It’s the stuff in which movies are made; young dreamer launches a semi-successful business idea, lands perhaps one of the best jobs on the planet, only to leave and begin the process of creating his own utopia here on Earth. While half of Marc Lore’s story is unbelievable, it’s all pretty impressive and has led him to hold a net worth of $4 billion. Not bad, for a 50-year-old who would tell you he’s just getting started.
How it All Began
Lore grew up in a home with a father who loved to throw his hat in the ring when it came to business ventures. Though his father never made it big, Lore learned to follow the stock market and keep up with business trends as a teen.
Working as a banker in the early 90’s, Lore went on to found an e-commerce site which Topps acquired for $5.7 million in 2001 according to Sportskeeda. By 2005, he had co-founded Diapers.com and again, sold the company, this time to Amazon for a cool $545 million.
In 2014, Lore founded another e-commerce company, Jet, and like the several times before, he sold Jet to Walmart for $3.3 billion just two years later. Lore’s deal led to a CEO position with Walmart’s e-commerce business dealings and he earned $244 million, making him the highest paid executive in America.
Now What?
Already a billionaire, Lore now has the freedom to dream and develop a variety of business ideas. He and baseball pro Alex Rodriguez purchased the Minnesota Timberwolves earlier this year but that’s not what has everyone talking.
Lore has announced this month, he has a plan for a vast utopia set in the western part of the United States where residents live uninhibited by an overburden of taxes, sustainable energy and a future far from climate crisis.
According to the United Nations climate change report from 2021, the Earth could reach 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2040, affecting over 1 billion people by 2050.
Lore Believes He Has the Answer
According to USA Today, Lore has a plan for a $400 billion metropolis called “the new city in America” to be built in a dessert on the west coast. He hopes the city will become a blueprint for the future and plans to include eco-friendly architecture, sustainable energy production and a drought-resistant water system.
The city will eventually be home to 5 million residents and transportation will prioritize biking, walking and slow-moving autonomous cars (minus fossil fuel).
They call it Telosa – a city in which all people are included, opinions are heard and the environment takes top priority.
Lore believes the wealth gap in America will be its folly and the inequality currently seen among economic groups, social groups and education is unacceptable. His plan is to take a large piece of land that is virtually worth nothing, create a foundation to own the land and use tax dollars to build the infrastructure.
Lore told the New York Post, in the end, that “worthless” land would be worth trillions and the foundation has given citizens medicine, education, affordable housing, social services and more. In other words, the residents have bought stake in the land and as the city grows, the residents’ benefits grow as well.
The first phase of Lore’s project is expected to be completed by 2030 and would at first, accommodate 50,000 residents. Over the course of 40 years, as many as five million people could live there, across 150,000 acres.
This summer, Lore began assembling his team, including architectural firm Bjarke Ingles Group, providing renderings of Telosa and hopes to purchase land soon, though a specific location has not been chosen.
Will it Work?
Lore is not the first to try the utopian society. According to Sarah Moser, associate professor of geography at Montreal’s McGill University, she’s currently tracking about 150 projects backed by governments or private donations and not one has reached its target.
A common wish among technology guru’s, these new cities allow for testing sites for autonomous vehicles and robot-assisted living.
Just last year, Toyota announced their plans to create a 2,000-person city at the base of Mount Fuji for this type of community. Of course, there’s always New Harmony, Indiana, a thrice-failed utopian society and Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City’s, sparking garden cities across the globe, never quite adding up to Howard’s original plan.
Lore knows the cards are stacked against him, but his desire for a new society model and equal opportunity is going to drive the entrepreneur to this next adventure. Regardless of its success, most individuals can agree Lore’s plan sounds fabulous; ‘the most open, most fair and most inclusive city in the world.’
Sources: Sportskeeda, USA Today, Telosa, New York Post