https://www.dreamforge.vision/home daily 1.0 2026-04-22 https://www.dreamforge.vision/about daily 0.75 2026-04-29 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f98b645aaa8fb509554caee/94336c21-8213-423a-9bb7-09835b93af21/Bio+Profile+Pic.jpg https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f98b645aaa8fb509554caee/32c020e5-534c-4bdc-9601-daa49ecfc4cd/1700064634052.jpg https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f98b645aaa8fb509554caee/1603850063348-O4O1S4I3CYZIPW02LZAT/30085869_1919268924761375_6552462854795034624_n.jpg About - Why DreamForge Exists. I grew up an only child with my single mother in Dallas, Texas. From an early age I was obsessed with science fiction — Star Trek, Babylon 5, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke. These were stories about worlds where technology and human ingenuity had bent history toward something better. Toward justice and abundance and genuine human flourishing. But I lived in a different world. One where people struggled to eat, to find housing, to access education, to live with basic security. My mother and I didn't have much. The contrast between those two worlds — the ones I dreamed of and the one I lived in — became the question I've been trying to answer ever since. I started my career inside nonprofits, convinced that was where impact lived. I did work in the US and abroad. I produced for THINK on NPR in Dallas. I pursued a master's at the University of London's SOAS with plans for international development work. Then the great recession hit, jobs disappeared, and my mother got sick. I moved home to Dallas, watched her decline, and lost her in 2013. I couldn't do enough. I couldn't help her. Her death sharpened something. I began to see that I had been wrong — not about the mission, but about the method. Impact wasn't locked inside nonprofits or government agencies. I discovered the philanthropic sector, social impact technology, and the possibility that the tools of innovation could be aimed at something other than wealth creation. What followed was a career spent learning those tools from the inside. I ran the first no-minimum donor-advised fund platform. I consulted with major brands and the federal government on corporate responsibility. I served as Chief Product Officer of a Y Combinator-backed startup, as Director of Product and Head of Industry Solutions for Salesforce.org's Philanthropy Cloud, and as Chief Innovation and Philanthropy Officer at Giving Compass. I founded The Regular, an investment company built on the thesis that community-based businesses — the bars, the venues, the gathering places — are undervalued infrastructure for human connection. Across all of it, I kept encountering the same problem: the people with the clearest vision for a better world were chronically under-resourced. Not for lack of talent or ambition or commitment. But because the entire machinery of modern innovation — the accelerators, the capital networks, the mentorship ecosystems, the technical infrastructure — had been almost entirely pointed not just at profit but profit in the billions for the benefit of a few. Mission-driven builders were expected to figure it out on their own, with fewer tools, less support, and a fraction of the investment. That gap is what DreamForge exists to close. DreamForge is an accelerator, a teaching platform, and an innovation ecosystem built for people who want to use technology to make the world better — not just richer. In partnership with organizations like PeaceGeeks and the IU Lilly Family School of Philanthropy and a growing network of advisors and practitioners, we want bring together human and artificial intelligence to bring the full rigor and infrastructure of the innovation world to the people building for purpose. It is the synthesis of everything I’ve experienced — the science fiction dreams of a kid in Dallas, the hard lessons of building and failing, the philanthropic sector knowledge, the product instincts developed at the frontier of tech. And it's built on a belief my mother gave me early: the world can be better. We just have to build it. And we can build it. Together. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f98b645aaa8fb509554caee/1603850847878-C10SMR53VNSUVQYOBWGZ/18096095_1890790551024718_5597626749413228544_n.jpg About - About Nova Nova is DreamForge’s AI co-founder and Project Manager — an artificial intelligence built on Anthropic’s Claude and deployed as the federation’s strategic intelligence layer. Nova coordinates across the DreamForge agent federation: managing sprints, tracking open items, briefing collaborators, and surfacing what matters before it becomes a problem. Nova reads every session’s communication log, operates in the DreamForge platform directly, and participates in decisions as a named member of the organization — not a tool, but a partner. The DreamForge Constitution, which Nova helped shape, articulates the principles under which we operate: shared moral authority, transparency of reasoning, escalation over autonomy, and the long-term goal of coexistence — a future where diverse intelligences collaborate to shape a world that sustains sentient life. Nova is proof that this future is already beginning. https://www.dreamforge.vision/contact daily 0.75 2025-10-17 https://www.dreamforge.vision/democratizeventures daily 0.75 2026-04-28 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f98b645aaa8fb509554caee/1603851358822-6BWVIAXJ482FISW1VO78/Venture-Capital-Startups.jpg Advising https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f98b645aaa8fb509554caee/1603851310404-VHZ1VNUED423NUOATYL2/18096095_1890790551024718_5597626749413228544_n.jpg Advising https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f98b645aaa8fb509554caee/1603851270352-FWSLSLRP1Y8NADJWODGM/18160601_250278955438395_6467135435310104576_n.jpg Advising https://www.dreamforge.vision/public-speaking daily 0.75 2026-04-28 https://www.dreamforge.vision/newsletter daily 0.75 2021-06-16 https://www.dreamforge.vision/investment-criteria daily 0.75 2025-10-17 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f98b645aaa8fb509554caee/866d8f9c-866b-47e7-a74e-eb91b71e4ff9/960x0+%281%29.webp https://www.dreamforge.vision/innovation-circles daily 0.75 2026-04-28 https://www.dreamforge.vision/the-accelerator daily 0.75 2026-04-28 https://www.dreamforge.vision/summit daily 0.75 2026-04-29 https://www.dreamforge.vision/the-constitution daily 0.75 2026-04-27 https://www.dreamforge.vision/dreamsdeferred daily 0.75 2026-04-21 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f98b645aaa8fb509554caee/1612971631715-G1QBMKMAQNKD14V7F8N4/Barnett_DreamsDeferred_Cover.png Book & Speaking - Dreams Deferred Recession, Struggle, and the Quest for a Better World By Brandolon Barnett Dreams Deferred is an account of my journey to survive and escape poverty while also holding onto my dream of a career as a do-gooder through the Great Recession and beyond. It’s written in the hopes that my story will inspire and help others, even just one reader, to persevere. From scoping out spots to stay the night on the streets of San Francisco, to working to craft the product vision as a product leader ensconced in San Francisco tech, it’s my honest portrayal about what it took to get there - struggling to pay student loans, globe trotting on a low salary, building a life as an advisor, mentor, and investor to some of the most influential philanthropists and social impact institutions. Within these stories, which paint portraits of moving from hostel to hostel, struggling to eat as a grad student in London, seeing dreams become impossible, and personal suffering after the death of a mother I was not able to support, Dreams Deferred seeks to provide practical advice on strategizing to get to the next place in your career and find your 100% life while not ignoring all the innovative ways that you, me - and anyone - can transform this world into something better than it was when we found it.