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about telos

Why We Do What We Do at Telos

Felix Bouma, Chief Product Designer & CEO, January 30, 2023
Mission

Telos is accelerating the transition toward a responsible technology future through software designed to cultivate people's autotelic hearts and telic minds.

vocbulary
Telos
/ τέλος /
Supreme end of man's endeavour.
Telic
/ˈtɛlɪk/
An action or attitude directed  to a definite end.
Autotelic
/ˌɔːtə(ʊ)ˈtɛlɪk/
An activity having an end or purpose in itself.
Vision

Social networks are designed for distraction and self-comparison costing over 800 hours annually while sabotages well-being, self-determination, and relationships.

Telos is a social framework designed for authentic relationships and self-development. Today we ar pioneering a new way for people to more easily chart their day and meetup offline.

Tenets
telos values
the social dilemma
Since the 1950s, with the rise of e.g. alcohol, cigarette, and junk food, society got exposed to a series of new consumer-facing products engineered to exploit physically addictive properties targeting the human body to sell more at all costs. Today, tech companies have spent two decades engineering digitally addictive products targeting the human mind to resell attention at all cost. In turn, society finds itself amid a widespread epidemic of constant partial attention, internet addiction, and unfulfilling junk connections. 

A handful of tech multinationals monopolised the free and open web against its original promise of decentralisation. In order to become the trillion-dollar multinationals that they are today, these multinationals became not just advertisement companies but what Shoshana Zuboff terms surveillance capitalists. This new breed of capitalism made capturing human attention and reselling it a prevalent new economic imperative of the 21st Century, corrupting the development of most commonly used technologies. 

Clocking in 2 hours and 19 minutes on average, social media will cost the next generation over 800 hours annually, and 6 years and 11 months in total throughout. Sadly enough, with this ever-increased exposure, the numbers indicate social media will be the defining activity of most people’s life while it sabotages their well-being, self-determination, and relationships. 

Telos is part of the rapidly growing field of responsible technology. A movement which seeks to move away from time spent, and move towards time well spent. As consumer awareness is rapidly increasing, sentiments around authenticity, self-development, and offline relationships are exploding as consumers favour services that are finally on their team — not someone else’s. 
founder's journey
At age 17, Felix attempted to better understand how to become a happier, more fulfilled, and more productive individual. As he became increasingly curious devouring fascinating books one after the other, he became both confused and later concerned. Things just weren’t adding up: over the last 150+ years, societies have become tremendously wealthy with godlike technology. However, self-reported happiness has not increased since the 1950s; it has actually decreased

Loneliness (+46%), anxiety (3x), depression (10x), self-harm (+173%), and even suicide (+56%) are skyrocketing. Worst of all, children are outpacing every other demographic in the population on all of these metrics. Giving rise to the question regarding all this wealth: till what end? After Felix discovered the responsible technology, five years before the release of the international Netflix hit documentary The Social Dilemma that opened many people's eyes, things finally started to add up. Tristan Harris illuminates the underlying problem by quoting American sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson: "The real problem of humanity is the following: we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology."

As a dropout, Felix learned to become a self-directed autodidact who always strives to remain as relentlessly curious as a child. Spending countless hours engrossed in the writing of some of the smartest people on this planet, Felix spent lots and lots of time deliberating on questions concerning how to prep for the longest cycle and live life well. By trade, Felix is an experienced professional Ui/Ux designer and Webflow web developer, but most importantly, he is the founder and CEO of Telos.

Friends made along the way

Willie van Burgsteden
Anna Gatti
Kees Kroot
Milo Herder
Merel Staalstra
Sam Licht
Noah Cohen
Marial Leonidakis
Alrik Karssiens
Leo Rennen
Noah Bosch
Tobias Eckardt



By James Williams • Stand Out of Our Light
OUR Advisory Board
Undisclosed

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Founder

"A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it the superficial appearance of being right."

— Thomas Paine

Telos was singlehandedly founded and designed from the ground up by Felix Meritis. Foremost, Felix is a curious autodidact who reads hundreds of books about startups, psychology, design, habits, economics, and much more — curiosity is his compass. The volume and velocity of modern-day life are unprecedented. Although reading for hours nowadays conflicts with most people's agendas, it is exactly this habit that Felix regards as one of the most fulfilling activities of his life.

As Felix understood more about the theories of how individuals thrive and become happier, fulfilled, and more productive, it also became evident that the technologies we use today are not on our team, but somebody else's. Inadvertently they comprise the story of our lives.

Technology that is adversarial is technology that has no place in our life. As Thomas Pain wrote: "a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it the superficial appearance of being right." Yet, this delusion will always inevitably evaporate. Telos was built on the idea that when people tap into their innate desire to live, love, learn, and leave a legacy, they are capable of incredible things. That people deserve tools that are on their team. Tools that help focus and think, rather than distract and diminish.

"We must reflect that, when we reach the end of our days, our life experience will equal what we have paid attention to, whether
by choice or default."


--- William James

Discover what makes us unique.

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