1. Tim Berners-Lee
Subject: Solid + Headstone — you already built the foundation
Tim,
You invented the web so knowledge could be free. Then you watched it get enclosed. Solid is your answer to that — data pods that put the person back at the center.
Headstone is trying to do something adjacent: what happens to a person's data, identity, and knowledge after they die? Right now, it disappears or gets harvested. We think it should belong to the person — and then to the commons.
You already believe this. The architecture you built for Solid is closer to what we need than anything else out there.
We're not looking for investment or partnership in any commercial sense. We're looking for people who already share the conviction, so we can build this right.
The project opens with a line you might appreciate: "You Will Die. So will everyone you love." It's not morbid — it's honest.
I've attached the Black Paper. It's short.
Would you be willing to read it and get on a 20-minute call?
— Johnny Bettencourt
2. Vitalik Buterin
Subject: Public goods, digital death, and the thing nobody's building
Vitalik,
You've written more clearly about public goods, coordination failure, and what blockchains are actually for than almost anyone. You know the technology isn't the point — the social contract underneath it is.
Headstone is a digital legacy and data sovereignty platform built on three things: Freedom, Individual Rights, Equality. The tagline is "The Great Equalizer." Not because it's catchy — because that's literally what it does. A billionaire and a broke 22-year-old die the same way. Their data shouldn't be treated differently.
We think there's a governance and preservation layer that needs to be built at the protocol level — something permanent, censorship-resistant, accountable to no corporation. Your work on quadratic funding and public goods mechanisms is directly relevant.
Not asking for money. Not pitching a startup. Looking for people who already believe what we believe and want to help build it right.
The Black Paper is attached. It opens honestly: "You Will Die. So will everyone you love."
Would you read it? A 20-minute call after would mean a lot.
— Johnny Bettencourt
3. Brewster Kahle
Subject: The Archive preserves the past. Who preserves the person?
Brewster,
The Internet Archive exists because you understood something most people missed: if we don't actively preserve things, they disappear. Pages, books, music, culture — gone.
You've spent your career fighting to keep that from happening. Universal access to all knowledge. That sentence alone could be the mission statement for Headstone.
But we're focused on a gap nobody's filling: personal knowledge. The grandmother who survived something no one else did. The inventor whose notebooks never got digitized. The ordinary person whose life contained extraordinary things. When they die, all of it dies.
Headstone is building the infrastructure to change that — data sovereignty in life, legacy preservation after death. Owned by the person, not a platform.
You'd understand this immediately. The Archive is kin to what we're trying to do.
Attached is the Black Paper. It opens: "You Will Die. So will everyone you love." — because that's the truth the whole project is built on.
Would you give it 15 minutes and tell me what you think? A call would be even better.
— Johnny Bettencourt
4. Shoshana Zuboff
Subject: You named the problem. We're trying to build the exit.
Shoshana,
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism named something that needed naming. You showed how behavioral data became the raw material of a new economic order — extracted without consent, processed without transparency, deployed against the people it came from.
You wrote the diagnosis. Headstone is trying to build part of the cure.
The premise is simple and uncomfortable: you are going to die. Your data won't. Right now it gets inherited by platforms, not people. We're building the infrastructure to reverse that — data sovereignty in life, meaningful legacy on your own terms after.
The economic model isn't extractive. No surveillance. No behavioral modification. "Basic income for basic. Big income for all." The data value flows back to the person who generated it — and ultimately to their heirs, community, or the commons.
You've already done the intellectual work that makes this legible. We need people like you to help it be credible.
The Black Paper is attached. Under 20 pages.
Would you read it and spend 20 minutes with me on a call?
— Johnny Bettencourt
5. Tristan Harris
Subject: What if we built for the end — not the engagement?
Tristan,
You left Google because you realized the incentives were pointing the wrong direction. The algorithm wasn't evil — it was just optimizing for the wrong thing. Engagement over wellbeing. Dopamine over dignity.
The Social Dilemma reached people who'd never read a policy paper. That's rare. That's a gift.
Headstone is thinking about a different kind of design problem: what should technology do for people at the end of life — and after? Right now the answer is: nothing good. Your data gets scattered, monetized, or deleted. Your story gets lost.
We're building something that puts the person in control — of their data, their legacy, their digital life. Not as a product. As a right.
The design principles you've developed at the Center for Humane Technology are exactly the kind of thinking this needs. We don't want to build another engagement machine. We want to build something that actually serves people.
Attached is the Black Paper. Honest opening: "You Will Die. So will everyone you love."
Could we get 20 minutes? I'd love your reaction.
— Johnny Bettencourt
6. Max Schrems
Subject: You took them to court. We're trying to make the case moot.
Max,
You've spent years fighting to make existing law mean something. GDPR, Schrems I, Schrems II — you've forced courts and regulators to confront what "data protection" actually requires. That takes a particular kind of stubbornness. The good kind.
But litigation is reactive. Someone violates your rights, you fight back. We want to build something where the violation can't happen in the first place — because the data never left the person's control.
Headstone is a digital legacy and data sovereignty platform. The core idea: your data is yours in life, and yours to direct after death. Not the platform's. Not the state's. Yours. The infrastructure we're building makes that real — not just legally, but technically.
You've seen what happens when legal frameworks exist but architecture doesn't match. We're trying to close that gap.
Not asking for legal help (though we'd love your thinking). Asking if you'd read what we've built and tell us where the gaps are.
Attached: the Black Paper. It's short and honest.
20-minute call?
— Johnny Bettencourt
7. Mackenzie Scott
Subject: Not asking for money. Asking if you'd read something.
Mackenzie,
This might be the rarest email you receive: we're not asking for funding.
What you've built — a model of giving that trusts recipients, moves fast, and attaches no strings — is its own kind of philosophy. You believe that people closest to the problem are best positioned to solve it. That's not charity. That's respect.
Headstone is a digital legacy and data sovereignty platform built on Freedom, Individual Rights, and Equality. The tagline is "The Great Equalizer" — because death is the great equalizer, and what comes after shouldn't depend on how rich you were.
We're looking for co-signers. People who look at this and say yes, this is the right direction. That kind of credibility matters for a project trying to serve everyone equally — especially people with no power to advocate for themselves.
The Black Paper is attached. It opens with: "You Will Die. So will everyone you love." Not morbid. Honest.
If it resonates, would you be willing to read it and spend 20 minutes with me?
— Johnny Bettencourt
8. Aza Raskin
Subject: You invented infinite scroll. Now help us build something finite and meaningful.
Aza,
You invented infinite scroll, watched what it became, and then spent years trying to undo the harm. That kind of intellectual honesty — naming your own contribution to a problem — is rare. It's also the only way to actually fix things.
The Center for Humane Technology asks: what would technology look like if it served humans instead of harvesting them? Headstone is trying to answer that question for one of the most human moments there is — the end of a life.
Right now when someone dies, their digital presence is either frozen, monetized, or deleted. Their data — decades of it — gets absorbed into systems that don't care who they were. We're building the infrastructure to change that. Data sovereignty in life. Meaningful legacy after. Owned by the person, not the platform.
The design philosophy here matters as much as the tech. That's where I think your brain would be useful.
Attached is the Black Paper. Short, direct, opens with: "You Will Die. So will everyone you love."
20 minutes?
— Johnny Bettencourt
9. Primavera De Filippi
Subject: Blockchain governance, digital death, and the infrastructure of personhood
Primavera,
Your work sits at an intersection very few people can navigate: law, code, and governance — not as separate disciplines but as one system. Blockchain and the Law named the idea of lex cryptographia — rules enforced by code rather than institutions. That framing changed how I think about what's actually possible.
Headstone is trying to build something that needs exactly that kind of thinking: a digital legacy system where a person's data rights survive their death, enforced not by goodwill or legal threat but by architecture. The governance questions are hard. Who controls what after someone dies? How do you build a commons from millions of personal legacies? What does consent look like across time?
This page summarizes the full specification. See the full document for complete details.