Verci Manifesto 1.0
(Re-Published from Verci.com/manifesto)
VERCI
To the entrepreneurs, artists, creators and other misfits on the unconventional path… to those that aspire to do more than optimize ads or create pitch decks… to those who are trying to find their way but are lost in this new age: we see you.
Our mission is to unite and nurture the next generation of DaVincis. We will enable anyone to find community, resources, and mentorship to work on what they actually care about. To do this, we are building libraries of the future in every city around the world.
What are these Libraries of the Future? Verci Libraries will offer a space for tomorrow's generation to come together and thrive through collaboration. We curate a community that pushes you further. We guide you along the way with personal mentors tailored to helping you achieve your dreams. We bring resources and individualized curriculum + programming to help you upskill in whatever domain you want - from founding and funding a tech company, starting and launching a store, building and monetizing a TikTok brand, supporting and nurturing your studio or artist career… everything you need to build the career(s) you care about. Verci Libraries will be epicenters of innovation, weird career paths, ambitious purpose and social belonging that we have lost in the world today.
Innovation doesn’t occur in isolation. Within every dynamic society throughout history, libraries and cultural collision spaces acted as the central points where creators and thinkers converged to catalyze growth, invention, and debate.
Today, our society’s social and educational functions are broken, and visionaries are slipping through the cracks.
Universities were supposed to be catalysts for modern sociocultural and technological growth. They are the closest thing we have to this ideal library, but the fantasy of what a college should be can no longer meet the realities of today. Meanwhile, other unconventional paths in life can be lonely and lack the infrastructure for continued lifelong learning and social growth.
Our education model is broken, and visionaries are slipping through the cracks.
As a society, we no longer build our futures by dancing around the edges of possibility. We no longer instill dreaming nor the pioneering spirit. We are stifling the identity of our generation by pushing a constraining success track upon the most creative and talented, forcing them to give up what makes them unique. If bright, promising students are fortunate enough to think about college, they’re quickly nudged to start prioritizing SATs only to continue studying for 4 years, pick a ‘prestigious’ job, grind the corporate ladder, wait for that promotion, and spend their lives living out a script. This conveyor belt chips away at the vitality and vision of shining eyes and passionate hearts, leaving the shell of an individual without a meaningful calling to wake up to every day. If this generation’s Einstein is working on optimizing the For You page engagement, we’re hopelessly and utterly, doomed.
The college model is an outdated outline for success
College encourages conformity and lacks the agility to nourish individual talent and passion. Cookie cutter curriculum molds ‘round pegs into square holes’ through bureaucratic syllabi and outdated career advising contingent on the alumni network’s strength. This tradition of filing into defined career paths with a promise of a job afterwards is pushing more people with the ability to change the world away from what they are meant to do and towards a life of complacency.
Society is not optimized for social connection
Even though we live in dense environments and are more digitally connected than ever before, Gen Z is facing a loneliness epidemic. Our social institutions attempt to create social hubs - and they often succeed- but they are not oriented around lifelong connections and belonging. Moreover, many of the social pillars are built around exclusivity and legacy.
The unconventional path is lonely
The evolutionary desire for stability and predictability is deeply rooted in us all. Those who take the leap from college into an untraditional path often feel like they are stepping into a bottomless void with no support or community. Many of those bold enough to test these waters with gap years or entrepreneurial career paths ultimately realize they don’t want to forfeit the social infrastructure that colleges provide.
Lifelong learning is the exception, not the norm
Today’s educational system drops young adults into the unknown with little resources to keep learning. Everyone feels a plateauing social and professional growth post-college because there are few resources for feeding curiosities or discovering new ones. Even the most ambitious, self-driven learners struggle to find resources, structure, and community to keep that love of learning alive.
SHIFTING TIDES WITH YOUNGER GENERATIONS:
Today’s youth are more empowered than ever before.
We have unprecedented access to tools and resources that were traditionally gate kept by institutions and information scarcity. With Google and YouTube - you can learn anything. With maker spaces you can build anything. With social media - you can reach anyone. These innovations, among others, have made the raw ability to upskill, pursue one’s dreams, and impact the world easier than ever. However, even with technologies that make it easier to share, younger generations have never been more isolated. We are facing a crisis in building authentic, real-world communities as we head into the future of digital connection and information. Face-to-face ideating and inspiration are key to ensure builders and creators feel fulfilled, supported, and hopeful.
The desire to follow and unconventional paths themselves are becoming widespread.
Gap years are becoming increasingly common, and unconventional people are more frequently dropping out to become a creator, build startups, or pursue any number of new paths the information revolution has made possible. Young people are now recognizing opportunities they didn’t know were available to them as the internet mints so many new, unorthodox career paths. Since the fall of 2019, undergraduate enrollment has dropped 6.6%. Out of the country’s 2.6 million students who started college then, 26% didn’t come back the next year. Even as more people take the individualized leap of faith, the developmental amenities of college and traditional career are still a major drawback to the conventional path.
The world is globalizing, and academics don’t fit the nomadic lifestyle.
Remote work catalyzed a new framework of looking at the world and longer-term lifestyle. People are learning that diversity of experiences in different environments has a major impact on one’s life. From the extremes of van-lifers to the more remote-friendly jobs that unlock new travel, living, and working options, the nomadic future is closer than ever before. At the same time, educational institutions are failing at flexible learning models.
A Library of the future:
At Verci, we want to reorient society around continuous knowledge building and principles of community that are fragmented today. We believe learning should never end and that physical community is at the foundation of what turns free information into skills and real action. Community and belonging is the missing link that will allow our society to unlock our potential to build era-defining missions, organizations, and companies. To do this, we are constructing the libraries of the future in cities around the world that serve as a locus for visionaries to meet and new innovations to flourish. We begin this quest by asking what a library looks like when designed for the needs of tomorrow.
Libraries are social infrastructure
What does it mean when access to knowledge and learning power is actually based on the people around you? How can we build a library that optimizes for aligned social connections and allows smart minds to collide? In a well designed community, 1+1 does not equal 2 but snowballs into infinity. Most importantly, how can a library serve as a place for realigning our lifestyles around intimate, intention-aligned circles and our tribalistic need for belonging?
Libraries are a learning environment for autodidacts defining the future.
We believe the ultimate learning environment blends this foundational community with physical space, resources, and individualized programming relevant for autodidactic innovators to explore in their unique ways. The future will not be built by people that can follow curriculum well but by individuals with the agency to take advantage of the free information that now exists. By providing low friction tools to explore anything - experts in residence, professional resource libraries, studio and maker tools - libraries can be the place to go when you don’t know where to start.
Libraries are local cultural hubs
Libraries should be heavily contextualized by their surroundings; they reflect the history, culture, and identity of the community it is in. They honor the city’s greatest innovations while nurturing its potential future. By serving as the congregation point for local visionaries that may have felt out of place and being the platform for grassroots programming, the library becomes a community asset and provides positive externalities.
Libraries are nodes in a global network-state.
To support our ever globalizing society, Verci will balance each campus’s unique touch with a broad network effect guaranteeing members can feel at home wherever they may find themselves today in the world, and uniquely, wherever they may see themselves tomorrow. A self-starter should be able to land in Shanghai or Berlin, and still have the comfort of an ethos-aligned community while being introduced to the unique cultural and social landscape of the city.
Finally, libraries are the first pillar of a knowledge campus.
Libraries are the first seeds in the vision of a truly learning and optimism oriented city. When we plant a new Verci Library, a campus and knowledge centered economy will spring up around it to provide resources and an ecosystem that caters to a new kind of lifestyle. These are the first steps toward a society centered around conscious growth, passionate living, and social belonging.
In periods of darkness and catastrophe, humanity bends towards a period of rebirth and new possibility. The Black Plague was followed by the Enlightenment. The Vietnam War with Woodstock and the counterculture movement. And with Covid-19, our generation came to a critical juncture where we were forced to step off the career conveyor belt, question the status quo, and begin looking for learning alternatives better suited to our personal needs. Communities saw collective awakenings, upheaval, and demands for social change. Time at home gives individuals the opportunity to feel what we as human beings need: intimate social circles that are deeply rooted to our identities. People had more time to explore and focus once again on the dreams they had put on the sidelines. We’ve peeked through the curtains and have seen what life could be. This is our chance to emerge stronger, more unified, and more optimistic than ever before. We could catalyze the Renaissance of our age.
We cannot allow this moment of clarity and spark of renewal go to waste. This is our generation’s chance to seize a moment of collective awakening, grasp the blank slate, and reforge our world to the needs of tomorrow. In the words of Winston Churchill, “Never let a good crisis go to waste”.
Library Node 1: Union Square NYC
As we embark on this journey to redefine exploration and build for unconventional paths, we could use help in 3 areas:
VERCI
To the entrepreneurs, artists, creators and other misfits on the unconventional path… to those that aspire to do more than optimize ads or create pitch decks… to those who are trying to find their way but are lost in this new age: we see you.
We know traditional institutions are holding people like you back and that following your dreams can seem lonely and intimidating. That is why we are building this for you. Welcome to Verci.
Our mission is to unite and nurture the next generation of DaVincis. We will enable anyone to find community, resources, and mentorship to work on what they actually care about. To do this, we are building libraries of the future in every city around the world.
What are these Libraries of the Future? Verci Libraries will offer a space for tomorrow's generation to come together and thrive through collaboration. We curate a community that pushes you further. We guide you along the way with personal mentors tailored to helping you achieve your dreams. We bring resources and individualized curriculum + programming to help you upskill in whatever domain you want - from founding and funding a tech company, starting and launching a store, building and monetizing a TikTok brand, supporting and nurturing your studio or artist career… everything you need to build the career(s) you care about. Verci Libraries will be epicenters of innovation, weird career paths, ambitious purpose and social belonging that we have lost in the world today.
HISTORY
Innovation doesn’t occur in isolation. Within every dynamic society throughout history, libraries and cultural collision spaces acted as the central points where creators and thinkers converged to catalyze growth, invention, and debate.
- Aristotle and his students used to gather and discuss in the Lyceum library
- The Tianye Ge Library served as the birthplace of many Confucian ideas from philosophical conversations
- Ancient India’s Nalanda University was a beacon for traveling scholars across the region.
- The oldest recorded library - the Library of Ashurbanipal - propelled the Assyrian Empire's military prowess
- The Bauhaus Dessau library inspired a design revolution by colliding students.
- The French Revolution and the Age of Enlightenment was born through discussions in Parisian Salons
- The Acropolis was a central monument that fed Greek culture and community.
- The library of Alexandria wasn’t just a collector's hold: they had communal dining halls, brainstorming areas, presentation rooms.
TODAY
Today, our society’s social and educational functions are broken, and visionaries are slipping through the cracks.
Universities were supposed to be catalysts for modern sociocultural and technological growth. They are the closest thing we have to this ideal library, but the fantasy of what a college should be can no longer meet the realities of today. Meanwhile, other unconventional paths in life can be lonely and lack the infrastructure for continued lifelong learning and social growth.
Our education model is broken, and visionaries are slipping through the cracks.
As a society, we no longer build our futures by dancing around the edges of possibility. We no longer instill dreaming nor the pioneering spirit. We are stifling the identity of our generation by pushing a constraining success track upon the most creative and talented, forcing them to give up what makes them unique. If bright, promising students are fortunate enough to think about college, they’re quickly nudged to start prioritizing SATs only to continue studying for 4 years, pick a ‘prestigious’ job, grind the corporate ladder, wait for that promotion, and spend their lives living out a script. This conveyor belt chips away at the vitality and vision of shining eyes and passionate hearts, leaving the shell of an individual without a meaningful calling to wake up to every day. If this generation’s Einstein is working on optimizing the For You page engagement, we’re hopelessly and utterly, doomed.
The college model is an outdated outline for success
College encourages conformity and lacks the agility to nourish individual talent and passion. Cookie cutter curriculum molds ‘round pegs into square holes’ through bureaucratic syllabi and outdated career advising contingent on the alumni network’s strength. This tradition of filing into defined career paths with a promise of a job afterwards is pushing more people with the ability to change the world away from what they are meant to do and towards a life of complacency.
Society is not optimized for social connection
Even though we live in dense environments and are more digitally connected than ever before, Gen Z is facing a loneliness epidemic. Our social institutions attempt to create social hubs - and they often succeed- but they are not oriented around lifelong connections and belonging. Moreover, many of the social pillars are built around exclusivity and legacy.
The unconventional path is lonely
The evolutionary desire for stability and predictability is deeply rooted in us all. Those who take the leap from college into an untraditional path often feel like they are stepping into a bottomless void with no support or community. Many of those bold enough to test these waters with gap years or entrepreneurial career paths ultimately realize they don’t want to forfeit the social infrastructure that colleges provide.
Lifelong learning is the exception, not the norm
Today’s educational system drops young adults into the unknown with little resources to keep learning. Everyone feels a plateauing social and professional growth post-college because there are few resources for feeding curiosities or discovering new ones. Even the most ambitious, self-driven learners struggle to find resources, structure, and community to keep that love of learning alive.
SHIFTING TIDES WITH YOUNGER GENERATIONS:
Today’s youth are more empowered than ever before. We have unprecedented access to tools and resources that were traditionally gate kept by institutions and information scarcity. With Google and YouTube - you can learn anything. With maker spaces you can build anything. With social media - you can reach anyone. These innovations, among others, have made the raw ability to upskill, pursue one’s dreams, and impact the world easier than ever. However, even with technologies that make it easier to share, younger generations have never been more isolated. We are facing a crisis in building authentic, real-world communities as we head into the future of digital connection and information. Face-to-face ideating and inspiration are key to ensure builders and creators feel fulfilled, supported, and hopeful.
The desire to follow and unconventional paths themselves are becoming widespread.
Gap years are becoming increasingly common, and unconventional people are more frequently dropping out to become a creator, build startups, or pursue any number of new paths the information revolution has made possible. Young people are now recognizing opportunities they didn’t know were available to them as the internet mints so many new, unorthodox career paths. Since the fall of 2019, undergraduate enrollment has dropped 6.6%. Out of the country’s 2.6 million students who started college then, 26% didn’t come back the next year. Even as more people take the individualized leap of faith, the developmental amenities of college and traditional career are still a major drawback to the conventional path.
The world is globalizing, and academics don’t fit the nomadic lifestyle.
Remote work catalyzed a new framework of looking at the world and longer-term lifestyle. People are learning that diversity of experiences in different environments has a major impact on one’s life. From the extremes of van-lifers to the more remote-friendly jobs that unlock new travel, living, and working options, the nomadic future is closer than ever before. At the same time, educational institutions are failing at flexible learning models.
FUTURE
A Library of the future:
At Verci, we want to reorient society around continuous knowledge building and principles of community that are fragmented today. We believe learning should never end and that physical community is at the foundation of what turns free information into skills and real action. Community and belonging is the missing link that will allow our society to unlock our potential to build era-defining missions, organizations, and companies. To do this, we are constructing the libraries of the future in cities around the world that serve as a locus for visionaries to meet and new innovations to flourish. We begin this quest by asking what a library looks like when designed for the needs of tomorrow.Libraries are social infrastructure
What does it mean when access to knowledge and learning power is actually based on the people around you? How can we build a library that optimizes for aligned social connections and allows smart minds to collide? In a well designed community, 1+1 does not equal 2 but snowballs into infinity. Most importantly, how can a library serve as a place for realigning our lifestyles around intimate, intention-aligned circles and our tribalistic need for belonging?
Libraries are a learning environment for autodidacts defining the future.
We believe the ultimate learning environment blends this foundational community with physical space, resources, and individualized programming relevant for autodidactic innovators to explore in their unique ways. The future will not be built by people that can follow curriculum well but by individuals with the agency to take advantage of the free information that now exists. By providing low friction tools to explore anything - experts in residence, professional resource libraries, studio and maker tools - libraries can be the place to go when you don’t know where to start.
Libraries are local cultural hubs
Libraries should be heavily contextualized by their surroundings; they reflect the history, culture, and identity of the community it is in. They honor the city’s greatest innovations while nurturing its potential future. By serving as the congregation point for local visionaries that may have felt out of place and being the platform for grassroots programming, the library becomes a community asset and provides positive externalities.
Libraries are nodes in a global network-state.
To support our ever globalizing society, Verci will balance each campus’s unique touch with a broad network effect guaranteeing members can feel at home wherever they may find themselves today in the world, and uniquely, wherever they may see themselves tomorrow. A self-starter should be able to land in Shanghai or Berlin, and still have the comfort of an ethos-aligned community while being introduced to the unique cultural and social landscape of the city.
Finally, libraries are the first pillar of a knowledge campus.
Libraries are the first seeds in the vision of a truly learning and optimism oriented city. When we plant a new Verci Library, a campus and knowledge centered economy will spring up around it to provide resources and an ecosystem that caters to a new kind of lifestyle. These are the first steps toward a society centered around conscious growth, passionate living, and social belonging.
FUTURE RENAISSANCE
In periods of darkness and catastrophe, humanity bends towards a period of rebirth and new possibility. The Black Plague was followed by the Enlightenment. The Vietnam War with Woodstock and the counterculture movement. And with Covid-19, our generation came to a critical juncture where we were forced to step off the career conveyor belt, question the status quo, and begin looking for learning alternatives better suited to our personal needs. Communities saw collective awakenings, upheaval, and demands for social change. Time at home gives individuals the opportunity to feel what we as human beings need: intimate social circles that are deeply rooted to our identities. People had more time to explore and focus once again on the dreams they had put on the sidelines. We’ve peeked through the curtains and have seen what life could be. This is our chance to emerge stronger, more unified, and more optimistic than ever before. We could catalyze the Renaissance of our age.
We cannot allow this moment of clarity and spark of renewal go to waste. This is our generation’s chance to seize a moment of collective awakening, grasp the blank slate, and reforge our world to the needs of tomorrow. In the words of Winston Churchill, “Never let a good crisis go to waste”.
OUR NEXT STEPS:
Library Node 1: Union Square NYC
- Applications for founding members are now open
- We are launching a learning campus targeted towards unconventional builders & entrepreneurs who have either dropped out or want to extend the growth and social environment beyond college
- For Season 0 membership (Oct - Dec) we’ve built a unique, fellowship-style program packed with events, challenges, and experiences for the community to gather. From weekly potlucks and game nights, to a retreat and sleepovers in the library. From fireside chats and workshops with local studios, to parties and a full social calendar of events. This is the chance to be part of our founding community.
- This is also an opportunity to help us build our home base together. Take off your shoes when you enter and step into a space that’s a blank canvas of possibility. Let’s re-paint the walls, roll out the rugs, curate the tiny decorations and details, and grow plants. Bring home the craziest spoons so we have the most unique spoon drawer ever. Venture into the city and find cozy lamps that will spread golden warmth throughout the annex. Put up your mark and make this space ours.
- This is a space to test our hypothesis while creating a scalable and repeatable model for Verci campuses around the world.
As we embark on this journey to redefine exploration and build for unconventional paths, we could use help in 3 areas:
- People: if you - or anyone you know - feels aligned with this mission and wants to be part of a world that nurtures exploration and unconventional paths, reach out! We are looking for:
- Cofounders and builders
- Mentors & Advisors
- Investors
- Philanthropists
- Physical Spaces + Financing: We believe fully in the power of in-person and the magical collisions that come from bringing ambitious interdisciplinary people together. If you know anyone that would be willing to invest, donate to our mission, or help us build these spaces for our future community, we’d love to talk.
- Keep Dreaming: If this is a future you want to see, if you also grew up in a place without the support, peers, or space to chase after your daring dream, remain hopeful and passionate because change is on the horizon. Join us and let’s build this vision together :)