1,000+
Unique people in Frontier Tower over two days
Conference + hackathon + 176 speakers. Includes a conservative estimate of 100 unregistered attendees who came through the door without formally signing up in Luma.
Two Days, One Tower, Many Worlds
Who Was in the Room
82%
First-timers
FtC reached well beyond its existing community
55
Funders
Capital allocation in the room
49%
Builders
+ 25% Creatives, 16% Researchers
68
Attendees over 55
A cross-generational room
By Sector
AI + Tech = 42% of attendees. Web3 at 8.5% — the pivot from crypto framing to AI governance landed.
Where They Came From
Community Signal
- Word of mouth was #1 by a wide margin. 27% of checked-in attendees came through personal referral.
- Community partners carried the rest. Trusted organizations and speakers opened their networks and brought their people.
- Zero paid marketing. Zero ads. The room assembled through trust, not spend.
From 92 Countries
US vs International
437 US · 219 international · 92 countries
Top International Countries
- India24
- Canada12
- China11
- Germany10
- United Kingdom9
- France8
- Singapore6
- Ukraine6
- Iran5
- Poland5
- Mexico5
A 16-Floor Vertical Village. Each Floor Its Own World.
Session Formats
Keynote
Talk
Panel
Fireside Chat
Workshop
Co-Design Lab
Circle
Unconference
Healing
Meditation
Embodiment
Installation
Screening
Social
Intro/Exit
Conference Tracks
- AI Governance & Trust
- The Intelligence Curse: Who Captures AI Value
- AI-Assisted Decision Making
- Open AI Infrastructure
- Applied AI: Real Deployments
229 Sessions Across 2 Days — A Taste of What Happened
Governing the Commons in the Intelligent Age
The Intelligence Curse
Machine Majority
Scaled Democratic Reasoning
Human Flourishing in the Age of AI
Institutional Imagination Block
Alignment Is Not Enough
The AGI Race to the Bottom
On the Shoulders of Capitalism
Superintelligence Companies & Humanity's Future
Who's Leading Who in the Age of AI
Incentivizing Energy Abundance
Sovereign Infrastructure: Web 0 to Web 3
From Hackathon to Mainnet
Mapping AI for Science
How to Align a Codebase
Scaling AI Safety and Security
d/Acc, Two Years Later
Raising AI: Our Existential Conceptual Shift
Designing Institutional Infrastructure for AI
Algorithmic Ancestry: Digital Stewardship
Human Alignment Before AI Alignment
Exit to the Commons
Relational Commons: Building the Inner Commons
The Body as Commons
Future of Work: Human-AI Teams
Immersive Theater Sense-Making
Coherence Calibration for Frontier Leaders
Community As Resistance
Existential Grief Ritual
Commons Infrastructure for Human Community Stewardship
Guided Nap Practice
Functional Age Test & Leaderboard
Hyperbaric O2 Chamber & Red Light Therapy
AI-Powered Precision Medicine for Longevity
How to Reverse Your Brain Aging
Science and Immortality: Facts, Myths, and the Roadmap
The A, B, C, D Plan to End Aging
Brain Mapping
The Art of Livecoding: Music as Algorithm
Your Board Seats Should Include A Drum Throne
Sketchbook Talk
Culture as Living Infrastructure
Arthur Brock: Infrastructure for Generating Culture
OPENING KEYNOTE: Deep Funding & Retrospective Impact
Accelerating Decentralization with Quantum Computing
Agentic Marketplaces on Decentralized Rails
Open vs. Closed AI: Akash + Eliza Labs + Google Startups
Hypercerts
Why Open Source Matters
Investing in a Future Where Humans Have a Growing Stake
Interactive Funder Introductions
Stewarding Life with Wisdom in Tech Acceleration
New Capital Coordination: Founder Pools & SPVs
What's Net Zero ASAP?
Solarpunk
Design Your Own Scent: Perfume 101
Whale Bioacoustic Listening Journey
Earth Intelligence & Sacred Alignment
Immerisia
Pneumatek: New Media Art Installation
UNICEF: Building Financial Rails for the Age of AI
Fireside: Jeff Burnstein & Devinder Sodhi
Move as a Living System
Regenerative Capital for Bioregional Stewardship
From Metrics to Coordination: Engineering Systems for Human Flourishing
Funding Mechanism Diversity
Agentic AI & Longevity
Navigating the Longevity Search Space
Cultivating the Relational Commons for Climate Innovation
Memory Isn't Retrieval
Life-Aligned AI Research & Development
Solutioneering the Food System: A Future Forum
Open by Default
Yoga Break (donation-based)
AI & Autonomous (Floor 9)
Ethereum & DeTech (Floor 12)
Neuro & Biotech (Floor 8)
A Cross-Generational Room, Community-First Access
Age Distribution
25–44 is the core (69%), but every generation was present. 68 attendees over 55.
Community-First Access
- 65% of tickets comped: speakers, team and volunteers, partner organizations, named guests
- 35% paid across tiers from $50 student to $1,000 patron
- The right people in the room over maximizing ticket revenue. No one turned away for lack of funds.
- 341 new newsletter subscribers from conference, 68 from hackathon. 409 new members of the FtC community.
Beyond the Event
Commons Platform
- New product launched at the event. All 229 sessions, speaker profiles, and floor schedules live on the Commons platform
- A persistent home for FtC's content and community, designed to stay live well after the event ends
Live Funding Experiments
- Artisan Fund ran a public goods funding round timed to the conference
- Simocracy let each floor create an AI sim of itself to debate governance questions and allocate funding across the building. Coordination infrastructure in action
What's Next
- Full session recordings and transcriptions publishing to the Commons platform
- Post-event survey and deeper community analysis to follow
- Hackathon project showcase and winners coming soon
8M
Potential Network Reach
Follower ceiling across all sponsors, partners, and speakers who posted about FtC SF
500K+
Tracked Organic Impressions
Verified views across X, LinkedIn, and earned amplification during the 3-month promo period
330K
Owned Impressions
@FundingCommons X (294K) + LinkedIn (35K)
5.8%
X Engagement Rate
Above industry average
17.1K
X Engagements
+34% vs prior period
1.9K
Profile Visits
+78% vs prior period
23.3%
LinkedIn Peak Rate
Mar 15 (+207% vs avg)
+266%
LinkedIn Comments
vs prior period
Network Reach: Who Carried the Signal
Confirmed Amplifiers — 2.9M reach
Accounts that posted about FtC SF (verified from search)
Kevin Owocki (Gitcoin)131K
Illia Polosukhin (NEAR co-founder)111K
Juan Benet (Protocol Labs)52K
+ Octant, H.E.R. DAO, Ethereum House, human.tech, Foundry Unbrowse, DevSpot, PL_Genesis, and 6+ individual speakers/attendees
Associated Sponsor & Partner Network — 5.2M additional
Sponsor/partner accounts (logo on event page, associated brand)
+ Bittensor (100K), UNICEF Innovation (32K), Foresight Institute (11K)
Note: Potential reach = combined X follower count of all entities that posted about or are associated with FtC SF. Actual unique reach is lower due to audience overlap, which is standard in earned media reporting.
Platform Performance
X (Twitter) — @FundingCommons
1.9K
Profile Visits (+78%)
Source: X Creator Studio Analytics, 3-month view (promotional period)
LinkedIn — Funding the Commons Page
35,461
Impressions
+91.7%
23.3%
Peak Engagement Rate
+207% on Mar 15
Source: LinkedIn Page Analytics, Jan 1 - Mar 16, 2026
Zero paid marketing. Zero ads.
Every impression on this dashboard came from organic posts, community amplification, and word of mouth. The room assembled through trust.
$158K
Raised
$118.5K sponsors · $39.7K tickets
$152K
Spent on Production
Event costs only
$20K+
In-Kind Value
Livestream, video, match fund
$152
Cost per Person
Across 1,000+ in the building
Context
These numbers cover event production only. Core team salaries are funded separately through FtC's operating budget. The event roughly broke even at the production level, while the organization continues to run on operating costs that are not reflected here.
Who Paid, and Who Didn't
Tickets ranged from $50 to $1,000 across eight tiers. Comped seats went to speakers, team, volunteers, partner organizations, and anyone for whom cost was a barrier. No one was turned away for lack of funds.
Where the Money Went
Where It Ran Lean
$1,000
per floor · 10 floors activated
<$6K
deco, signage & print · entire 10-floor venue
~$30K
food · <$20 per person per day in SF
$10K
marketing · half on commission · zero ads
$0
paid ads · paid PR · agency fees
Where the Money Came From
Sponsorships$118,500 · 75%
Ticket Sales$39,680 · 25%
The event runs on sponsor relationships. Tickets cover a quarter of the budget.
Thank You to Our Sponsors & Partners
These organizations backed a new format, an unusual mix of people, and a 16-floor venue no one had run a conference in before. The event existed because they said yes.
Sponsors
Protocol Labs
DevSpot / Polaris
Solana
Bittensor
Human.Tech
NEAR
Octant
Filecoin
Activeloop / DeepLake
NomadicML
VESSL AI
ElevenLabs
Partners
Frontier Tower
Internet Archive
The Tor Project
Foresight Institute
UNICEF Office of Innovation
Advanced AI Society
Flourishing Systems Foundation
Founder Institute
ETHSF
Metagov
Floor, Experience & Food Partners
Quorum1
Biopunk Labs
Viva.City
UFB
Ethhouse.xyz
GTM at the Edge
Learning Layer Labs
Tea Tribe
Rich DDT
Optimized Foods
In-Kind Contributions
- $10K — Livestream, Internet Archive. Two days of mainstage broadcasting.
- $8.3K — Frontier Tower match fund. Contributed to Samourai as part of venue participation.
- $2K — Videography. Donated hours for the permanent content record.
- Compute credits. VESSL AI + NomadicML: compute, AWS, Anthropic Claude Code for hackathon builders.
The People Who Made This
6
Core team members
Some part-time
10
Floor leads
Built their own programming
176
Speakers
Gave their time and wisdom
67+
Volunteers & mentors
Ran the event floor
Thank you to the floor leads, speakers, mentors, volunteers, and contractors who took friendly rates to help this first run exist.
What the First Run Taught Us
The budget worked because the team took friendly rates and speakers gave their time. Next iteration will increase staffing and production budgets so teams can build with runway instead of stretch.