Praxis locked in $525,000,000 of financing last month to build a new city
This week, I flew to the Dominican Republic to join their first “World Congress”
Honestly some of it was very surprising, but what everybody probably wants to know: is this thing actually legit?
Most people probably aren’t super well acquainted so here are some high level numbers:
- They have over 80,000 people from across the world that have applied to become citizens
- Of the people who have been accepted they have built companies worth over $400,000,000,000 collectively
Ok so big numbers, but did the people who flew to this “World Congress” actually match that profile?
Honestly, yes.
A few thousand people applied to fly out and join this “World Congress” but only a few hundred were accepted. I mostly was interested in learning more about the types of person who would fly to the Dominican Republic for this so I spent a lot of time meeting people and learning more about their stories. Some examples of the people I met:
- The founder of a multi-billion dollar venture fund
- A person who consults nation states on their nuclear strategy as part a nuclear advisory group they are on at MIT
- Entrepreneurs with multiple successful prior exits
+ many others like this
Ok so, interesting crowd, but wtf? Are they actually going to build a city?
The thing is, this was actually a discussion I had with many people who attended — are they actually going to be able to pull this thing off? I honestly think that’s the wrong question to ask though. I am currently building my second company. Are we going to actually be able to achieve the things we are aspiring to? Maybe, we haven’t reached our end goals, but we are making solid progress.
That I think is the lens people should be evaluating Praxis from, so let’s look from a pragmatic lens on where they’re at today:
- Their first big win was that they raised ~$20m from top tier VCs like Paradigm, and even Sam Altman has exposure
- They locked in a $525,000,000 financing deal recently
- They convinced hundreds of people to fly to the Dominican Republic to join them in the first multi-day pop up city.
So is that a city? No, it’s not. But it’s also obviously not nothing.
There is obviously an insane amount of work and effort that would go into something as massive scale as the construction of a new city, but what I think they have provably succeeded in so far is their ability to build a community of like-minded, and often highly successful people who are down to put in the effort to fly from across the world to be together for a few days.
I live in NYC because of the people. It is a dirty & chaotic city but I gladly put up with it because I love the hunger and ambition of the people who live in NYC. From this weekend, it’s clear that Praxis is capable of providing a comparable, probably even more dense value prop in that sense.
That’s my take — if people are curious to hear about any specifics of what went down this week hit me in the replies and I’m happy to give more details.
This week, I flew to the Dominican Republic to join their first “World Congress”
Honestly some of it was very surprising, but what everybody probably wants to know: is this thing actually legit?
Most people probably aren’t super well acquainted so here are some high level numbers:
- They have over 80,000 people from across the world that have applied to become citizens
- Of the people who have been accepted they have built companies worth over $400,000,000,000 collectively
Ok so big numbers, but did the people who flew to this “World Congress” actually match that profile?
Honestly, yes.
A few thousand people applied to fly out and join this “World Congress” but only a few hundred were accepted. I mostly was interested in learning more about the types of person who would fly to the Dominican Republic for this so I spent a lot of time meeting people and learning more about their stories. Some examples of the people I met:
- The founder of a multi-billion dollar venture fund
- A person who consults nation states on their nuclear strategy as part a nuclear advisory group they are on at MIT
- Entrepreneurs with multiple successful prior exits
+ many others like this
Ok so, interesting crowd, but wtf? Are they actually going to build a city?
The thing is, this was actually a discussion I had with many people who attended — are they actually going to be able to pull this thing off? I honestly think that’s the wrong question to ask though. I am currently building my second company. Are we going to actually be able to achieve the things we are aspiring to? Maybe, we haven’t reached our end goals, but we are making solid progress.
That I think is the lens people should be evaluating Praxis from, so let’s look from a pragmatic lens on where they’re at today:
- Their first big win was that they raised ~$20m from top tier VCs like Paradigm, and even Sam Altman has exposure
- They locked in a $525,000,000 financing deal recently
- They convinced hundreds of people to fly to the Dominican Republic to join them in the first multi-day pop up city.
So is that a city? No, it’s not. But it’s also obviously not nothing.
There is obviously an insane amount of work and effort that would go into something as massive scale as the construction of a new city, but what I think they have provably succeeded in so far is their ability to build a community of like-minded, and often highly successful people who are down to put in the effort to fly from across the world to be together for a few days.
I live in NYC because of the people. It is a dirty & chaotic city but I gladly put up with it because I love the hunger and ambition of the people who live in NYC. From this weekend, it’s clear that Praxis is capable of providing a comparable, probably even more dense value prop in that sense.
That’s my take — if people are curious to hear about any specifics of what went down this week hit me in the replies and I’m happy to give more details.
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