This seems like a good point. OpenPhil has previously drawn analogies between the work it does and the work venture capitalists/angel investors do. One big part of the job of an angel investor is to spend lots of time networking so as to become aware of new funding opportunities. The fact that some fund managers are apparently not even socially engaged enough to explain why they aren’t granting the money they’ve been given seems a little discouraging on this front.
This view also suggests that a good person to add to the EA Funds team might be someone who is already known as a super-networker within the EA community. (Somewhat disappointingly, I’m having a hard time thinking of anyone like this off the top of my head. Proposal: A few people should make it their business to go to every EA event they can possibly go to, monitor and contribute to all online EA discussion spaces, and get to know loads of people in order to introduce people who should know each other etc.)
This seems like a good point. OpenPhil has previously drawn analogies between the work it does and the work venture capitalists/angel investors do. One big part of the job of an angel investor is to spend lots of time networking so as to become aware of new funding opportunities. The fact that some fund managers are apparently not even socially engaged enough to explain why they aren’t granting the money they’ve been given seems a little discouraging on this front.
This view also suggests that a good person to add to the EA Funds team might be someone who is already known as a super-networker within the EA community. (Somewhat disappointingly, I’m having a hard time thinking of anyone like this off the top of my head. Proposal: A few people should make it their business to go to every EA event they can possibly go to, monitor and contribute to all online EA discussion spaces, and get to know loads of people in order to introduce people who should know each other etc.)