Jordan Hall

Jordan is now in his seventeenth year of building disruptive technology companies.

Classic “Ready Player One” style 80’s nerd. Comics, science fiction, computers, way too much TV and role playing games. Oh, so many role playing games. Naturally, these interests led to a deep dive into contemporary philosophy (particularly the works of Gilles Deleuze and Manuel DeLanda), artificial intelligence and complex systems science in college in the early 90’s and then, as the Internet was exploding into the world, a few years at Harvard Law School of all places where he spent time with Larry Lessig, Jonathan Zittrain and Cornel West examining the coevolution of human civilization and technology.

Starting in 1998 he then tried to put all this stuff to use combining disruptive technology, movement building and a taste for going up against obsolete oligopolies. First as an early employee crafting strategy and product for MP3.com, then at InterVU (acquired by Akamai) and then finally in 2000 launching and leading the online digital video revolution as founder and CEO of DivX.

After somewhat successfully navigating two financial crises and an IPO (and going down in flames at Stage6), he left the helm at DivX to return his attention to the big picture. He tried his hand at capitalism – combining Angel investment at the sharp edge of the Schumpeter wave — with participation in a number of think tanks and institutes; most notably, the Aspen Institute and the Santa Fe Institute where he served on the Board of Trustees for five sweet years.

This exposure led him to the conclusion that humanity is in the midst of a world historical transition which will likely kill all of us (see Mad Max) but just might end in a truly amazing future (see Star Trek). Getting there is going to require many things of us – most notably a significant upgrade of our individual and collective capacity for thought and action.