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Welcome back to the Collective. After spending the last two weeks giving you a behind-the-scenes look at our events featuring KIND Snacks Founder and Shark Tank judge Daniel Lubetzky and Splunk and The Yope Foundation Founder Michael Baum, we're returning to our ideas-first approach with this newsletter. Today, we're diving into what I've come to call "The Dopamine Economy."

This essay continues the ideas-first framework we employed during our event with Michael Baum and explained in last week's newsletter. Rather than focusing solely on personalities or companies, we're examining the underlying patterns shaping our economic landscape and what they mean for founders, investors, and society.

The concept for this piece crystallized a couple of weeks ago when we attended Professor Scott Galloway's talk at NYU. Though we didn't get to ask him about it during the formal Q&A, his insights on technology's impact on human behavior sparked a framework for this essay that we've been developing since. As more examples of this phenomenon continue to emerge in headlines and our daily observations, it felt like the perfect time to share these thoughts with our community.

We're committed to keeping the Coeus Collective Newsletter a blend of fresh ideas and behind-the-scenes storytelling about how we're building our community. This piece represents that balance nicely by exploring an emerging concept while connecting it to the ongoing conversations we’re having while building this Collective.

So what exactly is the dopamine economy? And what does it mean for founders, VCs, and society as a whole? Let's get to it.

— By Antonio DiMeglio and Leon Li

Why Now?