R E - C A L I B R A T E

For its 8th edition, the Favorable newsletter is evolving, and changing names.

Thank you to my cherished starter community! Thank you for being here, thank you for your patience, and thank you for coming along this journey to do good things in a wild world.

TAKEAWAYS & TACTICS

Y Combinator states that a key ingredient to their formula for success is creating a sense of urgency in the process of building their portfolio companies.

The past 18 months have been booming breakout years in impact investment and the startup industry, and it's been truly exciting to be a part of it while building Favorable. The laws of thermodynamics apply to all, however, and what goes up, must come down. This same company, Y Combinator, the industry's determining and benchmark company, issued a statement this past week informing startups at large to plan for the worst and operate under the assumption that investments will be freezing for the next 12 to 24 months.

This is in line with my takeaways from Fundraising training at Founder Gym last year, which led me to go to market directly rather than embark into fundraising for a few reasons:

> To start, I have a tendency to be weary of overexcitement, considering my passion for thermodynamics.

> My favorite gem from the FG trainings by Phin Barnes which confirmed an intuition: Build your company as if you won't receive funding, and you'll probably receive funding.

> The very good reason that our MVP is in development and surely it will be more exciting to onboard financial partners once it is live! Also, our build, and not only, has been affected by the war in Ukraine.

> Accelerating last year and reconnecting with Silicon Valley tactics blew my mind and inspired me to develop a complementary and diversified venture, based on a shocking observation, through my scientifically trained observing mind. And so I've been learning a new skillset entirely and am excited to share this all with you now. Read on!

Surely you feel it too.

Our Times are an unprecedented culmination of chaotic cascades, ricochets, and colliding trends - we operate in acute and constant ambivalence - the worst of times and the best of times, all.the.time.

And then there's that cognitive dissonance which stems from the permanent alarm that it is "Now or Never" to reverse Climate Change - including the latest UN report which stated that the 6 or 7 years we thought we had are actually 3, or was that 0?

Enter Cognitive Psychology & Neuroscience - connecting awareness, decision-making, agency, intent, action, and result. Most importantly, if the Truth is engulfed by Fake Information, how are individual people supposed to become their best selves in order to enact the actions needed at large and at scale to redress course? How do we affect Systemic and Structural reorganisation to create virtuous instead of vicious cycles - locking into Regeneration and the Nature of Nature to thrive?

I could go on about this - and as some of you know I was published on it by panel review - turns out I am pioneering it by virtue of tackling it, and naming it Climate Psychology. And it is headlining the return of the Davos World Economic Forum this year as a topic:

"Addressing the drivers of Eco-Anxiety: two-thirds of young people in 10 countries report feeling sad, afraid and anxious about the climate crisis and over half believe that humanity is doomed.[...] How can we turn eco-anxiety into agency and meaningful action to address the climate crisis and biodiversity collapse?"

Therefore, and in line with a few elements I witnessed which didn't add up, I am acting where I can, in this space now named Sentí.earth.

Sentí, in French, means knowing from feeling. Synonymous with sentience, and awareness, we aim to resolve cognitive dissonance through enlightened agency - the mission here is to make Sustainability Accessible to All - namely by connecting Entrepreneurship, Nature, and Neuroscience. Instinct and Intuition will find here a sanctuary and guides to direct action, both personally and professionally. It's a natural progression, and it's a passion. Equipping individuals with robust mental fortitude and mindset practice through knowledge, understanding, tools and tactics to translate into actions for the highest possible good in the face of overwhelming adversity. The world today is both a thrill and a daunting task. The beauty and reality of a golden age contrasted with the total and complete collapse of the social contract and the environment, in urgency.

To start, I would direct your attention to the first obvious piece of this puzzle and silver lining:

What do greed, penny pinchers, a recession, and sustainability all have in common?

Paul Hawken states it most clearly in a 1999 New Dimensions discussion named Sustaining Earth through Natural Capitalism, surfacing the fact that business as usual has been looking for productivity in all the wrong places:

" When you make something very productive, you use a heck of a lot less of it. And you have a lot less impact on land, water, oceans, forests, on the atmosphere, climate, and repairing systems. To be more productive with our use of natural capital into radical resource productivity dramatically shifts relationships between human made capital. We use less resources - people become more valuable in that scenario, and we change our emphasis on producing things to creating an economy where it's the flow of services we value as opposed to the accumulation of things."

A precocious vision of a now fully fledged and booming Creator economy in 2022. Hope. So there we go - Sentí.earth draws a line in the sand, holding space to usher in this best reality and bring critical mass to the green transition. Stay tuned, reach out, get in touch, hang out, share: bienvenue.  

A quick note and insight on the How:

By combining Startup and Creator Online Business Models and playbooks, through Personal and Professional Sustainability Education, Sentí.Earth will make sustainable personal and professional growth accessible to all. You will see GAIA Founders included in this umbrella space as well, more on that next time. These are Mentorships built to help humanity beat the odds.

I promised a shocking observation:

50% of Solutions needed for Net Zero have not yet been invented (World Economic Forum call for an Ecopreneur Revolution)

95% of early stage solutions fail.

50% more depression in Entrepreneurs - they bear double the mental health burden while driving the solutions most likely to help humanity at large - they need adapted help.

As the Barbados Prime Minister Mia Motley stated at COP26, relying on solutions that have not yet been invented is, simply, reckless.

In other words: The Climate Crisis is the Mental Health Crisis

As he is still relatively unknown, let's focus and amplify - introducing the Ecopreneur:

In calling for an Ecopreneur Revolution, the World Economic Forum highlights that "when entrepreneurs finally pursue an idea, they gravitate to the places and people in their networks that can provide resources, which ultimately tie them to corporate or profit-driven goals. As a result, humanitarian entrepreneurs have historically struggled to fuel and fund their innovation even as the pandemic, climate change, and growing inequality have increased the need for their projects."

In the International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior and Research, Kirkwood and Walton state that Ecopreneurs were motivated by five factors: their green values, earning a living, passion, being their own boss, and seeing a gap in the market.

However, there is a gaping No Man's land which needs to be addressed if we plan on connecting Solutions, Action, and the Net Zero Drawdown:

Many entrepreneurs live at or below the poverty line at some point in their journey, under pressure with limited resources. Awareness begins by gaining an understanding of the factors that could impact your ability to complete a successful raise. Techcrunch

Supporting Founder's Mental Health is not only a personal responsibility for founders themselves, but a collective responsibility for everyone in the startup ecosystem. Through an awareness of realistic minimums, meditation, and conversations, founders and those around them can help to support their overall mental wellbeing. Techstars

Entrepreneurship is often an isolating experience, with very few being able to relate with what you are going through. 72% of entrepreneurs are directly or indirectly affected by mental health compared to 48% of non-entrepreneurs. Mental health is essential for knowledge work in the 21st century. Creativity, ingenuity, insight, brilliance, planning, analysis, and other executive functions are the cognitive cornerstones of breakthrough value creation by entrepreneurs. CTech

Elon Musk famously quipped that "starting a company is like eating glass and staring into the abyss."It can feel like everything is on the line, all the time, which is a heavy weight to hold. When we're turning a vision we hold into reality, it's easy to feel like we're walking a tightrope of self-doubt and self-belief. Forbes

Entrepreneurs have to tackle active discouragement from immediate family members and close relatives. I think burnout doesn't even begin to capture the state that people end up in, when they have basically exerted or leveraged every aspect of themselves, every once of social, emotional capital. Managing mental health is no easy feat. But destigmatizing these issues would require creating awareness and participation from all stakeholders, particularly investors. Jumpstart Mag

It's a lot.

I've been there.

And, I've also recently made it into a humbling ranking by Sifted, The Financial Times-backed startup media, created together with ForColoredGirlsWhoTech, who counted me as 1 of 40 Black and Mixed Race Female Founders to Watch in Europe, this February 2022. There are fewer than 10 funded black Female Founders in France. There is just short of 100 funded Black Female Founders in the US. Black women receive less than 0,2% of all investment dollars, while yielding twice the returns on average. This is beating the odds.

In masterful execution, Founder Gym was borne from the observation that underrepresented Founders received single digit percentages of overall investment dollars; and bowed out 4 years later, this past April, having shifted the needle on this point in a major way.

Over the next 3 years, more than any other time in our existence as a species, every single one of our actions count and compound.

Code Red, as Mia Motley said. Yet, ecology and nature conservation is one of the most dangerous occupations, and the world waits on Ecopreneurs while they bear a disproportionate burden, driving innovation into a chokehold. With the violent wake up call served by the pandemic, significant progress has been made fast and priorities are clear. The next step is how, and how fast can we live up to this unprecedented opportunity to build back better and achieve cultural transformation and evolution. Hence Sentí.earth is dedicated to developing and distributing the understanding and guidance needed to shift out of doom and gloom into positive agency for the triple bottom line - People, Planet, and Prosperity; raising Earth Awareness and strengthening the innovation ecosystem by combining winning playbooks.

It all starts in the mind.

Making the most of dualities is, none the less, the story of our world, and old as Night and Day. With my namesake Isis, understanding the relationship and subtleties between Divinity and Terror is part for the course. Perpetual shifts between Chaos and Order - is in fact the First Law of Thermodynamics - energy cannot be created nor destroyed, only transformed.

Going further into lessons from Theology - an insight from Egyptologue Normandi Ellis in the book Dreams of Isis, p.68:

Human struggle, conquest, then peace, followed by renewed strife is the pattern of personal and cultural histories. These patterns mirror the dualities, oppositions and reconciliations that occur in nature, psychology, and spirit. The succession of Horus to the thrones of both Osiris (the abundant Nile) and Seth (the desert Nile) evinces a peace that comes from uniting the diverse realms of expansion and limitation, of growth and decay. The Uniter of Opposites [...] the ability of Horus not only to tolerate ambivalence, but to combine or unify oppositions in order to create a balanced third principle, is the hallmark of [progress].

Would it make sense then that the Elle US Magazine found on February 22, 2022 - which was also Sentí's soft opening date - that " Everyone Wants to Dress Like a Goddess Right Now"

And so, a Favorable Fashionista clamors back to Fashion's way of divinely uplifting our spirits in tempo.

Taking this opportunity to introduce you to the new comer shutting it down, Nensi Dojaka - who is redefining the Divine Feminine in style.

And head over to Maison de Mode for Ethically sourced Luxury Fashion styles including top seller and affordable goddess wares by Geraldine Garcia : Sena Long in Old Rose - $242

A heartfelt thank you for being here! I am eager to share what's in store with you. And of course - funding equals speed so if you are an investor and you would like to support this work, let's talk. If you are a fellow founder, I included more material and longer quotes than recommended by algorithms: a greater understanding of your experience in context can help you cut through the noise, and feel supported. And it's just a start - reach out.

To all - please do not be shy with feedback! Sentí is a community driven space and hearing from you is my happy place.

Isis Valliergues

Founder & CEO, Favorable, Gaia Founders, Sentí.earth

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