Disrupting the Market for Souls

Last night at dinner with a group of officers from Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, Oxford Professor and legendary evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins asked me to explain why I signed up to be a Trustee of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science. Later I was asked to share those comments, so here they are:

From inside Silicon Valley, it may seem somehow unnecessary or obsolete to promote science. But it’s easy to forget how fortunate and enlightened we are here. The scientific method is ingrained in everything we do. Instead of A/B testing your apps to improve your conversion funnel, would you ever rely instead on prayer, ritual and miracles?

But in the world at large, and even our country, most people still do not value the proven theories of scientists, either because they themselves do not understand science, or because there is too much social and emotional pressure upon them to value faith over evidence-based beliefs.

Still, so what? Why invest my limited time and capital in a startup foundation that promotes science and secularism?

As I would for any startup investment opportunity, I naturally start my assessment by looking at the incumbents in the vibrant market for people’s souls, to see how vulnerable they are to disruption. And as I deconstruct the businesses of religion, here’s what I see:

• The largest possible market -- 7 billion customers!
• Awesome value proposition – immortality – that addresses the most basic human desire.
• A recurring revenue business model.
• A Net Promoter Score higher than Apple's, where their customers go door to door on their behalf and build schools to sell their product.
• An impressively large and distributed field sales organization staffed by product evangelists (literally) who work for low wages.
• Enormous government subsidies in the form of 100% tax relief, and similar government subsidies for all their customers!
• Enormously high switching costs – customers who churn can lose their jobs, friends, even family, and in some countries their head.

The only drawback is product quality. Not only is immortality difficult to deliver, but the entire industry agrees that only one of the thousands of products on the market actually works. The good news is that customers pay prior to shipment, and there is no mechanism for rating product satisfaction.

That's a business I would want to own!

The downsides are simply economic externalities – costs that are mostly born by others. Some are obvious, like Jihad and the oppression of gays and women. But the most dangerous externality of all is more subtle, and that’s the marginalization of science.

Broun: "Lies straight from the pit of Hell"

To keep their customers, religions convince them that faith trumps evidence, and in so doing, they undercut whatever shot we have as a species to fight disease, poverty and global warming.  Medical doctors in the US are turning to prayer as treatment. 17 Americans die everyday for lack of a kidney because most of us want to keep our corpses in tact in order to enter Heaven. And when every other American believes that the Earth is 6,000 years old, we elect representatives who (at least pretend to) think that way -- like a President who outlawed federal funding to research new stem cell lines. Congressman Broun, a member of the House Space, Science and Technology Committee, called the Big Bang Theory and evolution “lies straight from the pit of Hell”. Representative John Shimkus rejected carbon emission regulations because God promised Noah in Genesis 8:21 that there won’t be a flood, so it's heresy to worry about rising sea levels. “Man will not destroy this Earth. God’s word is infallible, unchanging, perfect.” Senator Inhofe, the next Chairman of the Senate's environmental oversight committee agrees with Shimkus on God's protection, and denies that Man is changing the climate.

Religions do this because science is the most formidable competitor they face. Science delivers a high quality product that works. Science has already doubled our life expectancy, and immortality is on the product road map.

The problem with science is that unlike religion, it has a terrible business model – it’s open source and free, with no premium paywall. That means science can’t afford a sales force, marketing materials, and lobbyists. Science competes against extremely well funded incumbents.

And yet, as a VC, I’ve divested myself from religion, and I’m investing my time and capital into science, and here’s why:

1. The product is critical to our survival as a species.  That’s a strong value proposition.
2. The internet accelerates the spread of information, providing a favorable macro trend.
3. I look for what every VC is looking for, and that’s traction. Every survey shows a secular trend among young people today away from religion. Science can capitalize on this opening in the market.

But to pull this off, science needs:

market research, such as studies showing that atheists can be just as ethical and philanthropic as as others;

marketing materials, such as science curricula for schools;
sales people, such as biologists in the Bible Belt who can be mobilized to explain to school boards why Creationsim isn't science;
and customer support services that make people feel okay about expressing their honest beliefs to friends, family and co-workers (such as the Openly Secular campaign below).

The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science is taking on these functions on behalf of science. Our balance sheet is way smaller than the competitors but if we can raise more capital, we will disrupt this industry. Join us, and you will get the best return on investment you’ve ever seen.