundation

The Prevent Cancer Foundation funds research that helps us understand how to prevent cancer; educates the public about how to prevent cancer; and reaches out to communities across the country through resources, events and partnerships with other organizations. I have served on the Board of Directors since 2005.
Bad Beat on Cancer

Bad Beat on Cancer^™ encourages amateur and professional poker players to pledge just one percent of their winnings to the Prevent Cancer Foundation as a tax-deductible donation. In just six years, Bad Beat on Cancer has raised over $2 million for cancer prevention research.
Cancer Complexity Group

Cancer is an extremely complex phenomenon that spans multiple levels of organization (biochemical, genetic, genomic, metabolic, cellular and so on) and involves multiple timescales (evolutionary, developmental, circadian, etc). I formed this group to bring together thinkers from different disciplines to cross-pollinate knowledge and create insights that have yet to be explored.
Documentary Film

As a society we spends $10 billion each year on trying to find a cure for cancer, yet the data shows that you are just as likely to die from cancer (on an age-adjusted basis) as you were 1950. I'm making a film to help us understand the complexity of the disease and to shift our thinking to hopefully break this tragic deadlock.
Ultimate Sports Adventure

"Two Guys in a Monster RV on the Greatest Road Trip in Sports History!" I was one of those two guys.

Black Swan Investing
Inspired by Nassim Nicholas Taleb's book The Black Swan, some friends and I have begun to rethink how to most effectively fund innovation. See the BLACK SWAN tab above for more. Here are some investments I've made using the Black Swan philosophy:

Right Side Capital Managment

This is the so-called "Black Swan Fund" based on theory and data from Taleb's book. Like most angels, we are focusing on the seed stage. But most individual angels only do about 1 deal per year and thus they lose money 40% of the time (insufficient diversification). Right Side's first fund is designed to do 125-250 deals per year, which is supported by deep mathematical analysis. Plus we will give entrepreneurs an offer (or rejection) just two weeks instead of the average 9 months.
Growthink

Co-founder, Jay Turo, has read and written more business plans than anyone I know. As a consulting organization, Growthink sees thousands of innovative ideas, and their job is to turn these ideas into good business strategies. I recently invested to help create an internally managed capital pool to make equity investments in the best ventures that come out of the Growthink process.
"Marge"

Marge is my first equity investment in a person, using the Personal Investment Contract that Phil Gordon and I created.
Seeking Happily Ever After

If you think picking early winners in technology is hard, try funding a movie production! I did not invest for financial return but rather to support the project, which I believe has huge social value. I also happen to strongly believe in Kerry David. The deal is structured to accelerate the project while returning my original investment quickly.
The Feast Microsponsorship

The Feast is all about accelerating the creation of black swans projects in social entrepreneurship. By becoming a micro-sponsor, I not only get the benefit of attending (which I would have anyway) but I'm investing in the return of social good by allowing superstars to attend who otherwise couldn't afford it. My first year (2009) my sponsorship went to bring Daniela Papi back from Cambodia to attend. After getting to know Daniela I'm convinced that it was an extremely high-leverage investment.
Idea Project

Similar to The Feast but with an LA twist, Idea Project used to be called "TED>LA" (which should give you an idea of how transformative it is). In addition to supporting Idea Project financially, I'm involved in several Idea Project initiatives, including the Wish Initiative (think "People's Choice" TED Prize Wish) and the Idea Salon.
By/Association [Pending]

With the help and feedback of my blog community, I've created a new type of vehicle for nano investments. I'm in negotiations with By/Association to be the first nano investment.
Michael Karnjanaprakorn [Pending]

Michael is one of the main catalysts of the social entrepreneurship scene in NY, which is to say he's one of the leaders in the U.S. as well. We both believe a Personal Investment Contract makes sense and we're figuring out the details to try to get a deal done in early 2010.

Science 2.0
As great as the Western scientific tradition has been for humanity's advancement, there are entire classes of truths that are unreachable via reductionism and disciplinary science alone. To be complete, the scientific method needs to include (at the very least) a bottom-up/emergent calculus as well as whole-systems/integrative reasoning. The collateral effects of Science 1.0's myopia will eventually overshadow its accomplishments unless this shift happens.

Truth Markets

Truth Markets is a concept to employ the power of financial markets to the problem of determining truth or falsity of public claims (like those from politicians or news agencies) as well as a way to measure the "truthiness" of people who make public claims. I'm looking for people/companies to partner with who have the technology resources to build one or more prototype systems with the eventual goal of making a working market system with big money at stake.
Incentive Prizes

Robin Hanson explains in this paper [PDF format] why the grant system won out over prizes for funding innovative work, and why that's not necessarily a good thing for science or society. I am interested in creating new prize models for scientific innovation, especially those that leverage crowdsourced funding and crowdsourced award determination.
Simulation

The book Complex Adaptive Systems makes the case that simulation is a critical tool for uncovering scientific truths and should be an integral part of the scientific method. I am working with one of the authors (John Miller) and two friends (David Kullmann and Samy Kamkar) on a vastly scoped, open-ended simulation of organic/social phenomena. I believe that the power of simulation has yet to be fully realized and that most simulation efforts are tragically flawed because they have a top-down driven goal or hypothesis. We are looking to set up life-like systems and see what emerges....
Visualization

I am in desperate need of collaboration with talented visualization designers for Science 2.0 concepts. If you are interested in helping, please email me.

Education 2.0
For reasons related to the need for Science 2.0, there is a growing consensus that educational system in the U.S. and elsewhere is (a) broken; and (b) not going to be fixed from the top down. Ken Robinson and Liz Coleman talk about some of the problems. I'm working with a few groups to lend my thinking and resources to the problem, from the bottom up.

Decision Education Foundation

Most of us believe we are good decision makers, at least when it comes to our own personal lives. But have any of us actually learned the science and practice of decision making in a school setting? Decision Education Foundation is about improving lives with better decision skills. I am a strategic advisor to DEF and participate in fundraising efforts. To understand why we could all stand to improve our decision skills, watch DEF Board Member Annie Duke's talk from The Feast conference.
Self Enhancement, Inc.

Self Enhancement, Inc. is dedicated to guiding underserved youth to realize their full potential. Working with schools, families, and community organizations, SEI provides opportunities for personal and academic success, bringing hope to individual young people and enhancing the quality of community life. For the past 25 years they have refined a model that has transformed academic and civic achvievement in Portland. I am advising SEI on how to replicate their success across the country.
Windward School

I attended Windward from 7th to 12th grade and without a doubt it was the single most formative positive force in my life after my family. What's exciting to me now is that Windward has kept all the good elements that I remember and loved about it, while maturing into a tour de force that is setting the pace and reinventing what secondary education can be. I will be working with Windward in the years to come on pushing the envelope and spreading the successful models to other schools and environments.

Legal 2.0
Rules are meant to be broken, but more importantly, rules are meant to be changed once they are not working to achieve their original goal. For those who are skeptical of the ability of the system to be changed from the bottom up, take a look at the quiet momemntum of the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.

Personal Investment Contracts

The U.S. legal system (and others based on it) makes it very difficult for me to help someone get a leg up in their business career and fully share in the fruits of their financial success. The Personal Investment Contract is one way to remedy this by allowing me to make a bet on someone I believe in and receive a small portion of their income in perpetuity. No, this is not "indentured servitude", and yes I've actually done this with someone. I've put the contract in the public domain if you'd like to use it. Click on the link above and you will see the whole story.
Nano Investment Option Contracts

I've simiplied the legalities to a two-page option agreement with the leader of a pre-company project, to invest in the company if and only if it materializes. The option is to invest at a discount to the valuation set after certain milestones have been achieved. My plan is to do many of these in the $1K to $10K range in the future.
Better Voting Systems

Shouldn't we be using all this nifty information technology to make our voting systems work better? Why not crowdsource election verification: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. And here's a longer term vision.
Alternative Governance

I have a theory of why political parties emerge and I wonder how the negative aspects of political parties can be ameliorated. I also wonder whether we can do better than democracy....
Class Action Crowdsourcing

While I think the litigious culuture in America is a downward spiral, I believe class action suits are a very positive thing. They balance the power that is inherently skewed towards the organization over the individual. It would be a good thing if class actions were easier to vet and try without lawyers getting all the rewards. If you want to help me work on this, let me know!

Social Innovation
Innovation is the manifestation of truth into real-world systems. And while I feel that truth-seeking is inherently a good thing, innovation without a social conscience is often destructive. This is why I am so passionate about "social innovation" and why I no longer excited by activities that are done purely for profit motives. Ironically, I have found that the less I think about where the money is going to come from, and the more I focus on helping others, the more money-making opportunities come my way.

Ideas Conferences

I am a shameless proselytizer of TED and Pop!Tech talks online to my friends and colleagues. I am even more crazy about attending these and other such gatherings in person, including Idea Project The Feast and Mindshare. The positive benefit on the world of this full-blown movement is staggering, underappreciated, and only just beginning.
Accelerators

There are several key accelerators in the social innovation universe that I have had the pleasure of working with. Some of my favorites are Echoing Green, StartingBloc and Unreasonable Institute. Who else wants to work with me? Let's accelerate!
AllDayBuffet.com

I am an advisor to All Day Buffet whose mission is to change the world through creativity and business. They put things into the world that make it a better place. These include The Feast Conference, By/Association, and projects such as the NewYork100.
Trace Marine

I also advise Trace Marine which is dedicated to making the quality of our marine environment safe for the world's future generations. Trace provides a solution to marine hazardous waste management by integrating exclusive EPA approved products and services in a multi-tiered system that has been specifically designed to eliminate hazardous waste discharge from vessels.

Poker
I've played a lot of poker in my life, starting when I was in middle school. It's been a very positive thing. I've learned how to think better and act more maturely. It's brought me lifelong friends and camaraderie. I've won some money, both for myself and for charity. I've won a World Series of Poker Bracelet. I've gotten to a final table dressed in drag. What more could I ask for?

Full Tilt Poker

I'm a "red pro" at Full Tilt Poker. Come play with me!
Tiltboys

This is my home game. We've been playing together since college (over 20 years ago) and somehow delivering bad beats to each other never gets old. We've written a lot about the game and our adventured, including this book.
Poker Theory and Education

I've published a number of articles and essays on how to improve your game. Here are some that are freely available here, here and here. For more in depth poker teaching, see my chapters in the Full Tilt Poker Strategy Guide and the award-winning Final Table Poker DVD from Expert Insight which I Executive Produced.
Poker Media

I've done dozens of poker-related media appearances, as a player, as an interviewee and also as an interviewer. A bunch can be found on YouTube and on the Expert Insight podcasts here and here.
Bad Beat on Cancer Advisory Council

We started the BBoC Advisory Council in the summer of 2009. The Council is comprised of over 30 members with diverse backgrounds, all of whom have exhibited tremendous support for Prevent Cancer Foundation in their poker endeavors over the years.
Poker Players Alliance

I'm an avid support of the PPA which is the advocacy group fighting for your right to play poker in the U.S. Did you know that there is no federal law tht prohibits anyone from playing poker online? Would you like to keep it that way? Support the PPA!
Poker Skill vs Luck Project

I'm working with a bunch of top poker players and academics on demonstrating empirically the relative amounts of skill vs luck in poker.

Movies/Video

Expert Insight

Expert Insight is an award-winning educational media company that connects world-class experts with everyday people who are seeking to expand their knowledge and improve their abilities. I co-founded EI and was Executive Producer on three of the five titles.
My Date With Drew

Investor
Vampires Anonymous

Investor
Mercy Streets

Investor

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I help make good things happen faster by making connections between people, ideas and resources. For entrepreneurial ventures, I help startups reach their potential faster through technology consulting, strategic consulting and sometimes angel investing.

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