We were lucky to catch up with Ben Spievak recently and have shared our conversation below.

Ben, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. So, let’s start with a hypothetical – what would you change about the educational system?

The education system is a pipeline into factories. For creative and ambitious people, it’s a limiting environment.

When I was attending undergrad at UCLA, I found myself skipping most of my classes to spend time in the gym and library, where I self-educated through books and YouTube, and built an online fitness coaching business. The time that I spent on self-education and experimentation yielded far more learning than reading textbooks and filling in bubbles on tests.

At the same time, I noticed that I could do my classes by reading the textbooks. I didn’t need to listen to someone else read them to me. This got me to question why these massive buildings and salaried professors are really necessary. When COVID came along and classes went online, I was able to double up my course load and graduate a year early, reinforcing the notion that the in-person university environment as not always necessary and often highly inefficient.

My junior year, I found that I spent more money on business coaches, digital courses, and Facebook ads than on tuition, but instead of accumulating student debt, I made more online than I spent. At this time, I developed a principle for my life, which is that we should always seek to get paid to learn, not the other way around.

Growing up with an entrepreneurial mindset, I always felt disengaged with school, and now nearing the end of my undergrad experience, I knew that my life purpose was to create a new version of higher education for entrepreneurs and creatives.

I started thinking about the value that people are seeking when they attend university and how we can deliver that in a new, more effective format. This thought processed converged to a short list: quality information, access to resources, professional network, social experience, and credibility signaling.

Many attempts to replace higher education have entered the market, but none address all five of these key points.

E-learning platforms, digital courses, masterminds, and online business coaches deliver valuable information, and they may even provide professional networking and resource access, but they do not offer a real social experience.

Ultimately we realized that a membership for a vetted network of founders and investors providing a curated social community, educational curriculum, and resources via partnerships with service providers and investor networks can provide most of the value propositions that university claims at a fraction of the cost. Additionally, this can be done in a much more applicable and actionable way, yielding immediate impact on career trajectory.

The only value that this strategy does not deliver immediately is the credibility signal that comes with names like Harvard and Stanford. But over time, with the right brand and media strategy, this value will be delivered as well, and we will see the value (both perceived and actual) of this membership eclipse traditional universities.

Not only does this strategy deliver better value and experience than university, but it is accessible to anyone, anywhere, at any time. Learning should not end when we are 22. It is a lifelong pursuit, as is networking and relationship development.

This is what we are building with SVRN – a lifestyle membership for Sovereign Individuals providing social, intellectual, and professional value in a holistically curated ecosystem.

Ben, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I grew up in Santa Barbara with my parents and two younger sisters. When I was 12, I wanted a laptop, but when I asked my dad for one, he told me I needed to make money and buy it myself. So I started my first business painting my neighbors’ addresses on the curbs with spray paint and stencils, and by the end of the summer had my new laptop.

By high school, my life revolved around my club water polo team and the group of guys I played with. During these years, I was fortunate enough to observe my dad pursue his career as a tech founder and venture capitalist, meanwhile engaging in a global CEO community called YPO. Watching these parallel channels in his life, I always felt like there was room to create efficiency between them.

When I went to UCLA, my belief that school was not the place for me grew stronger as I found myself skipping class for the gym and skipping parties to read physiology studies on PubMed. I got very interested in fitness and nutrition, so I got my trainer and nutritionist certifications and built an online fitness community, serving as the vehicle to teach myself digital marketing and content creation. This project helped me formulate the principle that we should find ways to get paid to learn, not the other way around. At the same time, I took the social chair position in my fraternity, learning about partnerships, hospitality, and event production. Although I didn’t find the drinking culture very appealing, I was intrigued by the business model of the fraternity and found myself wondering why similar formats aren’t common in the adult world.

Midway through undergrad, COVID hit, and for the next year, I spent my time meditating, reading, studying business coaching, and working on online business models. I grew the online coaching practice, experimented with e-commerce stores, held a remote sales position for someone else’s offer, and launched a crypto project with some friends. The crypto project was my first taste of trading and public markets, and I learned how to use content and written word to inspire investment activity within a digital community. At the same time, I doubled my course load to take advantage of the remote format and finished school a year early.

Coming out of college, my takeaways were that higher education needs an upgrade, the adult world needs community, and the investment space is highly transactional despite everyone involved claiming the importance of trust. Right around this time, I read a book called “The Fourth Turning,” which predicted the rise in demand for private communities.

I quickly saw that the social scene was as basic and consumption-oriented as it had been in college. Public social offerings are designed for the mass market, not for ambitious, growth-oriented people. I was motivated to create something better, both for myself and the millions of other entrepreneurs around the world.

This led to the creation of SVRN, a founder-investor social club oriented in intellect and authentic connection. Our intention is to provide an ecosystem of social community, professional networking, curated experiences, resources, and access to capital to empower the next generation of founders and investors, whom we call the Sovereign Individuals.

This lifestyle membership is designed to provide holistic value in terms of personal life, professional success, and physical and mental health.

SVRN starts as a community, where members engage in a curated social life and vetted network of founders, family offices, and funds. Our digital platform provides intellectual curriculum via Virtual Masterminds and a suite of services and resources via Community Partners. We frequently co-host with other investor networks, helping to expand our own community and gain our members new access.

The social layer establishes the foundation for our deal flow and venture studio operations.

Over time, our vision is to incubate or acquire additional elements of the ecosystem. On the creative side, this means festivals, film studio, music, fashion, and educational curriculum. On the capital management side, this will be a series of funds, RIA, investment bank, merchant processor, and family office infrastructure layer.

From here, the plan is to expand and establish communities in major cities like SF, Austin, and NYC, and then enter markets in Europe, Middle East, and Asia.

We believe the future of education and investment lies in community, and that if we can deliver key information, social experience, professional networking, resources, capital access, and brand credibility in one coherent membership, we can disrupt universities, accelerators, venture capital, and social clubs all at once.

Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?

There are many books that have had a significant impact on my growth as a founder and on the creation of our business. Here are a few…

Unconscious Branding – taught us how a brand communicates subconsciously and actions are driven by feeling

Influence – this is a foundational book in persuasive psychology. I believe a good founder should have the skill of persuasion, and to be a great founder, you must use it for win-win leadership, not manipulation.

The Art of Community – blueprint for community building with everything from defining target market to rituals and code of conduct. We have used many specific elements from this book.

The Fourth Turning – suggests that the societies of leading empires repeat themselves in cycles of 4 distinct periods of 25 years, called turnings. Each turning has distinct characteristics and relates things like political stability with gender fluidity. This book helped us predict the impending rise in demand for private communities.

The Surrender Experiment – the story of author Michael Singer who committed to surrendering to the flow of the universe, and as a result had a spiritual community form around him which evolved into a software development company that ultimately became a public company. This taught me to trust and attract what we need in our startup journey, and it has truly worked.

Sapiens – gets me thinking about what it really means to be human and what kinds of value really move the needle for our human experiences. Safety, community, learning, health, financial resources… these are the kinds of value propositions I want to be building businesses around.

Additionally, I would credit the music artists ODESZA and Afterlife for my production inspiration. They do such an excellent job of combining mind blowing visuals with excellent sound and emotional narrative throughout.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

We have seen pretty significant brand awareness within our target market in LA and can credit that to a few key strategies.

1. Events – This is the best way to build reputation within a localized market. The events need to be intentional, unique, well-curated, and deliver emotional value. If you can make your events really stand out and are thoughtful about the value you want it to deliver, you can use this to attract attention and grow a targeted email list. Now we do tons of events, and it’s the quarterly big ones that drive surges in awareness and leads.

2. Paid Media – Meta Ads can target a local audience and it’s pretty easy to saturate that audience with awareness. We meet so many people that tell us they’ve seen our ads.

3. Articulated Values – Being specific and intentional about our values has helped us attract and repel people appropriately. We focus on authenticity, integrity, and collaboration and communicate them clearly in our content and website.

4. Active Networking – Our entire team is super active going to events and parties. Because we host so much, we get invited to a lot, and we do our best to go as much as we reasonably can. The team needs to be constantly evangelizing, especially for our business model.

5. Newsletter – We have an active newsletter strategy that everyone who comes into contact with our ecosystem starts to receive. Tons of people in our market are aware of us and our updates because they read the newsletter.

6. Branding – We got lucky in that our branding seems to really hit. Not only is the name and logo distinct and memorable, but the narrative behind it is clear and interesting. We call it SVRN for the Sovereign Individual, one who is the master of their destiny, the main character of their game. Our membership is designed to support the Sovereign Individual on their personal journey through a suite of value ranging from social connection to deal flow.

7. Culture – We are intentional about hiring people that fit our current and desired culture. Due to the nature of our business, we prioritize sociability, kindness, intelligence, creativity, and good energy. As a result, people generally have a positive experience when engaging with anyone on our team, and I believe that has a huge impact on the brand’s reputation in their minds.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.svrnventures.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/benspievak/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benspievak/