A SANTA CRUZ MANIFESTO
This Time
We Build It
Ourselves
THE LOCAL AI CO. · SANTA CRUZ
01 · 10
№ 02 · WHAT WE GAVE AWAY
What we actually
handed over.
The knowledge of our own town. Who does good work. What's open right now. Who to call when the pipe breaks. We gave it away one convenience at a time, and someone else started renting it back to us.
THE LOCAL AI CO.
02 · 10
THE MONEY WAS THE REAL LOSS
$1,300
a year, per household.
Leaving town. ↗
A county of 260,000 sends $100 to $150 million a year to a handful of companies up north. Finding a plumber. Getting dinner. Reading a review a neighbor wrote for free.
THE LOCAL AI CO.
03 · 10
№ 04 · THE NEXT ROUND
The next round is
already here.
Ask an AI for the best plumber in town and it gives you two or three names, one pushed to the top. The same local knowledge, taken a second time, by a third party, with worse information.
1 PAID PUSHED 2 3
THE LOCAL AI CO.
04 · 10
№ 05 · WHAT IT IS
Here's what
it is.
A local AI you ask about your own town. Where to eat tonight, who does good work, what's open right now. It helps the kids with their homework too. Built with the people who live here, not scraped from them, and it runs on a machine right here, not a data center up north. Restaurants first, then the rest of what a town actually needs.
YOU ASK
“Good taqueria on the Eastside, open right now?”
IT SAYS
Two within a few blocks, both open now. The closer one has the shorter line tonight, and it's cash only, so bring some.
THE LOCAL AI CO.
05 · 10
№ 06 · MORE THAN THE DATA
We rent the brain.
We own the rest.
It runs on an open model, as capable as any of them, homework and all. The model is the easy part. What makes it local is everything around it.
Your data stays here.
Your questions, your kid's homework, your business numbers. They never leave town, and they never train someone else's model.
Your money stays here.
A ChatGPT subscription is its own toll heading north. You pay this one instead, and it stays in the county.
You own it.
You're a member of a cooperative, not a customer of a trillion-dollar company.
It answers to the town.
It won't change under you, get repriced overnight, or get shut off by someone who has never been here.
The graph is why it's better at your town. The rest is why it's yours for everything else.
THE LOCAL AI CO.
06 · 10
№ 07 · WHY CLOSENESS WORKS
Proximity is the
only real check.
When your customers are your neighbors, you compete on being good to them, because you can't get away from them. You see each other at the store. Word travels in a day. You'll be back next week. The companies seventy-five miles away compete a different way, on lock-in and ad spend, because they never have to face anyone. Distance is what let them stop caring. We answer to the near check: the places we send you are down the street, and so are you.
THE LOCAL AI CO.
07 · 10
№ 08 · THE SHAPE
So we built it as
a cooperative.
The same shape rural towns used when no company would run them electricity: a cooperative the community owns. Two parts, plainly. What's local to your town, your town owns. What's shared across towns, the company owns.
THE COOPERATIVE · YOUR TOWN
Owns the town's knowledge.
And the machine it runs on here. The people who help build it share in what it earns.
THE COMPANY · SHARED
Owns the shared protocol.
The protocol that outside models pay to query, and the shared software every town runs on.
THE LOCAL AI CO.
08 · 10
№ 09 · THE COVENANT
The covenant.
A handful of promises that bind every town. This one, and the next one.
★ SANTA CRUZ
I
Your data stays here. You are never the product. You pay with money, not with yourself.
II
Outside models pay to come in. The town is never sold to them.
III
The people who help build the knowledge share in what it earns.
IV
The graph belongs to the town. It is not for sale.
09 · 10
WHAT WE'RE ACTUALLY SAYING
It's our town.
It's our knowledge.
This time we build
on it ourselves.
THE LOCAL AI CO. · SANTA CRUZ
10 · 10
01 / 10
SPEAKER NOTES
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