I am unclear on whether or not the main constraint of evaluating EA projects in general is the “time of senior people with domain expertise.” For-profit venture capitalists are usually not the world’s leading experts in a particular area. Domain familiarity is valuable, but it does not seem like a “senior” or “expert” level of domain knowledge is all that helpful in assessing the likelihood of something succeeding or not. Like VCs, many EA funders I’ve spoken with rely strongly on factors that do not require a high level of domain familiarity to determine whether or not to fund a project, such as the strength of the founding team. Some amount of domain expertise may be helpful in evaluating certain types of highly complex or research-heavy projects, but most of the projects that I’ve seen and that other funders are funding do not seem to involve this level of deep domain complexity.
I am unclear on whether or not the main constraint of evaluating EA projects in general is the “time of senior people with domain expertise.” For-profit venture capitalists are usually not the world’s leading experts in a particular area. Domain familiarity is valuable, but it does not seem like a “senior” or “expert” level of domain knowledge is all that helpful in assessing the likelihood of something succeeding or not. Like VCs, many EA funders I’ve spoken with rely strongly on factors that do not require a high level of domain familiarity to determine whether or not to fund a project, such as the strength of the founding team. Some amount of domain expertise may be helpful in evaluating certain types of highly complex or research-heavy projects, but most of the projects that I’ve seen and that other funders are funding do not seem to involve this level of deep domain complexity.