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.
Where this was said
At 17:15 · 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 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.
Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins and Diana Frappier built Promise into a billion-dollar company helping governments be more frugal and helpful rather than more lethal.
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's initial MVP was coded in approximately one week using ChatGPT voice mode and copy-pasting code, with no prior technical experience.
Sam argues Discord is 10x better than email for building relationships with younger users who rarely check their inbox.
Sam's monthly operating costs include Cursor ($200), AI image generation ($100), AI video generation ($200), hosting ($100), email marketing ($80), and AI compute ($300–$500).
Sam recommends copying days of Discord chat history into ChatGPT and prompting it to list recurring pain points as a fast, free market research technique.
Bhanu and his team built approximately 50 free tools to attract search traffic, each linked back to SiteGPT.
With AI coding tools like Cursor, Bhanu can now create a new free marketing tool in less than 5 minutes by referencing existing tools.
Bhanu filters Ahrefs keyword results to show only those with a keyword difficulty below 10, making them realistic ranking targets for any decent website.
Bhanu sets a minimum search volume of 1,000 monthly searches when selecting keywords to target with free tools.
PropGPT averaged 20 downloads per day right after launching on the App Store through influencer marketing.
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