I agree with ColdButtonIssues that luxury consumer goods may be a better direction in the long term. You might be well advised to run a for-profit business (perhaps dropshipping, or other money-making schemes, like buying cheap items at garage sales and upselling them on eBay, Facebook Marketplace, etc.) and use the profits to fund the start-up costs of a bigger business. I would guess that you could make ~$10,000 with 100-200 hours of work.
I recently read “Zero to One: Notes on Startups and How to Build the Future” by Peter Thiel and “The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference” by Malcolm Gladwell, and they make several points that may be useful to you to bring about your dream of using the consumer economy to fund charities:
You want to start with a very small demographic, and gradually scale up. Supreme was created for a niche market, the New York City skateboarding scene, and now has stores in 14 cities and over $1 billion in equity. Perhaps you could sell clothes for E.A.s where 100% of profits go to Against Malaria Foundation or Clean Air Task Force.
You might get one or two articles written about this in the first couple of months and maybe it’s promoted by someone relative high-profile like Sam Harris.
Maybe, over time, it will become flashy in elite circles, and non-EA influencers will start promoting it. I’d expect this to take ~3-5 years in the best-case scenario.
Once a product reaches this “tipping point”, it will take off very quickly. This is difficult for a lot of founders, who are disillusioned in the first few years. You need absolute and unwavering faith that your product and vision will take off.
Three kinds of people are responsible for getting ideas to tip.
Connectors – they have a massive social network, with many acquaintances and allow ideas to spread from one social group to the next.
Salesmen – the boast about ideas they love and their incredibly positive energy is contagious.
Mavens – they hoard information, in order to be a source of great tips to their network, the people which they greatly influence with their advice.
Start-up = largest group of people you can convince of a plan to build a different future.
You have a very compelling vision of the future and an interesting plan to get there. I don’t expect this step will be particularly difficult for you.
Join EA Creatives and Communicators Slack for help with design, networking, distribution, etc.
Keep posting regular updates on the project on EA Forum.
Questions to ask before starting a business:
The Engineering Q: Can you create breakthrough technology instead of incremental improvements?
The Timing Q: Is now the right time to start your particular business?
The monopoly Q: Are starting with a big share from a small market?
The people Q: Do you have the right team?
The distribution Q: Do you have a way to deliver your product?
The durability Q: Will your market position be defensible 10 and 20 years into the future?
The secret Q: Have you identified a unique opportunity that others don’t see?
I’d highly recommend you read these two books. I’d even be willing to share my Kindle account with you if you don’t want to spend money rn.
Luxury goods might be a good avenue, but in the long run we’re hoping that many businesses are replaced by guiding producers, and the companies generating most profits mostly aren’t luxury companies (perhaps with the exception of Apple). I think both can be successful in guided consumption.
I had/have the idea to sell extremely high priced items that were unique. My idea was to create the world’s most expensive t-shirt (was thinking like 1 or 10 million USD) with a popular artist and donate 99% of that to charity. Seemed like that kind of thing would generate a lot of PR with the right artist and buyer. I still think this might be worth pursuing, but if you want to move the broader public towards guided consumption I believe there’s more to be gained in commodotized businesses that sell goods/services to millions. That’s why we ended up trying to be a guided producer as a sustainable marketplace. I think I have an almost delusional faith that guided consumption (I call it profit for non-profit usually) will work and I’ve quit my job, bootstrapped a business and sunk quite a lot of my net worth and all of my time into pursuing it. I have a lot of skin in the game and certainly not going to give up any time soon.
The books you mention are ones that I’ve got recommended a lot and I’m trying to read them in the upcoming months, thanks for elaborating on some important concepts in the books!
Tomer: thank you for reading and the thoughtful response!
I agree with you and ColdButtonIssues that luxury goods, allowing for virtue signaling that could warrant the toleration of higher costs and thus higher margins. However, especially if we’re talking about a long-term in which the general public is familiar with GC, it is unclear why popular profit destinations would not be used to compete in other consumer sectors. The structural advantage conferred by popular ownership is not offset by a corresponding disadvantage, and thus, where there is a meeting of the philanthropic will to create companies that serve causes and a consumer society that prefers the designated cause over a nameless shareholder GCs should tend to dominate. As I had stated in my paper, I anticipate that this advantage would be especially decisive in areas of few dimensions of product differentiation. I would be interested in thoughts as to what I might be missing in this analysis.
I’d take you up on that offer regarding the books. It sounds like they have some insights I could definitely use.
I would say that I have do have a pretty strong belief in Guided Consumption, though my unwavering faith would regard that this phenomenon will eventually become dominant moreso than in my own ability to personally usher it in. Given an insufficiently exploited means of a structural advantage, one of these decades, someone will find a way to effectively use ownership identity to get an edge over the traditional firms. Virtually any charitable cause is more popular than the competition: nameless, rich shareholders. My hope is that the Effective Altruism community can have influence inwhich causes prevail come the advent of the age of consumer power, because they are very thoughtful regarding how to do the most good. In any case, even if there was a low probability of my success, given the magnitude of good that would accompany a successful effort, I will try to tame anything in me that urges me to stop.
I agree with ColdButtonIssues that luxury consumer goods may be a better direction in the long term. You might be well advised to run a for-profit business (perhaps dropshipping, or other money-making schemes, like buying cheap items at garage sales and upselling them on eBay, Facebook Marketplace, etc.) and use the profits to fund the start-up costs of a bigger business. I would guess that you could make ~$10,000 with 100-200 hours of work.
I recently read “Zero to One: Notes on Startups and How to Build the Future” by Peter Thiel and “The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference” by Malcolm Gladwell, and they make several points that may be useful to you to bring about your dream of using the consumer economy to fund charities:
You want to start with a very small demographic, and gradually scale up. Supreme was created for a niche market, the New York City skateboarding scene, and now has stores in 14 cities and over $1 billion in equity. Perhaps you could sell clothes for E.A.s where 100% of profits go to Against Malaria Foundation or Clean Air Task Force.
You might get one or two articles written about this in the first couple of months and maybe it’s promoted by someone relative high-profile like Sam Harris.
Maybe, over time, it will become flashy in elite circles, and non-EA influencers will start promoting it. I’d expect this to take ~3-5 years in the best-case scenario.
Once a product reaches this “tipping point”, it will take off very quickly. This is difficult for a lot of founders, who are disillusioned in the first few years. You need absolute and unwavering faith that your product and vision will take off.
Three kinds of people are responsible for getting ideas to tip.
Connectors – they have a massive social network, with many acquaintances and allow ideas to spread from one social group to the next.
Salesmen – the boast about ideas they love and their incredibly positive energy is contagious.
Mavens – they hoard information, in order to be a source of great tips to their network, the people which they greatly influence with their advice.
Start-up = largest group of people you can convince of a plan to build a different future.
You have a very compelling vision of the future and an interesting plan to get there. I don’t expect this step will be particularly difficult for you.
Join EA Creatives and Communicators Slack for help with design, networking, distribution, etc.
Keep posting regular updates on the project on EA Forum.
Questions to ask before starting a business:
The Engineering Q: Can you create breakthrough technology instead of incremental improvements?
The Timing Q: Is now the right time to start your particular business?
The monopoly Q: Are starting with a big share from a small market?
The people Q: Do you have the right team?
The distribution Q: Do you have a way to deliver your product?
The durability Q: Will your market position be defensible 10 and 20 years into the future?
The secret Q: Have you identified a unique opportunity that others don’t see?
I’d highly recommend you read these two books. I’d even be willing to share my Kindle account with you if you don’t want to spend money rn.
Luxury goods might be a good avenue, but in the long run we’re hoping that many businesses are replaced by guiding producers, and the companies generating most profits mostly aren’t luxury companies (perhaps with the exception of Apple). I think both can be successful in guided consumption.
I had/have the idea to sell extremely high priced items that were unique. My idea was to create the world’s most expensive t-shirt (was thinking like 1 or 10 million USD) with a popular artist and donate 99% of that to charity. Seemed like that kind of thing would generate a lot of PR with the right artist and buyer. I still think this might be worth pursuing, but if you want to move the broader public towards guided consumption I believe there’s more to be gained in commodotized businesses that sell goods/services to millions. That’s why we ended up trying to be a guided producer as a sustainable marketplace. I think I have an almost delusional faith that guided consumption (I call it profit for non-profit usually) will work and I’ve quit my job, bootstrapped a business and sunk quite a lot of my net worth and all of my time into pursuing it. I have a lot of skin in the game and certainly not going to give up any time soon.
The books you mention are ones that I’ve got recommended a lot and I’m trying to read them in the upcoming months, thanks for elaborating on some important concepts in the books!
Tomer: thank you for reading and the thoughtful response!
I agree with you and ColdButtonIssues that luxury goods, allowing for virtue signaling that could warrant the toleration of higher costs and thus higher margins. However, especially if we’re talking about a long-term in which the general public is familiar with GC, it is unclear why popular profit destinations would not be used to compete in other consumer sectors. The structural advantage conferred by popular ownership is not offset by a corresponding disadvantage, and thus, where there is a meeting of the philanthropic will to create companies that serve causes and a consumer society that prefers the designated cause over a nameless shareholder GCs should tend to dominate. As I had stated in my paper, I anticipate that this advantage would be especially decisive in areas of few dimensions of product differentiation. I would be interested in thoughts as to what I might be missing in this analysis.
I’d take you up on that offer regarding the books. It sounds like they have some insights I could definitely use.
I would say that I have do have a pretty strong belief in Guided Consumption, though my unwavering faith would regard that this phenomenon will eventually become dominant moreso than in my own ability to personally usher it in. Given an insufficiently exploited means of a structural advantage, one of these decades, someone will find a way to effectively use ownership identity to get an edge over the traditional firms. Virtually any charitable cause is more popular than the competition: nameless, rich shareholders. My hope is that the Effective Altruism community can have influence inwhich causes prevail come the advent of the age of consumer power, because they are very thoughtful regarding how to do the most good. In any case, even if there was a low probability of my success, given the magnitude of good that would accompany a successful effort, I will try to tame anything in me that urges me to stop.