3DE is Betting on the One Advantage That Never Gets Obsolete: Natural Intelligence
The loudest story we tell about the future is an AI story. The tools will get smarter. The workflows will get automated. The pace will keep accelerating. And in the middle of that noise, it’s easy to miss the more important question: what happens to the human mind when the world becomes optimized for machines?
3D Entrepreneurs (3DE) Club is built around a quieter, better premise: the most valuable intelligence in the next economy is natural intelligence. Curiosity. Judgment. Taste. Courage. The ability to spot a problem worth solving and push an idea into the world, even when you don’t know exactly how it ends. Those skills don’t get disrupted. They get amplified.
On Sunday, January 25, 2026, from 2:00–4:00 PM at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History (MAH), 3DE Club will officially launch its Santa Cruz-based nonprofit and kick off its fundraising with an event that feels unusually grounded in what actually matters. Not the hype cycle. Not the shiny demo. The harder work of helping kids build the internal muscles that turn imagination into outcomes.
3DE Club delivers a scalable ed-tech entrepreneurship platform that enables local schools to become launchpads for future innovators, starting earlier than most systems ever dare. After successful pilots at Imagination Lab School in Palo Alto and Pacific Elementary School in Davenport, the organization plans a controlled expansion this year into 10 elementary schools across Santa Cruz and the Monterey Bay region.
But the real product isn’t the platform. It’s the experience: ideation to commercialization. Kids learn how to generate ideas, shape them into something real, price it, explain it, and share it with others. They learn that value isn’t something adults hand you. It’s something you can create.
That shift matters even more in a world where AI makes production easier. When tools can generate endless options, the scarce resource becomes the human ability to choose well. To connect with people. To understand what’s meaningful, what’s useful, what’s ethical, what’s worth building at all. AI can accelerate outputs, but NI determines direction.
The launch event brings together a real cross-section of the region’s leadership. It will be moderated by Jeremy Neuner (Google Partnerships) and include attendees such as Mayor Fred Keeley, Hilary Bryant (Community Foundation Santa Cruz County), Doug Erickson (Santa Cruz Works), Ed Colligan (former CEO of Palm, Inc.), Jason Borgen(CTO, SSCOE), Eric Gross (Superintendent of Pacific Elementary School), and other civic, business, and community leaders.
Highlights include networking, a panel discussion on preparing students for an uncertain future, and the moment that makes the whole thing click: a Shark Tank-style pitch by 3DE Club members ages 8–12, showcasing products they’ve designed and 3D-printed themselves. The event closes with a ribbon-cutting ceremony for 3DE’s gamified entrepreneurship platform.
This is what a hopeful future looks like: not kids learning to keep up with technology, but kids learning to lead with their own minds. Support youth, support this 501c3 community organization.