Questions Answered

At Arcspring (arcspring.com), we pride ourselves on not only answering questions but uncovering questions that haven’t yet been asked. Questions that can transform companies, sectors, and entire industries. We look at things differently and use new perspectives to create valuable change across our portfolio.

Recently, the firm was presented with a series of questions that circled around the concept and proper deployment of team management, and I felt our unconventional mindset could help uncover some atypical answers for many of them.

How do we accelerate the process of building mutual trust?

The creation and building of mutual trust have always been time-consuming processes. A “feeling out” of two entities as they study the results of small initiatives that contribute to an overall opinion. One of our colleagues helped build a trust engine that looked at the “digital wake” people give off as they travel online. From there, he and his team used these various metrics to build a quantifiable trust score. Quick and effective, this "social credit score" can be used to know how trustworthy your Uber driver is and/or whether the potential date you’re speaking with online is actually whom they say they are.

How do I see people more clearly?

The repercussions of COVID have led all of us to retreat inward. We hide behind digital walls and invented online personas. But true transparency is attainable through conversation. Recently, a company called “I Think Therefore I Question” has created a series of cards that ask deep, unusual, and incredible questions that help break down barriers and get personal without feeling intrusive.

Can we create algorithms to assess people’s credibility and assign decision space to those with the highest credibility?

Everything is quantifiable. But credibility, especially when it comes to making decisions, is both quantifiable and intention-based. Sure, we could easily create a win/loss calculation and give more space to those with more checkmarks in the win column, but what were those wins? What drove those decisions? What was the beneficial power behind them? Intentions are hard to assign numbers to, but we feel those with positive intentions add to their overall credibility score. In other words, we’d prefer decisions by someone acting in the firm’s and world's best interest over someone who is acting in their own self-interest.

What’s the best way to organize and align principals and agents across a team of teams?

It would be easy to use experience to evenly spread-out principals and agents across a team of teams, but it helps to have individuals who possess different core qualities to help shape a team. We’ve identified the following characteristics in employees that, when combined, help create a successful team that works well together and creates incredible results:

Leader – respected, excited, and with an excellent grasp of the “big picture.”

Computer – analytical, binary, and able to see the spaces between the numbers.

Driver – well-organized, task-oriented, and able to keep things on track.

Creator – unconventional, dreamer, and one who is driven by the need to build something.

Heart – passionate, devoted, and a utility player fueled by the project's success.

What’s the next wave of alternative investment partnerships going to look like?

This is the bread and butter of our thesis at Arcspring. We firmly believe that alternative investment partnerships are built on “bringing the next to now.” There are still analog companies out there untouched by the digital world. Arcspring partners with them to bring them into the future and not only creates incredible value creation opportunities but prevents them from falling further behind.

If capitalism is the first rogue AI, how can we organize people who are skilled at operating in the financial markets to help channel that rogue AI so that we don’t wreck our planet?

With the recent GME/Robinhood dustup, it looks as if the rogue AI is attempting to self-correct. We often think about the moment in Jurassic Park when the warden speaks about the velociraptors looking for vulnerabilities in the system. At a macro-level, this is what the folks on WallStreetBets were trying to do: exploit the flaws while showing what needs to be corrected. We should fund these small players – empower them to look at the systems controlling the health of our world and help us steer the ship away from the iceberg.

How do we prepare our children for the increasingly chaotic future, which may or may not have jobs, a stable climate, or democracy?

We need to reorganize our education system. While there will always be an imperative need for the true basics, we also need to create an educational foundation that supports practical futures. Increase STEM learning and computer programing instruction. Teach students about investing and money management. Rely on science and facts to build a core-curriculum that doesn’t sugarcoat our past. And, most importantly, pose the question: how will you fix the future?

What are the best tools to quiet the nervous system and ego and see reality clearly?

Take a hike. Literally. Want to feel how small you are in the world? Head into the woods, climb a mountain, seek the horizon. Not only will this give you perspective, sometimes the best decisions are made after you’ve inhaled fresh air and stepped away from your desk.

What am I subject to, what’s water in my fishbowl to me, what can I not make object and clearly see?

Time. It’s both infinite and finite. At Arcspring, we’ve found that it’s not the quantity of time, but the quality that is most important. How we choose to spend our time and the positive differences these endeavors have on the world are of utmost importance to us. We can’t see it. We can’t touch it. But we can affect it.