The first phase will involve building smaller-term city “solutions” to city issues like transport and housing funded by Mr Rzepecki before submitting an application to a host nation for an entire city, when he hopes that his network of Silicon Valley founders and investors will get involved.
“It is very tricky to build an economy and convince tens of thousands to relocate, so I am definitely not of mind that I am just going to buy a plot of land and figure out everything else after,” he said.
“I think that there are going to be a variety of approaches and a variety of founders tackling the problem.”
Mr Rzepecki, who has a background in urban planning, said he grew disillusioned while living in San Francisco, home to some of the wealthiest individuals yet one of the largest homeless populations in the western world.
Venture-backed private cities have received funding from tech heavyweights. Trump donor and PayPal founder Peter Thiel, Marc Andreesen and Bitcoin investor Roger Ver put $9m in Pronomos in 2019, a venture capital fund dedicated to building the next charter city. Pronomos is backing Blue Book Cities, which is in discussion with officials in Africa.
“We are working with teams of people in Africa and Europe to create the legislation and get government approval to do these unique real estate developments where the value is driven by having different laws and maybe more honest, reliable courts, because that’s a huge problem in a lot of countries,” Patri Friedman, Pronomos’ general partner said.
In Nigeria, Iyinoluwa “E” Aboyeji, cofounder of Flutterwave, a fintech firm valued at more than $150m, is currently on the hunt for Silicon Valley engineers to invest and eventually move to his business-friendly “Talent City” in Africa.