Matt Abrams

Founding Partner

2023 - Current

Advising, Educating, Investing and Partnering on solutions that promote trust → strengthen Democracy → economic returns & resiliency Trust is at the core of healthy Democracies vs autocracies, oligarchies, and ultimately anarchy. And critically, trust --and our Democracies-- are in need of repair (investments). Investments include, but are not limited to, solutions that: ✅ strengthen the integrity, quality, and transparency (IQT) of our information and information environments ✅ improve our discourse & dialogue and reduce "us vs them" ✅ provide the foundational backbone for effective civic services ✅ implement policies & incentive structures that support the aforementioned and incentivize the attributes and investments critical for trust

Principal

2020

Advising, investing in, and supporting the people, companies, and causes that will "leave it better."

Advisory Board, Digital Safety Research Institute (DSRI)

2023

Digital Safety Research Institute (DSRI), launched in February 2022 as a new UL research institute, works to thoroughly understand and mitigate the risks that big data, machine learning, artificial intelligence (AI), and autonomous systems may pose. DSRI aims to partner with other safety-minded organizations to help protect individuals from rapidly evolving digital threats. As part of UL Research Institutes, DSRI researches methods to increase public safety in the digital ecosystem. Our research is focused in three topic areas: Safety Education DSRI will provide continuous safety education and tools needed to empower the public to better protect themselves and demand safer systems. Safety Testing DSRI will prototype advanced independent, dynamic, testing tools to provide the public with up-to-date safety labels for digital systems and test the prototypes. Safer Designs DSRI will prototype safer tech stacks and tools needed to seed the next generation safer digital ecosystem and test the prototypes.

Franchise Owner

2023

Peace, justice, love, authenticity, integrity…bringing happiness to everyone…for profit

Board Member

2023

Upgrading the Operating System of Democracy: Jury duty for civic issues DemocracyNext is an international non-profit, non-partisan research and action institute. Our mission is to build new institutions for the next democratic paradigm of citizen participation, representation, and deliberation. We want to create a more just, joyful, and collaborative future where everyone has meaningful power to shape their societies. We believe that by tapping into the ideas, energy, and collective wisdom of everyone, we will be able to better address societal challenges, overcome polarisation, and strengthen trust. We work to design and establish new institutions for government and to transform the governance of organisations that influence public life, rooted in three principles: 1. Giving people agency and dignity through participation; 2. Distributing equal political power through representation by lot (sortition), and 3. Channeling collective wisdom and enabling people to find common ground through deliberation. The goal of DemocracyNext is to see such institutions have real political power, rather than just an advisory role, so that they could eventually become the heart of a new democratic system.

Investor & Advisor

2023

Clarity is an AI and Cyber startup on a mission to preserve trust. The company is set to mitigate the risks that DeepFakes pose to society, to businesses, and consumers, providing clarity for people to distinguish between authentic and hyperrealistic Generative AI media. Our technology and platform is designed to create adaptive, explainable detection at scale in order to promote the integrity of digital interactions, ensure critical information workflow of business, strengthen the resilience of our critical democratic institutions, and secure public faith in the democratic electoral process.

Investor

2023

Ad Fontes rates the news for reliability and bias. We's on a mission to positively transform media and society. Ad Fontes Media is incorporated as a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC) in Colorado. The stated public benefit of Ad Fontes Media is tthe same as its mission. Ad Fontes is Latin for “to the source,” because at the heart of what Ad Fontes Media does is look at the source—analyze the very content itself—to rate it.

Board Chair

2023

Advisor & Investor

2021

Advisor

2023

Task Force Member, Georgetown Law's Center on National Security

2021

The Center’s NatSec Tech incubator’s pilot project – Social Media & Tech 360: Innovation, Security, & Governance – will address a range of risks and opportunities emanating from social media, including disinformation campaigns, online extremist organizing, regulatory gaps and the privatization of public oversight. Task Force members include experts from diverse backgrounds and experiences, including from the legislative, judicial, and executive branches of the US government, technology companies, traditional and next generation media, law, finance, civil society, and academia. Members are contributing in their individual capacities.