I failed at 98 %

And yet, FreeWillWave brought together about 12,000 people.

The site exists. It works in fifteen languages. Humans joined it from all over the world.

From the outside, it can look like a success.

For me, not yet.

Because my goal was not to create a site with a few thousand members. My goal was to bring together enough humans to make something else possible.

And to understand why, we have to go back a little.

I was born in Rocourt, near Liège, in Belgium.

In elementary school, everything was going very well. I was even a very good student.

Then, around twelve, I started to hate school.

Not so much because I did not like learning. But because I had a hard time being locked in, having to ask permission to move, to talk, or just to go to the bathroom. I had a hard time with the idea that someone could decide for me just because he had a title or a job.

I did not know yet what to do with that feeling.

So I grew up, I worked, and I had a pretty normal life.

After several jobs, I became an IT specialist, then an analyst-programmer. I made a very good living. I lived in Ibiza. I got married. Then, seven years later, I got divorced.

And then, something changed.

About fifteen years ago, I felt that I had to completely change my life.

I did not know why yet. I only knew I had to do it.

I left a lot of things behind. I gave away what I had. I lived with roommates.

And I remember one very clear scene.

When I left my first shared place, everything I owned fit in my old 1997 Toyota Corolla.

I was on the road.

No more rent. No more electricity contract. Almost nothing tying me down anymore.

And I felt an incredible freedom.

During the years that followed, I tried to understand what I had been feeling for a long time.

I studied groups, their influence, what I call their energy or their egregore.

A company, a country, a soccer club: these are groups that exist because humans give them time, attention, work, money.

And I ended up understanding something essential:

the problem is not the group.

The problem starts when a group created by humans ends up asking humans to serve it.

For fifteen years, I looked for another way to do things.

I created a lot of projects. I wrote several books. And every time I thought I had found a solution, I asked myself the same question:

Does this really respect the human being?

And often, the answer was no.

Because even a good intention becomes bad if someone decides for you what is supposed to be good for you.

So I ended up arriving at something very simple:

You are the one who decides if something respects you.

If it respects you, you keep going.

If it does not respect you, you can stop.

And you recognize the exact same right for others.

From that point on, I stopped looking for how to fight the existing system.

Fighting against something still means giving it your time, your attention, and your energy.

So I changed the question:

What if, instead of fighting what exists, we built something next to it that humans would want to choose?

A group that grows, yes.

But a group that exists to serve the human being.

That is how Humans.team was born.

Then artificial intelligence arrived, and for an analyst-programmer like me, everything sped up.

I built a platform with invitations, affiliate programs, a shop, events, contests, classified ads, systems that make it possible to sell and earn commissions.

I wanted to create tools to help humans in their real lives.

And then I understood my mistake.

Who is going to post an ad on a site where there is nobody?

Who is going to organize a contest if nobody is watching?

Who is going to open a shop in an empty mall?

I had built the second floor before the first.

First, we had to bring the humans together.

So I pulled that function out of Humans.team.

And I created FreeWillWave.

The idea can almost be summed up with a soccer game.

You go to a place where there are people and you shout:

"Who wants to play?"

One person raises a hand.

Then two.

Then ten.

And when there are twenty-two of you, the game can exist.

FreeWillWave is the same thing:

There is a team getting organized to respect the human being. Are you going to be part of it?

First, we gather.

Then, when there are enough of us, we can create the tools.

Meetups. Events. Services. A marketplace. Possibilities to work, to sell, to create, to find a place to live, to eat, to meet other people.

Tools for the needs of humans.

Not tools to solve the administrative problems of systems.

And today, thanks to the Internet and artificial intelligence, we can build all of that at a speed that was unimaginable just a few years ago.

FreeWillWave, for example, was able to exist in fifteen languages from the start.

Then people came.

About 12,000 people signed up.

And that is where I failed.

Because I was expecting a snowball effect.

I thought one person would come, then invite someone. That person would invite someone else. And at some point, the growth would no longer depend on me.

It did not happen enough.

And meanwhile, the site costs money.

I can work. I work a lot.

But I can no longer fund everything I have built by myself.

There is also an irony in this story.

For fifteen years, I have been trying to bring humans together, while I myself live almost like a hermit.

I live with my father, who is 88, and I take care of him. I go out little. I do not have a network of people I can call to save the project.

So today, FreeWillWave has to switch to minimum mode.

And for once, I have to do something I am very bad at doing.

Asking for help.

That is why I say I failed at 98 %.

I did not manage to reach critical mass.

I did not manage to create growth that runs on its own.

I did not manage to balance development and funding.

But 2 % remains.

The site exists.

The code exists.

The first 12,000 humans are here.

And above all, the idea is still here.

So maybe the story is not over.

Today, the question is simply this:

Is FreeWillWave going to die out here?

Or is someone going to decide to let it continue?

Because deep down, after fifteen years of searching, I always come back to the same sentence:

There is a team getting organized to respect the human being.

Are you going to be part of it?