Not many people heard about the Singularity Summit in Salt Lake City. Here is part of Luke Nosek's talk that struck me:

I was a futurist all my life... but there was a strange detour [as a result of] my time with Paypal...

We all [the "Paypal mafia"] went off and started more companies [Yelp, YouTube, etc.]... and what you'd do in your 20s if you got that level of success was, "Well, I have some money. Now I need some more." This was the mentality...

In 2008 this changed for me, almost like a spiritual conversion. I met... William and Michael Andregg, who decided in their freshman year they wanted to cure aging... So they set out [with Halycon Molecular] to build the perfect gene sequencing machine...

I was trying to help them incorporate the company and set up the right share structure, and they said, "We don't have a share structure... We're all gonna give it away... to a foundation to help cure aging and disease.

And I thought, "Well that's kind of quaint. I've gotta teach these entrepreneurs about how to set up a real business, how to make money. You've gotta divide up your shares, people are gonna fight over them... and that's the primary motivator for running a business, is to make money."

It hit me during that conversation... is that the purpose of Halcyon Molecular was never to make money... it was to solve the greatest problem of mankind: our slavery to our biological form...

That changed my way of thinking about what I was doing in the world. I wasn't there just to make money... I wanted to find more William and Michael Andreggs: more entrepreneurs who were building companies that were developing breakthrough technologies that would enable a positive Singularity for the world within our lifetimes.