Matt Mullenweg: recommendation

Transcript context

…Bay Lights, there's two famous bridges in San Francisco, the Golden Gate Bridge, which is kind of the iconic one, there's actually the Bay Bridge, which is the workhorse of San Francisco. It's one of the busiest bridges in the country. And it's really beautiful from an engineering point of view. And so kind of a vision between Ben Davis and artist Leo Villarreal, who's an amazing light artist, actually who started Burning Man was to put, gosh, I forget the number, I think 18,000 LEDs on the side of the bridge on all the cables and create this really beautiful, gentle kind of algorithmic light piece, light art piece. And yeah, Ben Davis was dating an artist friend of mine and we were over and having drinks on my patio and we were looking at the Bay Bridge and I had this kind of thing where there's some lights at the top of the Bay Bridge and I was like, "Oh, wouldn't it be cool if those lights were Christmas lights and they could do patterns or something?" It's the lights to keep planes from hitting it. And I was like, "Oh, you could program that." He was like, "Yeah." It was almost like the Social Network thing where a million's cool, but a billion would be really cool. He was like, "Yeah, that would be cool, but what if we put the whole side of it?" And so I was like, "Oh, cool," and sort of made an angel investment in that thing. They hadn't raised anything or had, I don't even think an entity at that point, but I was like to get you started, I forget what it was, 100 or 150k so I gave them that first bit and then it kind of blossomed into a thing. And then sort of fast-forward, I don't remember the exact timeline, but they were kind of at a final bit of fundraise and they weren't able to close that last bit and I actually mortgaged my condos and donated the last million, million and a half to finish out that project. The Bay Lights were online for 10 years. The technology degraded, and so the environment's very harsh. So actually we just completed a fundraise and are reinstalling the Bay Lights. They're calling it Bay Lights 360. So now it'll be both sides of the bridge, it'll be visible from also Oakland and the Treasure Island because the first version, the city was very worried about the drivers seeing the lights and it might distract them so we had to angle them so that you could only see it from San Francisco, which was a compromise we didn't love because we love the East Bay and everything else like that too. So new version is coming online hopefully later this year in the fall. And also that turned into a nonprofit called Illuminate, which I'm on the board of run by Ben Davis, who I mentioned previously, that does cool public art stuff around the city. So they're responsible for the Grace Lights, all the JFK Boulevard stuff where that has some murals and the beer garden and all the chairs, that's all Illuminate. So their thing is radical public art. So it's like art that needs to be free and accessible. K Boulevard stuff where that has some murals and the beer garden and all the chairs, that's all Illuminate. So their thing is radical public art. So it's like art that needs to be free and accessible. And I think that's so important for San Francisco. We have great institutions know the SF, MoMA, the Opera, etc, that have huge budgets like 100 million a year and Illuminate literally one 10th of that has created something that millions of people can enjoy. And I like to think that anyone along the Embarcadero, you might be going through a tough time, obviously we have people who are struggling with mental health and homelessness and everything like that, but maybe seeing a little bit of art can help raise your soul a little bit. And that's how I think about philanthropy as well. You need to work on the base issues, the fundamentals at the bottom of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, and then you also have to work on the things that raise your soul a little bit, so arts. So I like that barbell approach to philanthropy. Elon has a great quote along those lines, "You can't just work on solving problems all day, you need something inspiring to think about and to work towards." First of all, thank you for doing this. If you live in SF, you're like, this makes the city better, just having this around. I didn't realize you were involved in helping come up with the idea itself. I know that you did mortgaged your house to make it possible.…

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