Andrew Conru · Why I care
Why Icare.
I’ve spent my life building places where people connect, and watching what happens when the incentives pull them apart.
01
I build places for people to connect
Over the years, I’ve built dozens of online and offline communities to help people connect, for all types of relationships. Some were websites. Some were rooms full of art and people. I keep watching what brings people together, and what pulls them apart.
02
You are not your thoughts
In December 2007, at thirty-nine, I sold FriendFinder. Nobody made me. I’d built a hugely popular site, and it had become who I was.
“I was the company, the company was me.”
Andrew Conru
“Stress, depression and burnout. I had to get away.”
Andrew Conru, 2026
“Your thoughts can be more powerful than you. You are not your thoughts. That’s the oddest thing. Your thoughts are downstream from things you can’t even articulate, and you really can’t understand what those are until you quiet your mind. And then you find something pure and beautiful.”
Andrew Conru, 2026
A friend told me to learn something worth remembering. I’d never taken an art class, so I painted, full-time, for two years.
“The biggest one: not seeking mental health help earlier. Trying to shoulder it all, and understand it myself.”
Andrew Conru, 2026, on what he’d do differently
03
Philanthropy is harder than it looks
I’ve been giving money away for about twenty years. I wanted to bring the same rigor I brought to building companies, and it turned out to be much harder.
“The first part of philanthropy is to heal thyself.”
Andrew Conru, 2026
04
Left and right in the same room
For years I’ve tried to get people who disagree to actually talk to each other, instead of past each other.
“I tried to get left and right to talk to each other, and I even created humanist.com to lay out the core elements of how to be good.”
Andrew Conru, 2026
05
The algorithm, then AI
“Kind of dumb and simple, but that’s how modern life got to where we’re at, especially online, because online is so easy to optimize, and it puts the money people in front of the users.”
Andrew Conru, 2026
“The power of the algorithm is our biggest worry right now, because it runs all the way to AI.”
Andrew Conru, 2026
“The algorithm can prioritize anything, and right now it’s not prioritized for your benefit.”
Andrew Conru, 2026
AI is starting to take the work that gave people their identity, the way selling my company once took mine. What holds people up is craft, art and community: things you make, and people you make them with. That’s why I care about this now.