Hmmm, reading your question, I think our disagreement might not actually be about entrepreneurs’ fit in EA, but rather about how much labor your plan requires. I think (correct me if I’m wrong) you and I both believe something like:
If Snowball would require large amounts of labor to get close to market returns or to get impactful people involved in EA, then it might not be worth doing.
Let me briefly explain why I think the antecedent holds:
Market returns: Many (maybe most) VCs follow your strategy of being a follow-on investor, for the reasons you describe. Despite this, they still have to do a fair amount of labor and struggle to make market returns (e.g. because the most lucrative deals are only available to top VC firms).
Getting people involved: EA’s have a number of connections to talented entrepreneurs: several EA organizations have gone through YCombinator, many impressive entrepreneurs have signed with Founders Pledge, etc. I’m struggling to think of instances where these networks resulted in recruiting someone to start an EA project. No doubt more could be done, and perhaps your team is more talented than the people who have tried this before, but I still doubt it will be easy.
Do you think you had already built that skillset before leaving your startup, such that any extra skill-building in that overlapping core wouldn’t be helpful for your work now?
To be clear: it’s good to be better at more things, and of course I would be more impactful if I was better at start up stuff. But it just doesn’t seem like the biggest thing holding me, or the people I know, back.
On point #1, there’s a critical distinction in the type of “follow-on” strategy we’re employing, which is a standard template $100K into a large number of companies (generally known as the “spray and pray” model). This is characterized by low diligence per deal as opposed to most VC’s who do still put in a decent amount of effort. Spray and pray of course has it’s drawbacks in terms of validating the quality of the deal flow, but that’s the crux we’re exploring here regarding EA-aligned founders being potentially higher quality than average.
On point #2 not to be autobiographical but I personally am an example of an individual who would not have started an EA project without the onramp from Founders Pledge to actually introduce me to the community networks to get Snowball Fund up and running.
Hmmm, reading your question, I think our disagreement might not actually be about entrepreneurs’ fit in EA, but rather about how much labor your plan requires. I think (correct me if I’m wrong) you and I both believe something like:
Let me briefly explain why I think the antecedent holds:
Market returns: Many (maybe most) VCs follow your strategy of being a follow-on investor, for the reasons you describe. Despite this, they still have to do a fair amount of labor and struggle to make market returns (e.g. because the most lucrative deals are only available to top VC firms).
Getting people involved: EA’s have a number of connections to talented entrepreneurs: several EA organizations have gone through YCombinator, many impressive entrepreneurs have signed with Founders Pledge, etc. I’m struggling to think of instances where these networks resulted in recruiting someone to start an EA project. No doubt more could be done, and perhaps your team is more talented than the people who have tried this before, but I still doubt it will be easy.
To be clear: it’s good to be better at more things, and of course I would be more impactful if I was better at start up stuff. But it just doesn’t seem like the biggest thing holding me, or the people I know, back.
Daniel’s comments:
On point #1, there’s a critical distinction in the type of “follow-on” strategy we’re employing, which is a standard template $100K into a large number of companies (generally known as the “spray and pray” model). This is characterized by low diligence per deal as opposed to most VC’s who do still put in a decent amount of effort. Spray and pray of course has it’s drawbacks in terms of validating the quality of the deal flow, but that’s the crux we’re exploring here regarding EA-aligned founders being potentially higher quality than average.
On point #2 not to be autobiographical but I personally am an example of an individual who would not have started an EA project without the onramp from Founders Pledge to actually introduce me to the community networks to get Snowball Fund up and running.
Thanks for the data point about you coming from FP! That’s helpful.