In this Telescope Foundation LENS Q&A, we talk with Shannon Farley, co-founder and executive director of Fast Forward, an accelerator supporting tech and AI-powered nonprofits around the world. Shannon shares why the biggest problems are often the ones markets have failed to solve, how AI has collapsed the barriers to starting something new, and what it takes to build technology that keeps human dignity at the center.
Tell me about Fast Forward and how your work connects to Telescope Foundation’s mission of building technology that works for more people.
We started Fast Forward because we wanted the best tech applied to our biggest social problems. We believe the fastest way to get there is by supporting tech and AI-powered nonprofits to build what they need to solve the problems in front of them.
So much of technology has really been focused on market problems, but there are a lot of problems out there — problems that markets have totally failed. There are a billion people who will never see a doctor in their lives. There are tech nonprofits building tools for community health workers to serve those folks, because they too deserve great health and the technology to get there. In our first cohort, back in 2014, we had an organization called Medic. At the time, they were serving about 5 million people with a pretty basic mobile app for community health workers. Fast forward to today, and Medic is serving 89 million people with a comprehensive suite of open source technology to ensure that wherever someone is, they have access to the highest quality health care.
Where do you see technology genuinely changing things for the better right now?
Every day we hear about issues where I can see how technology would impact human lives in good ways. We work with an organization called Adalat AI in India, where there are 300 years of backlogged court cases. That's not just because of laws — it's because there aren't enough trained stenographers. Judges still handwrite everything in a courtroom: testimonies, summary judgments. That just takes a long time. It's the perfect space for AI to come in and help, so humans do what humans do best, which is present an argument, and courtrooms run much faster. This is an organization that's only a couple of years old, but they're already in courtrooms in 11 Indian states.
Another example: we had an organization in our last accelerator cohort called Visilant — an ophthalmologist, an AI engineer, and a business student. They created an incredible AI layer and an inexpensive lens that can sit on top of any smartphone and screen for eye disease. Why this matters is because most blindness is preventable with antibiotics or cataract surgery, but it's hard to know how to triage if you don't have the technology out in the field. It's been about a year since they were in our program, and they've already served a hundred thousand patients. I love that this ragtag group of three — super smart, could do anything in the world — said, you know what? No one has to be blind. We can solve this.
When you think about a future that works for everybody, what does that look like?
There's no question that these are turbulent times. Need is growing; it's not receding. When I think about the opportunity for technology, I really think of technology as a tool, like a hammer. It can build a house or it can tear one down. So it matters who you back.
At Fast Forward, we're backing the builders. We're backing people who care about the human at the end of the technology — how they're served — and ensuring that their dignity and joy is not just part of the design process, but part of the entire ecosystem of support.
What would you say to young people trying to enter this space?
The first thing we would say is: what do you know? You should start with the issue that's burning a hole in your heart, because these jobs are not easy. It's everything about running a nonprofit and everything about running a tech startup at the same time. You really have to know the issue you want to work on, live it and breathe it, and build toward that.
One of the things that's particularly exciting in this moment is that AI has removed barriers to entry. For years, Fast Forward has run an accelerator program, and we would get about 200 applications from all over the world for 10 spots. A year ago, the number was 400. Last year it was 800. We're seeing exponential growth because all of these AI tools, no-code tools, and agentic coding assistants make it so much easier to start something. So my recommendation to young people is: think about the problem you know best, play with the tools, see if you can get something in people's hands as quickly as possible, and then think about how to grow from there.
And as they build, I want them to center their network in their community — not the transaction, but the humans within the community and what they need. One of the things that's particularly interesting about this moment in AI is that there's not one entity that has the answers. It's not platform companies, it's definitely not government, it's not foundations, it's not individuals. It's going to be a community of folks who care about humans and how to center human needs and human dignity in the future we build. We run into trouble when we only talk to each other — particularly with something as fast-moving and wholly different than anything we've seen before.
Is there a missing piece in how we think about AI?
I think AI can be a tool for good, but it really matters who's using it and, most importantly, who's building it. It really matters that you have a diversity of voices in the training data set. It really matters that you have somebody with lived experience on the ground informing the best practices that come out of evaluating the model itself. And it really, really matters at which moments you put humans in the loop — where you insert human decision-making and human judgment so that you know your values are reflected in the outputs. It's going to get harder as the technology becomes more self-sustaining, but that's all the more reason to ensure that your build, your data, your iterations, and ultimately your output reflect your values.
The good news is that it's early. There's a moment of opportunity where we can influence not just where the platforms go, but the middleware layer of what we can build to make this better for other people. There isn't a lack of imagination — that's the thing humans are great at. Humans are incredible creatives. What there isn't is an abundance of infrastructure. So there's a real opportunity to build the infrastructure we deserve, so that the tools touching people's lives reflect our values.
What kind of founder is Fast Forward looking to back?
Fast Forward focuses on proximate founders. The reason we do this is because you have to really understand a problem to be able to solve it. So we look for folks who have lived experience with the problem — that's our first filter. We want to know that you've been there, you've seen it, the solution has been roaming around in your imagination, and you've been waiting for the tech to unlock it.
We had a group in this last cohort called Muevetex, based in Mexico. In Mexico, you can use Google Maps if you're in a major city or a tourist area, but in the rest of the country, the maps aren't as filled out and don't include public transportation information. In those places, public transportation exists — independent vendors with a van who will pick people up — but the routes change all the time, the timing isn't consistent, and there's no way to figure out how to get from one place to another. People spend hours just trying to commute to school and work. The founders of Muevetex had this problem themselves — they were struggling to get to university — so they mapped all of the public transportation routes by hand and built an app that reflected what they had mapped. Now they're crowdsourcing information from their neighbors and communities to keep that map accurate. Muevetex is solving a personal problem, a community problem, and, importantly, a global problem around mobility, access, and freedom.
What's next for Fast Forward?
For over a decade, Fast Forward has served early-stage tech nonprofits to launch and scale their impact. In the next one to two years, we're building a suite of tools so that folks who are not yet a nonprofit, but have dreams of becoming one, will have everything they need to launch AI-powered nonprofits.
One of the things I'm most excited about with this technology is the opportunity to level the playing field — that any person with a problem that's burning a hole in their heart, who can imagine a better solution, can build it. They just need the context, the curricula, and, importantly, the community around it. That's something you can do with technology. So we're going to be building it, and you should come check it out. We have a ton of resources on our website, particularly for folks who maybe haven't built something before but know the problem in front of them and have a dream of how to solve it.
