The Story and Meaning Behind Denizen

Early in the pandemic, I began organizing a weekly salon for a handful of intellectually curious friends. I wanted to pick up where my master’s degree in economics and international development left off, interrogating capitalism’s role in improving the human condition and exploring the cultural, economic, and democratic institutions of an optimal human society.

I called it Dent, a name I’d used in the past to organize quarterly dinners with mission driven technology entrepreneurs. I liked that it connoted action against big challenges, but with humility. For me at least, these conversations weren’t just about intellectual curiosity. They were establishing the intellectual foundation for me to eventually tackle what I felt were humanity’s most fundamental, root challenges.

Early topics included capitalism and inequality, universal basic income, and content moderation on social media. My short list of friends happened to include activists, entrepreneurs, investors, and academics at the forefront of many of the topics we chose to explore. Six weeks in, a friend encouraged me to bring the conversations to the then nascent Clubhouse community. She felt the topics were too important to stay confined to our small group.

Before I knew it, my little salon of a few dozen friends had grown to a core community of a thousand amazing humans, with an extended audience reaching 30,000. Clearly, we were striking a chord.