Be among the first ten to donate $50k and help rewrite the story of American politics!

By Mike Reid | September 2025

The truth is, what I need most right now is a handful of pioneering tech millionaires and billionaires to hit that red button — or tap the three horizontal lines if you’re on your phone — in the top right corner and contribute $50k through ActBlue.

Someone like Reid Hoffman.

Someone like Dustin Moskovitz.

Yes, even someone like Sam Altman.

And why should Reid, Dustin, Sam — and every tech millionaire and billionaire who can toss in $50k without blinking — click right now and contribute $50k to Democratic Retreats via ActBlue?

To immediately begin creating an unlimited number of jobs that pay $50/hour to replace all the jobs that AI is already taking away.

Founding VIP

The first ten people to contribute (or raise) $50k+
Support a brand new approach to politics
Create fun jobs that pay $50/hour

Donate Now:

Because according to Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, AI could wipe out 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs in less than five years, while pushing unemployment rates to 10–20%.

But with Republicans controlling the White House, the House, the Senate, and the Supreme Court, what can the Democrats do now?

Run and hide? Stick our heads in the sand? Cross our fingers and pray that Barack Obama comes up with a solution?

No. We can go on job-creation offense.

The Democrats can create an unlimited supply of $50/hour jobs.

Jobs that harness the power of AI to make politics exciting again.

Jobs that use AI not just to mobilize our base, but to win over swing voters — and even Republicans. Jobs paid for by the very same tech millionaires and billionaires who are creating AI technology.

If you wanted to, you could sit here with ChatGPT all day crunching numbers like you're a Bain & Company consultant. How many people live in America? What percentage are working-age? What percentage want $50/hour jobs? Or you could just look at the chart above and realize that as long as the supply of money flowing from millionaires and billionaires into PACs is greater than or equal to the demand for fun $50/hour jobs, we'll always have the money to create an endless supply of jobs that pay $50/hour. The real challenge isn’t math, it’s the logistics that go into inventing new ways to do politics in 2025 and the fun jobs that make those visions reality. And that’s exactly what Democratic Retreats is built for. We already have hundreds of people ready to step into $50/hour jobs — we just can’t pay them. But if you donate $50k right now, we'll hire big time. We'll rapidly scale. So please donate $50k and become a Founding VIP right now.
‍

Ok. So if you’re Reid Hoffman, Dustin Moskovitz, Sam Altman, or Dario Amodei, you could easily drop $50k without even noticing.

The poorest among you is Dario — and he’s still worth $1.2 billion.

But before you give what is, to you, basically pocket change, maybe you’re wondering: Mike Reid — who exactly are you?

Ok, sure.

Hi, I'm Mike Reid.

I grew up in San Francisco, graduated from Stanford in 2007, and then spent 2009–2021 deep inside the Democratic establishment as a political fundraiser — both high-dollar and digital fundraising.

And in 2018, I even bootstrapped my own political fundraising firm, and grew it to a team of over 40 people in 2020, before watching it crash and burn in 2021 — which, as it turned out, was the best thing that could have happened, because it gave me a once-in-a-lifetime period of deep work I would never have had otherwise.

And so in 2023, when Sam rolled out ChatGPT-4 and started talking about AI’s exponential curve, I reoriented what I was designing to account for where AI technology was going — because if AI is the next gold rush, someone has to be out here mining for gold, right?

Shovel-Ready Projects:

Picture Stanford in 2005. Dario, you’re grinding through physics problem sets. Sam, that’s the year you dropped out to go build the future. Dustin, you’re in Palo Alto, scarfing Pizza My Heart slices and slipping into Stanford parties. Reid, you’re a little past the party circuit, pouring PayPal gold into scrappy 2005-era startups. And me? I’m a psych major at Stanford, sure — but mostly I’m running stuff. New Student Orientation. Ram’s Head musicals. So Democratic Retreats? Sure. Think New Student Orientation, but for democracy. The Forgiving Stage? Think Gaieties except with a professional cast and crew. Remember how electric Silicon Valley in 2005 felt? Now imagine bringing that vibe roaring into the year 2025. And here’s your role: donate $50k each to every shovel-ready project that lights you up and you won't just blitzscale a single project, you'll blitzscale an entirely new approach to political innovation, creating an endless supply of $50/hour jobs.
‍

Because to be 100% honest — I’m worried. I’m worried about the direction this country is heading.

And I’m worried that the last time Silicon Valley had a gold rush and everyone raced to sell shovels, the shovels — the social media platforms — ended up being extremely addictive.

And now we’re in another California gold rush.

But this time, the stakes are even higher.

And both the tech industry and the government are laying people off, instead of creating new opportunities. Dario’s warning us that the job cuts have barely started. Sam’s telling us that AI is about to get exponentially more powerful.

That means the storm isn’t on the horizon — it’s already here.

And unless we step up and start creating the jobs of the future right now, millions of livelihoods are going to vanish before most people even realize what’s happening.

Early AI was clunky. But I believed Sam Altman when he said development was on an exponential curve. And now the curve is here and it’s screaming upward. We’ve gone from static images to audio to full AI video, and a lot of the first drafts from AI are now good enough to publish. AI tech is getting smarter by the week, which means that job losses are about to accelerate just as fast. So, we can either watch millions of livelihoods vanish or start creating $50/hour jobs now. Please, donate $50k today, and you’ll help launch a wave of PACs built to do exactly that. This is the moment. Be the job-creating hero. Click. Donate $50k. And do it right now.
‍

Ok, so what’s my unfair advantage?

I spent many years inside the Democratic establishment, but I also speak fluent Silicon Valley gold rush. And in 2023, when the first intelligent AI arrived, I was 38 — childless, girlfriendless, fresh off the biggest success and then the biggest crash of my life — with nothing stopping me from diving into the AI deep end.

In 2023 I had nothing to lose, and everything to gain.

So I threw myself completely into learning AI, not just dabbling, but really studying how to wield these new and bizarre AI magic wands.

And I took everything I knew about how politics works — the years behind the curtain, the campaigns that put people in Congress, the handshakes with Pelosi and Schumer, the hundreds of hours in the DCCC call time room, the hundreds of millions raised both online and offline — and I set out to invent something better using AI.

Founding VIPs Retreat

Come prepared to donate (or raise) at least $50k
Meet PAC Founders launching innovative projects
Retreat for between 90 minutes and two weeks

Get Started:

And here’s the thing about AI: it’s weird. It’s powerful. And some of you building it are acting a little….let’s me just say, irresponsibly.

So yes, I’m going to use AI to call out the irresponsibility, with a mix of blunt truth and optimism — and to pull you out of the AI bubble so you can see what’s happening to regular people in America.

And also, yes: I’m mining for gold with AI technology — by asking the very billionaires creating this technology to fund PACs that will create an endless supply of $50/hour jobs to replace the very jobs that their AI technology is eliminating.

Which means, my AI loving compatriots, you now have a chance to be part of the solution to the very problem you’ve created.

And how cool is that, right?

Ok. We can’t have an economy made entirely of shovel sellers. Somebody’s got to mine for some actual gold. Here’s the exciting part: if you click right now and drop $50k, you’ll be proving the power of AI to mine that gold — because your donation is the gold. The very words you’re reading now started as a messy freewrite, then I ran them through ChatGPT-5 (thanks Sam, it’s definitely smarter) and edited them in two minutes — a process that used to take a day with humans alone. That’s the whole jobs problem in one paragraph: AI is taking human work, but now I’m using AI to get you to invest in creating new $50/hour jobs. Your $50k goes directly to that mission, making you the hero in this story. So Sam, Reid, Dustin, Dario — and every other millionaire or billionaire who loves AI but knows they haven’t figured out job creation — here’s your lifeline. Grab it. Donate $50k. And we'll create jobs.