A REGENERATIVE LEARNING VENTURE STUDIO
We work with builders, communities, and institutions to turn real needs and emerging possibilities into viable ventures. Through shared learning, technology, and the practical work of organizing people and resources, we strengthen our collective capacity to act together and build organizations that sustain meaningful work.
We believe that the way we build matters as much as what we build.
WHY WE EXIST
We're living through profound changes in how we work, organize, and relate to the world around us. We don't know exactly what comes next. But we can develop the capacity to meet it and shape what becomes possible through the choices we make today.
Yet there's a mismatch between the complexity and power of the systems we live and work within and our shared human capacity to understand, coordinate, adapt, and act within them. The problem isn't that support for human development doesn't exist, but that it's often disconnected from the organizational, technological, and economic systems in which people need to put their capabilities into practice.
Someone who knows a problem firsthand may still lack the collaborators or resources to respond. Even when people come together around a shared purpose, they may struggle to coordinate decisions, responsibilities, and the work required to move forward. And when that work generates new knowledge, practices, or promising initiatives, another question emerges: what deserves to continue, and who can take responsibility for making it possible?
S³ exists to help individuals, initiatives, and institutions become more capable of responding to the problems that are actually theirs to meet. As a regenerative learning venture studio, we develop that capacity through the work itself: bringing people together around real needs, learning through action, organizing resources, and building the organizations through which meaningful contributions can continue.
HOW WE WORK
Building a venture involves the people and relationships that carry it, the systems through which they organize their work, and the value they create in the world. Our Human Organizational Operating System (HOOS) brings these dimensions together to develop human capacity and build organizations capable of sustaining meaningful work.
Developing individual capacity.
We make room for each person's questions, gifts, needs, and sense of purpose. Through self-directed learning, reflection, and real-world practice, we cultivate the awareness, discernment, and agency to recognize meaningful contributions and take responsibility for bringing them into the world.
Learning to act together.
Through listening, peer learning, and practical collaboration, we bring different perspectives and capabilities into relationship. We cultivate trust, shared agreements, and the capacity to make decisions, coordinate responsibilities, and organize meaningful work together.
Organizing work that can thrive.
We develop the roles, operating practices, and social and digital technologies that enable people to coordinate their work and deliver value. Through market learning, practical experimentation, and resource organization, we work toward ventures capable of generating revenue and sustaining their operations.
Sustaining what makes the work possible.
Every venture exists within a wider economy and living ecosystem. We consider how resources circulate, how contributions are recognized and supported, and how the value created can sustain people, communities, and the living systems on which the work depends.
These dimensions are distinct but inseparable in practice. Decisions about purpose, relationships, technology, and resources continually shape one another—and the kinds of organizations we become capable of building.
THE EVOLUTIONARY LEARNING JOURNEY
Our methodology connects personal and collective development with the practical work of creating meaningful contributions. Six recurring phases provide a structure for inquiry, collaboration, experimentation, and integration—developing both the work and the capacities of the people carrying it forward.
Listening grounds the journey in what matters to each person and the group. We explore our questions, recognize what people bring, and develop the shared intentions and agreements that make collaboration possible.
Learning takes us beyond our starting perspectives. Through conversations, research, and encounters with the wider ecosystem, we deepen our understanding of people's needs, existing efforts, relationships, opportunities, and constraints.
Letting Go creates space to question what we thought we knew. We make sense of our discoveries, release assumptions that no longer serve, and discern a direction worth pursuing together.
Letting Come opens space for emerging possibilities to take shape. Through experimentation, prototyping, and organizing people and resources, we discover what the work asks of us as we bring it into form.
Leading means making our work visible and taking responsibility for what we offer. Through demonstrations, storytelling, and feedback, we invite others to encounter our contributions, test their usefulness, and help shape what comes next.
Living carries learning beyond the immediate experience. We integrate what has changed into our lives and work, consider what continuation requires, and decide what to sustain, adapt, transfer, pause, or bring to a close.
LIVING LABORATORIES
Living Laboratories are structured, 12-week environments where people collaborate around real needs and emerging initiatives. They bring S³'s Human Organizational Operating System and Evolutionary Learning Journey into practice, connecting human development with applied research and venture building.
Each Lab brings meaningful questions into contact with the people and communities they concern. Participants investigate needs, test ideas through practical experiments, and develop contributions that others can experience and evaluate. S³ designs and facilitates the environment, coordinating the relationships, technologies, and resources that make this work possible.
The work develops in two directions. Participants strengthen their capacity to learn, collaborate, and take responsibility, while their initiatives gain evidence and clearer pathways forward. What emerges may lead to further experimentation, new partnerships, or venture formation. Where opportunities warrant deeper commitment, S³ works to assemble the entrepreneurial, operating, and investor capacities needed to carry them forward.
WHO WE WORK WITH
We work with people carrying different kinds of work and responsibility: developing their own initiatives, serving communities and organizations, or advancing opportunities across a wider ecosystem. Our relationships take shape around what matters to those involved, the capabilities and resources each brings, and what we can responsibly build together.
People developing a meaningful question, practice, body of work, or emerging venture. Through shared learning and practical collaboration, we help them strengthen their capabilities, test possibilities in the real world, and develop the relationships and organizational foundations their work needs to thrive.
Leaders and teams responsible for communities, organizations, and bodies of work already underway. We collaborate through applied research, developmental programs, and organizational design to strengthen their capacity, explore meaningful questions, and create pathways for promising initiatives to move into practice.
People and organizations connecting resources, relationships, and opportunities across a wider field. We work together to identify needs worth addressing, support coordinated experimentation, and direct attention and resources toward initiatives capable of creating meaningful value.
Facilitators, designers, researchers, technologists, operators, fellow founders, and others whose capabilities or initiatives complement our own. We exchange knowledge, develop shared opportunities, and contribute to work that benefits from our combined experience, relationships, and responsibility.
Different relationships call for different forms of participation and commitment. We seek to make those relationships clear, reciprocal, and capable of supporting meaningful work over time.
Explore working together →OUR WORK & ROOTS
Our approach has taken shape through years of work in regenerative organization, peer learning, institutional collaboration, and venture development. These experiences have shaped the practices and capabilities we bring together in S³ today.
2025 / LIVING LABORATORY
A ten-week Living Laboratory bringing personal development, shared inquiry, and venture experimentation into one learning environment. Participants pursued meaningful questions and emerging initiatives within a global peer cohort, while engaging in applied research with Open Circle Foundation.
On Isaac Rubinstein’s Substack
Inside the experience
Participants explored their individual purposes and learning questions through contemplative practice, peer coaching, and facilitated collaboration. The learning journey adapted to the needs and discoveries emerging from the group.
Sensing journeys and collaborative research brought participants into contact with real-world needs. Through practical experiments and early prototypes, they developed their ideas into contributions others could encounter and respond to.
Interviews, personal stories, organizational case studies, and a shared portfolio of emerging work made the learning visible. These contributions were gathered in Wayfinding, a publication documenting the experiences, practices, and emerging work developed through the Laboratory.
REGENERATIVE ORGANIZATION & SHARED STEWARDSHIP
Samara emerged within SEEDS, a global movement developing regenerative economic and governance systems. Working across distributed communities and local initiatives, we helped people adopt new technologies while developing the human infrastructure for coordination: shared roles, governance practices, contribution recognition, and systems for organizing meaningful work.
Samara Trust extended this work into a member-led organization for collective development and shared stewardship. Through pooled resources, governance, member training, and support for emerging initiatives, we explored how individual contributions and shared economic responsibility could sustain a wider ecology of purposeful work.
PEER LEARNING & PURPOSEFUL ENTREPRENEURSHIP
A six-month peer-learning journey for purpose-driven entrepreneurs, developed through Huddlecraft's Huddle model. Participants explored their own learning questions through contemplative practice, peer coaching, collaborative inquiry, and hands-on project work.
The journey culminated in a public Showcase of participant stories, projects, and creative offerings. Its five-phase learning design became an important foundation for the S³ Evolutionary Learning Journey.
2026 / INSTITUTIONAL VENTURE DEVELOPMENT
Working with Open Circle Foundation, we helped develop an initiative to bring its developmental programs and rites-of-passage practices into higher education.
The work combined market research, institutional outreach, and program development with the practical demands of venture building: organizing team responsibilities, designing partnership and sales workflows, and developing the digital and operational systems needed to move the initiative forward.
OUR NEXT CHAPTER
Established in September 2026 as a Colorado limited cooperative association and public benefit corporation, S³ is building the organization through which this work can continue. We're developing cooperative stewardship, clear agreements around contribution and compensation, and an economic model that can sustain the people doing the work while creating value for the wider world.
Looking toward 2027, we're preparing our next Living Laboratory, bringing builders and institutional partners together around real needs and emerging initiatives. We're assembling the relationships, team, technology, and financial resources to support that work—and strengthening the studio's capacity to develop promising opportunities into viable ventures that can sustain their contributions.
GROW WITH US
Let's start with a conversation.
Bring what you're working on, the questions you're exploring, or where you'd like to contribute. Let's explore where our work might connect and what we could do together.
Talk to JustinCONNECT DIRECTLY
Facilitative Founder
Samara's Sanctuary Studios
FOLLOW THE JOURNEY
Writing, experiments, research, and reflections as the Studio develops.
Read our writing on Substack (opens in a new tab)