Thank you for sharing! This type of critical feedback is much needed in the EA community (for many of the reasons you stated).
“A potential danger with an EA start-up is that you might, as I did, find a hypothetical solution and try to retro-fit a business case.” This is a really important takeaway from your conclusion, and I’m glad to hear it mentioned. A good piece of business/entrepreneurship advice I’d heard thrown around in startup circles before is to fall in love with the problem, not the solution. Keeping a constant internal check to evaluate how a venture, whether it be a new startup or a non-profit working on a global health intervention, is tackling the problem as effectively as possible ensures that venture is on the right track and producing the right solutions. Optimizing for the solution itself can veer those ventures off course.
Finally, I’d like to point out that you did find success here, even if the mobile application itself was a failure. By starting work on the PhD and the app at the same time, you gave yourself much more career capital than if you’d worked on one alone. In this case, the capital was not transferrable across both sides, but there’s an alternate universe that exists where the work on your app led to a industry career. You kept your options open, and that’s led you to a place where you’re more confident in the career you’ve chosen. If other EAs find themselves in a similar opportunity (i.e. working on a side business and academia at the same time), it’s probably a good thing to gain experience in both for awhile. The incremental amount of improvements each individual project would see if you went at it full time (i.e. one more published research paper, a fully functioning machine learning feature) likely do not matter in the long term. If you take value from the experience, and not the outcome, I think there are many positives to be had from this kind of work.
you gave yourself much more career capital than if you’d worked on one alone
I don’t think this is true, and that’s my main takeaway. It’s true I gave myself two opportunities to acquire career capital—the PhD and the startup—but the latter never turned into actual career capital. In expectation, the start up looked promising (to my, possibly deluded eyes) but it turned out, in fact, to be much use to me. When i started it I thought “if Hippo works I’ll be a tech billionaire. If it doesn’t work, at least I’ll have learnt loads” but in reality Hippo didn’t work and I didn’t learn much. That’s the, somewhat subtle, cautionary tale.
The incremental amount of improvements each individual project would see if you went at it full time (i.e. one more published research paper, a fully functioning machine learning feature) likely do not matter in the long term.
I want to push back on this too. I can see how much more progress I’m making on philosophy now I’m just focused on that. I basically scraped through my first year review. One important thought is that you only get really good at X by focusing on X (e.g. see Cal Newport’s Deep Work) and that most work is done by the top performers, e.g. 20% of academics get 80% of the citations, etc. Hence if you’re not laser focused you’re ruling yourself out of the top category where the real change happens. Again, I’m making a nuanced point: I’m not saying there is no value to exploration, but I am saying there is value to focus. I don’t think I’d adequately recognised the trade-off. Would I have changed my choices? Not obviously, but this might be a useful lesson which could change what someone in a different position would do. Hence I’m sharing and hoping this is useful for someone else!
Thank you for sharing! This type of critical feedback is much needed in the EA community (for many of the reasons you stated).
“A potential danger with an EA start-up is that you might, as I did, find a hypothetical solution and try to retro-fit a business case.” This is a really important takeaway from your conclusion, and I’m glad to hear it mentioned. A good piece of business/entrepreneurship advice I’d heard thrown around in startup circles before is to fall in love with the problem, not the solution. Keeping a constant internal check to evaluate how a venture, whether it be a new startup or a non-profit working on a global health intervention, is tackling the problem as effectively as possible ensures that venture is on the right track and producing the right solutions. Optimizing for the solution itself can veer those ventures off course.
Finally, I’d like to point out that you did find success here, even if the mobile application itself was a failure. By starting work on the PhD and the app at the same time, you gave yourself much more career capital than if you’d worked on one alone. In this case, the capital was not transferrable across both sides, but there’s an alternate universe that exists where the work on your app led to a industry career. You kept your options open, and that’s led you to a place where you’re more confident in the career you’ve chosen. If other EAs find themselves in a similar opportunity (i.e. working on a side business and academia at the same time), it’s probably a good thing to gain experience in both for awhile. The incremental amount of improvements each individual project would see if you went at it full time (i.e. one more published research paper, a fully functioning machine learning feature) likely do not matter in the long term. If you take value from the experience, and not the outcome, I think there are many positives to be had from this kind of work.
I don’t think this is true, and that’s my main takeaway. It’s true I gave myself two opportunities to acquire career capital—the PhD and the startup—but the latter never turned into actual career capital. In expectation, the start up looked promising (to my, possibly deluded eyes) but it turned out, in fact, to be much use to me. When i started it I thought “if Hippo works I’ll be a tech billionaire. If it doesn’t work, at least I’ll have learnt loads” but in reality Hippo didn’t work and I didn’t learn much. That’s the, somewhat subtle, cautionary tale.
I want to push back on this too. I can see how much more progress I’m making on philosophy now I’m just focused on that. I basically scraped through my first year review. One important thought is that you only get really good at X by focusing on X (e.g. see Cal Newport’s Deep Work) and that most work is done by the top performers, e.g. 20% of academics get 80% of the citations, etc. Hence if you’re not laser focused you’re ruling yourself out of the top category where the real change happens. Again, I’m making a nuanced point: I’m not saying there is no value to exploration, but I am saying there is value to focus. I don’t think I’d adequately recognised the trade-off. Would I have changed my choices? Not obviously, but this might be a useful lesson which could change what someone in a different position would do. Hence I’m sharing and hoping this is useful for someone else!