The Time Repair Corporation exists because we believe that no one should have to fear the future, whether that means tomorrow, next year, or a lifetime from now. We are equipping and empowering a generation of practical futurists to actively shape our collective future.

I’m Paul, an engineer and materials specialist. While I am focused once I am working on a problem, I admit that I daydream a lot. In 2018 the daydreaming came in handy when someone asked me what my startup was. I was networking at an event here in Helsinki, and it got me thinking about the future. In that moment I imagined 2050, I had followed the career path I had in mind, product development and design engineering, because it was practical. Eventually I was leading a team of other engineers and specialists. Possibly by 2050 founding my own startup. I asked myself what would it be?

Of course I wanted to use all of my knowledge and experience to fix the big sustainability problems that have bothered me since childhood. By 2050 however, it is too late to do anything about them, so the best company I could create would be a time travel company that let me alter things back in the past when there was still time. Suddenly I found myself back at the networking event, where I was explaining that ideally I could found a company that focused on sustainability and education, but that I hadn’t founded one yet. 

My companion told me that I had homework. When I got home I needed to fill up an A4 paper with the “Why What and How” of the company I would like to found. They said that the world needed more passionate people to make businesses and that this was a realistic way to start getting feedback and validate an idea. By the end of the week I had 60 pages. Not only that I realized that other notes, drawings, project ideas, scribbles, and daydreams that I had already recorded all applied because this was already all I thought about. 

In order to make changes at the scale I would need to, to positively impact the future, I would need to build a team focused on empowerment, education, and positivity. I hadn’t done anything before because I looked at the scale of the problems and thought they were too big for me, but all of the greatest works of our species have been too big for any one person. They require coordinated effort, the best science and mathematics, hope, and a unified will. I realized that in my daydream I had looked at a possible future, and future Paul had looked back and had reminded me that I am an engineer. I don’t need to be able to wrestle all of the plastic out of the sea myself, or clear the carbon dioxide out of the air, I needed to design a series of systemic changes that will have a high probability of accomplishing those goals. To build the lever that would move the world. 

The climate strikes prove that the will exists, anyone who imagines the future wants a world where children can grow up in safety and have opportunities, and by building a platform between education, industry, and communities we can provide everyone with clear next-steps that combine everything we need to start making real lasting change. That means that no matter who or what you are today, you can start using what you already have to shape who you will be tomorrow; and that we need every artist, entrepreneur, doctor, parent, and yes every student, to lend their talents and vision. The most beautiful thing about this precise moment in history, is that if we work together, and start right now, there is still time to fix the future. 

Our goal now is to connect the community of people who want to do something, the teachers who want the latest material for their classes, the business people who are taking courageous steps to do things sustainably or who want to get started taking them, the students who are tired of artificial boundaries holding them back from building our future.

If you are that person, the one who is going to change the world, then reach out and join us; because we can’t believe it has taken this long to meet you. You are a practical futurist and you are more than welcome to join the Time Repair Corporation.