The ideas ledger
Ideas waiting 14
Ideas already built 12
| Idea | To launch | Projected, per year | People served, per year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Park Kiosks | $250,000 | $554,800 | 100,000 |
| Shark Tank for Social Enterprise | $1,000,000 | $500,000 | 100,000 |
| The Colorado Trail Documentary | $250,000 | $500,000 | 100,000 |
| Route Setters Documentary | $250,000 | $375,000 | 75,000 |
| Rebates for Riding, Not Buying | $3,000,000 | $365,473 | 2,800 |
| Local AI Utility | $2,400,000 | $304,000 | 3,200 |
| My Avalanche Story | $10,000 | $219,510 | 270 |
| Artist Fiscal Sponsor | $250,000 | $200,000 | 200 |
| Spherical Mirror | $500,000 | $150,000 | 15,000 |
| Telluride Bluegrass Documentary | $500,000 | $100,000 | 20,000 |
| Ski FKT Database | $10,000 | $50,000 | 5,000 |
| The Once-Every-50-Years Newspaper | $50,000 | $20,000 | 4,000 |
| The Durango Four Corners Hat | $7,000 | $850 | 85 |
| Grants That Fund the Fundraising | $1,000,000 | researching | 90 |
A small, permanent kiosk bar and cafe in American neighborhood parks, modeled on the Portuguese quiosque: a business whose actual product is the feeling that a public space is taking care of you. Denver first, where the vending and beer permits already exist and only the idea is missing.
A highly produced pitch show where social entrepreneurs raise real capital from real investors, bringing prime-time rigor and reach to profitable, impactful business.
A documentary on how the Colorado Trail got built: the 486 mile Denver to Durango route that Gudy Gaskill and hundreds of volunteers scratched into the mountains over fourteen years, finished end to end in 1987. It is told through archive and interviews gathered while making Moving Line, including Gudy's adult children and the Colorado Trail Foundation's first executive director.
A documentary or docuseries about the people who put up the routes climbers travel the world for, starting with Indian Creek first ascensionist Devin Finucane.
A public incentive that pays people for the e-bike miles they actually ride instead of the e-bike they bought, logged on the same city website where residents already pay their taxes and redeemed against those same bills.
A cooperatively governed local compute utility that gives a town's small businesses and nonprofits their own AI capacity, owned and priced by members rather than rented from hyperscalers. Modeled on the rural electric cooperative: enough right sized inference hardware to serve every business in a county, member governed, sited and powered on local terms.
An online forum where the families and friends of avalanche victims can find each other, tell their story, and learn about the mountains, culture, and science behind the accident that took the person they loved. It is meant to complement the facilitated peer support that groups like SOAR already provide, by being always available and searchable rather than scheduled.
A comprehensive fiscal sponsor built for creative work, giving artists and point-in-time projects the tax exempt conduit and the real back office they need to raise money without forming their own 501c3. Most arts sponsors act only as a pass-through for funds; this one runs the payroll, bookkeeping, and compliance, and teaches fundraising strategy and financial literacy alongside it.
A walk-in spherical concave mirror, a one-at-a-time public art piece where you stand inside an unbroken reflective sphere and meet optics no flat mirror can produce.
A feature documentary about the Telluride Bluegrass Festival, the fifty-plus-year-old summer solstice gathering in a San Juan Mountains box canyon that its regulars use to measure the passage of time. The film would capture the traditions that make it a living institution rather than a concert: the tarp run, the Thursday convocation, the band contest that launched careers, and the Festivarians who have organized their summers around it for decades.
A public, verified record board for ski routes. The established Fastest Known Time database accepts skiing only as a minor mode within a route that is primarily run or hiked, which leaves ski-dominant lines with nowhere to be recorded. This would give skiers the same open, user-submitted, community-verified home for their routes that runners have had for two decades, at the moment ski mountaineering is arriving on the Olympic stage.
A newspaper published once every fifty years, reporting only the changes that would still matter to someone reading half a century from now. It is part time capsule, part editorial exercise in long-term perspective: choosing, together, what actually counts.
A Durango hat that people who actually live here would wear, run as a tiny social enterprise. Every dollar of gross margin is granted back to Southwest Colorado artists, alongside the city's lodgers tax arts and culture fund.
A grant model where foundations fund the fundraising itself, adding a modest amount to each grant so nonprofits can build the individual-giving systems that keep them alive after the grant is spent. Funders get the sustainability they already say they want.
When an idea lands here, a research pass gathers the closest organizations already doing it, their real costs, and evidence-based prices for the outcomes. Conviction and fun ratings are my intuition.
Keep climbing
I will not be taking on most of these ideas despite them being awesome. Please take them on and reach out to me for help.