Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins and Diana Frappier built Promise into a billion-dollar company helping governments be more frugal and helpful rather than more lethal.
Where this was said
At 17:40 · chapter starts 16:40
Theory becomes practice in this segment as Jones offers four vivid proof-points. Andre Part, formerly incarcerated, teamed up with engineers to build Untapped Solutions — a LinkedIn for people with criminal records, now deploying AI agents to support social workers [1] — Van Jones "Andre Part built something Silicon Valley never would have thought to: a professional network for formerly incarcerated people. Now it's de…" 17:15 . Noelle Sudbury, a lawyer, is using AI to automatically expunge prison records. Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins and Diana Frappier built Promise into a billion-dollar company helping government be more frugal and humane rather than more lethal. And Tajiel Smith's Rapport, backed by Reid Hoffman, uses AI to raise EQ inside organizations rather than just IQ. Capping the list is John Hope Bryant's Hope AI, targeting 1 billion people becoming AI-literate in 10 years. Together these examples answer the skeptic: the incubators, venture studios, and funds that pair grassroots knowledge with engineering talent already exist. The blueprint just needs to be scaled.
Andre Part, formerly incarcerated, partnered with engineers to build Untapped Solutions, a LinkedIn-style platform for formerly incarcerated people, now deploying AI agents to assist social workers.
Andre Part built something Silicon Valley never would have thought to: a professional network for formerly incarcerated people. Now it's deploying AI agents to help social workers. This is what pairing grassroots knowledge with engineering talent actually looks like.
Promise is a billion-dollar company using AI to help governments be more frugal and helpful rather than more lethal. It's one of Jones's clearest examples that pairing engineers with people who know the community produces solutions no purely technical team would find.
John Hope Bryant's Hope AI initiative aims to make 1 billion grassroots people AI-literate within the next 10 years to enable broader economic participation.
John Hope Bryant launched Hope AI with the goal of making 1 billion grassroots people AI-literate in the next 10 years. The goal isn't just inclusion — it's unleashing the next wave of companies from communities that power has long overlooked.
The answer is simple to state and hard to do: tech needs less greed and speed, more sharing and caring; activists need less shame and blame, more space and grace. Put those together and you get a movement with enough magic to become the ancestral intelligence of the future.
Sam built Algrow from zero to $14,000 in monthly revenue within just six months of shipping his first MVP.
Algrow reached over 10,000 users in roughly six months, driven almost entirely by organic Discord community growth.
Sam acquired his first 400 users entirely through Discord communities, without paid advertising or traditional outreach.
Algrow added exactly 480 new paying customers in its most recent month, demonstrating strong ongoing growth.
Sam's Stripe dashboard showed over £10,000 in revenue in the last four weeks, equivalent to roughly $13,000–$14,000 USD.
Sam gave all early users free access so they could show the tool to friends, turning them into live demos and advocates who helped the product spread virally.
By silently screen-sharing his tool in Discord voice chats rather than posting links, Sam attracted curiosity without violating no-self-promo server rules.
Before building Algrow, Sam and two friends made over $10,000 in revenue through affiliate marketing for RizzApp by posting faceless texting story content.
Bhanu grew SiteGPT to $13,000 monthly recurring revenue entirely through organic channels, spending nothing on paid marketing.
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