History
How we got here.
Where the work started
Loneliness, named as a public-health emergency.
In May of 2023, the US Surgeon General issued an advisory titled Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation. The Advisory treated disconnection as a public-health problem with measurable consequences on morbidity, mortality, civic life, and workplace function. Similar statements followed in the United Kingdom, in Japan, and across the European Union.
None of that was new. The seriousness of the language was. When a Surgeon General uses the word epidemic, the rest of us are permitted to stop treating the problem like a lifestyle issue.
The premise
A community platform as a public good.
There are two ways to build software that addresses loneliness. One is to build it as a product, take venture capital, grow engagement, and sell attention to advertisers. The other is to build it as a public good: free at the core, bound by a charter, and paid for by the people who benefit from it and the institutions that want to.
The first model has been tried. It makes the problem worse, on the record, in every independent study we have read. The second model is what the Foundation exists to test.
Why a Foundation
Why the hybrid structure, and not a startup.
A for-profit with good values can be sold or recapitalized and lose them. A nonprofit without operating discipline cannot ship software that keeps up. The hybrid structure we chose splits those risks: the Foundation holds the mission and the charter; the subsidiary holds the engineers and the payroll.
This is not a new invention. Mozilla Corporation sits under the Mozilla Foundation. Signal Messenger, LLC sits under the Signal Technology Foundation. The Wikimedia Foundation funds MediaWiki. The shape is well-understood by nonprofit counsel and by the IRS. We are not improvising; we are picking the right tool.
The things we most want to be permanent are locked into the Foundation charter, where a future board cannot quietly unwind them. Everything else is policy. That split is the single most important architectural decision the organization has made.
Where we are now
Pre-launch, with charter in drafting.
Nonprofit counsel has been engaged. The charter language is in late drafting. Board recruitment is underway. The first capital campaign is scoped. The subsidiary is already building: the flagship Elitesgen app, the Academy and Active arms, the enterprise wellbeing work. The timeline below is the public version of the schedule we are running.
Timeline
The schedule, in the open.
2023
The Surgeon General called it an epidemic.
Loneliness and social disconnection were named a public-health emergency in the United States. Similar statements followed in the UK, Japan, and across the EU. The underlying finding was not new; the seriousness of the language was.
2024 – 2025
We started sketching the shape of a platform.
A long run of reading, building, and arguing about what a connection platform owes the people who use it. The premise that hardened: software can help, but only if it refuses to extract from the people it serves. That ruled out the for-profit playbook.
2026 · Q1
The hybrid structure was decided.
A 501(c)(3) foundation to hold the mission, a taxable subsidiary to run engineering and commerce. The same shape Mozilla, Wikimedia, and Signal arrived at for broadly similar reasons: to keep the core free, to keep the charter binding, to attract and pay good people without having to sell the mission to exit it.
2026 · Q2
Incorporation and 501(c)(3) filing.
Nonprofit counsel engaged. Charter drafted. Foundation incorporated in Delaware. IRS Form 1023 filed. Contribution agreement transferring intellectual property to the Foundation, licensed back to the subsidiary.
2026 – 2027
First board, first capital campaign, public launch.
Board of Directors seated. Founding capital campaign closed. Elitesgen launches publicly as the flagship product of the Foundation. Membership tiers open. The first annual report follows at fiscal year end.
Precedent
We are not the first to choose this shape.
Signal Messenger chose it so the app would not need to take ads. Mozilla chose it so Firefox could resist the browser market’s monetization pressure. Wikimedia chose it so Wikipedia would stay free and ungated. Each one looked at the commercial ladder, judged the mission unlikely to survive it, and made the split we are making. We have read their 990s and their bylaws. The particulars are ours; the architecture is theirs.
The work continues in the open.
Our year-by-year reporting, financials, and program outcomes are all published as they happen. Read the mission, or help fund the founding years.