Scott Hartley co-founded and co-manages Everywhere Ventures after nearly 15 years in venture capital and conversations with 10,000+ entrepreneurs, bringing a rare mix of federal policy experience from his time as a Presidential Innovation Fellow at the White House and big-tech product perspective from Google and Facebook. He approaches venture capital as psychology rather than finance, focusing on founder motivations and communication styles as core investment signals, and actively seeks opportunities far outside Silicon Valley in under-capitalized ecosystems like the Philippines while emphasizing that humanities perspectives are essential to frame AI and other technologies.

• Integrating liberal arts into the technology sector. A major focus is the belief that successful companies must combine technical engineering with humanistic skills. A relevant example is the frequent promotion of an authored book about bringing more philosophical thinking into tech, and praising financial journalists who highlight the importance of anthropology in the modern digital age.
• Empathizing with the extreme difficulty of startup work life balance. Entrepreneurship is framed as an endless marathon that takes a severe personal toll on founders. A memorable example used to illustrate this was comparing startups to triathlons, noting that while physical races have clear finish lines, an ambitious business never does, making personal balance an even harder task than initially launching the company.
• Funding early stage companies across diverse global and regional markets. There is a clear enthusiasm for backing founders far beyond traditional technology hubs. This is demonstrated by public celebrations of new venture fund launches in the American Midwest and Australia, as well as active encouragement for learning about decades of company building across Africa.
• Viewing digital assets and alternative investments as inevitable infrastructure. Cryptocurrencies and decentralized finance are treated as foundational elements of the future economy rather than passing fads. To illustrate this, the point was made that treating digital money as a separate corporate strategy will soon seem as outdated as having an isolated mobile phone strategy, and that critics should focus on improving clean energy rather than attacking the power consumption of digital assets.