Help Bring "The Vision Guide" to Life

Developing a critical resource for early stage founders to create with greater wisdom

👁️ BACKGROUND

For as long as I can remember, ideas and the creative process have been energizing forces in my life. That passion led me to study entrepreneurship and spend 15 years working for, founding, advising and investing in early-stage startups across technology, education, politics, and social impact.

In 2024, with support from Pinterest co-founder Evan Sharp, I founded School of Wise Innovation to re-imagine innovation education and culture. Our programs, retreats, and media have influenced the thinking and behavior of founders, investors, and business leaders exploring how to live, work, and create with greater alignment.

As I look out on the troubled state of the world, and reflect on personal experiences with the unintended consequences of innovation, I’ve become increasingly aware of the power of what happens in the earliest hours, days, and weeks after someone has a promising new idea. Decisions made during this “vision stage” quietly shape the trajectory of teams, technologies, and the ripples those creations make in society. Yet this stage receives almost no attention, structure, or guidance rooted in ethics or wisdom.

My goal is to help shift the culture around this formative period by creating a powerful resource that supports people who are shaping tomorrow’s innovations at the point where it matters most: the very beginning.

📚 THE BOOK

I’m developing a 64-page, limited-edition, interactive mini-book called The Vision Guide. It is designed to be an accessible, beautifully crafted tool that helps founders and changemakers navigate the delicate vision stage with clarity and integrity. So they may bring ideas to life in ways that are better all touched, including themselves and the relationships that matter most.

The guide will help readers:

• Clarify the appropriate delivery system and timing for a vision
• Integrate lessons from previous projects to avoid common pitfalls
• Highlight and address unhealthy motivations and blind spots
• Mitigate risks of mission-drift, burnout, and negative externalities
• Make wiser and more grounded decisions during high-leverage moments
• Cultivate practices that support effective collaboration

This interactive artifact will blend reflection prompts, short teachings, practical exercises, and integrated digital elements like guided audio and custom software.

Writing the mini-book will help refine the ideas, gather feedback, and generate momentum toward the next phase: a full-length, mainstream book that weaves together deeper research, case studies, personal narrative, and comprehensive frameworks.

🌍 THE IMPACT

The “vision stage” functions like the headwaters of a river: the conditions at the source influence everything downstream. When vision-stage decisions are rushed or made from the wrong place, the consequences show up later as anxiety and depression, intractable conflict, injured personal relationships, avoidable failure, and sometimes violence to the web of life.

The Vision Guide aims to shift how innovators think about risk and responsibility, success and long-term impact—starting from the moment an idea is born.

Because I’m based in the heart of Silicon Valley, the book will be distributed through high-leverage channels: product leaders, founders, designers, researchers, and educators at organizations such as Apple, Google, Meta, OpenAI, Microsoft, Stanford, YC, Esalen, and others who shape the future of technology. It will also circulate among coaches, therapists, teachers, investors, and healers working with early-stage innovators.

Importantly, this book does not focus on critique. It offers practical, positive pathways for people who want to build meaningful things without sacrificing their health, relationships, or values — and without unintentionally creating negative impacts in the world.

🌱 USE OF FUNDS

A first draft of the mini-book has already been written. The total cost to complete the project (targeting Sept 2026) and print the first run is $24,000. I am personally contributing $10,000.

I am raising the remaining $14,000 to support:

• Content development and project management
• Professional editing
• Book design and illustrations
• Small research honorariums for expert contributors
• Printing 250+ copies
• Distribution to high-impact individuals and institutions in Silicon Valley

Even a modest amount of support can meaningfully advance the work and amplify the book’s reach.

All donations are tax-deductible through the School of Wise Innovation, a fiscally sponsored 501(c)(3). Donation amounts are not displayed publicly, and you may choose to remain anonymous. Donors over $50 will receive a printed copy, and all will receive an optional acknowledgment in the book.

Your contribution supports more than a publication—it supports healthier patterns of creation across countless future projects, teams, and communities.

Please reach out if you’d like to discuss the project further.

"If you want to teach people a new way of thinking, don't bother trying to teach them. Instead, give them a tool, the use of which will lead to new ways of thinking”. - Buckminster Fuller

Andrew Dunn works at the intersection of human development and innovation. He is the founder of the School of Wise Innovation and previously led educational initiatives at the Center for Humane Technology. Before that, he spent more than a decade in early-stage startups, including with Siempo, a Public Benefit Corporation that developed an open-source humane smartphone interface recognized globally for its approach to digital wellbeing.

His work bridges multiple disciplines and communities, bringing together insights from technology, entrepreneurship, psychology, and culture to support wiser forms of creation.