Today's businesses and technologies create conditions that exploit our nature and challenge our well-being.
Businesses prioritize shareholder interests with a relentless "move fast and break things" mentality, favouring quantity over quality and contributing to overconsumption that harms the health of individuals, communities and our environment.
Technologies are accelerating the digitization of our lives, reshaping culture and identity, while the real-world human experience struggles to adjust. "For-pleasure" algorithms in advertising, social media, gaming, addictive apps, and "on-demand" services introduce significant new harms: Social perfectionism, overconsumption, instant gratification that weakens our resilience which all leading to increased levels of stress and anxiety.
Our very nature is being hacked by these systems, leading to constant feelings of disconnection, distress, doubt, and dissatisfaction—what we call the “D state.”
At Ways of Being, we believe that in the absence of this constant disruption, people can flourish in the “C state,”– feeling connected, calm, confident, and content.
Our mission is to replace existing systems with social enterprises and technologies that are for-society over for-profit with the primary goal of cultivating well-being–using the “C state” as our North Star.
– Buckminster Fuller
Two optimistic social innovators united by the power of connection, a curiosity of the human psyche, and a strong belief that beneath the layers, we are all innately good!
Co-Founder
I learned firsthand that technology can play a significant role in cultivating well-being when using Noom, an app that leverages Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) with no in-person interactions. Through this, I lost 10 kg in 12 months. But more importantly, I found myself and developed a resilient mindset that positively impacted all aspects of my life, allowing me to feel authentically self-confident for the first time. During this time, I became aware of the existing systems that emphasize the problem as “self-control” at the same time as serving pleasure-selling advertising models that encourage impulsive addictive behaviour and overconsumption.
8yrs working on startups and the innovation space, leading the strategy and development of disruptive consumer technology has taught me that the power to drive change lies with the owners of these systems. They can be extremely effective in encouraging new behaviours, but too few prioritize our well-being or at least attempt to acknowledge or avoid the negative effects.
This must change; now.
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Ex Sr-Product Manager at Article (Canada's fastest-growing startup)
Ex Vital AI (#1 AI ER Patient Experience Platform)
Ex-Engineer, Ex-Product Designer
Co-Founder
I'm putting myself out there in a way that I had wished the world would have been when I grew up. When I was young I was really afraid of the world, thinking that I was too soft for it, not ready for it. So I really had to enjoy kindergarten and school because afterwards, it would suck.
And today, what I'm trying to do is find people who are excited about different ways of being and relating in the world to co-create towards that shared vision together. To lead with compassion, empathy, and vulnerability by not only seeing each of us as individuals but also in connection with each other, so we can form partnerships/collectives to create services and products that genuinely help individuals and groups of people improve their well-being.
Coach
Ex-AdTech Founder
Bkgd in Psychology, Journalism
We’re currently exploring some big ideas that cultivate and design for the “C State”– feeling connected, calm, confident and content.
Collaborate With Us
To connect to the world you must first connect to yourself.
Digital communication, now our primary interaction, lacks emotion and empathy and confuses even the most deeply connected human beings. The acceleration of human-to-AI interactions introduces further challenges like ChatGPT’s confirmation bias or LinkedIn's direct messaging automation continuing to create a gap between “online me” and “real me” distancing us from authentic human experiences.
We start... by re-designing one of the most important human connections one would make in their life – finding love. In an online world where dating apps fail to encourage authentic interactions instead are designed for pleasure using a quantity-over-quality model.
How might we... Find deep and authentic connections in a digital-first world?
Just because it’s simple, doesn’t mean it’s easy.
We live in a stressful, demanding, distracting and busy world where we’re constantly being sold new solutions and perspectives but we’re stuck constantly trying to implement change but fail to see long-lasting positive effects - yo-yo in dieting – great for-profit driven business models but not for your well-being.
We start... by integrating evidence-based techniques from psychology and therapy into daily life for the “busy and stressed” people focusing on personalized and adaptive learning methods that increase self-awareness and self-regulation to enable people to access calm, on demand.
How might we... Develop emotional self-regulation in an ever-changing world?
We put well-being first and live by principles for business that focus on people, drive equity and connection, and ensure technology is implemented in safe ways.
Working in service of people is at the heart of everything we do, with compassion and collaboration we believe the future must be co-created with a deeper empathy for both employees (those involved in the value chain) and the public (those we’re designing to help).
Equity seeks first to understand the interconnectedness of people to their communities and the planet, then serves to balance the value of change on all levels to create non-zero sum-game structures.
Critical today is leveraging the power of technology to build and scale any business but it must be done in a safe way that considers ethics, predictability, transparency, education, consent and privacy.
We prioritize social benefit over shareholder value by building PBCs (Public Benefit Corporations) to ensure our commitment and impact is transparent by measuring and sharing publicly.
We develop principal-led services and technologies that elevate well-being with mental health experts, healthcare providers and social innovators.
Explore Partnership
Specializing in mental health we partner with KOLs, therapists, psychotherapists, behaviour scientists and life coaches to integrate modern science into people-centred solutions that elevate the well-being.
We enable healthcare experts and professionals, educational Institutes and organizations to develop and disrupt existing markets to scale their impact with technology in safe ways.
We enable motivated and impact-driven investors—angels, VCs, and advisors—to co-create and scale social enterprises that prioritize well-being by balancing impact with financial returns.
We collaborate with impact-driven founders, social entrepreneurs and technology innovators to co-create this new world by developing technology, apps or services that prioritize, measure and increase well-being.
