I’m Minh, current intern at Nonlinear. Since this thread is clearly picking up again, I’d like to provide my perspective as someone who’s worked at Nonlinear, and on the Emergency Fund. First, context:
All this is my own experience and opinion. The fact that I had overall positive experiences does not invalidate someone else’s negative experience. I admit it’s … not a good look to have such a high rate of strong negative sentiment.
I’ve been working with Nonlinear for ~3 months. About 80% of my interaction is with Drew Spartz [1]and Luca (the other intern). The other 20% is Kat who I’ve had one 2-hour meeting with when planning the Nonlinear Emergency Fund and text correspondence/coordination as Nonlinear processes applications. I have never interacted with Emerson.
What I can do is provide additional context. So far, we’ve received ~40 applications for the Nonlinear Emergency Fund. Kat has been personally following up on requests, coordinating with external funders and handling relevant documents for dozens of grantees. To my knowledge, ~10 of the most time-sensitive requests have been approved. The responsibility is kind of insane, since improper follow-up/delay has immediate consequences on the grantee’s end. About 8 requests indicated they needed to hear back in less than a week, and the shortest was less than three days.
Motivations behind the Emergency Fund Keep in mind that none of this is something Nonlinear actually has to do. There’s practically no direct impact to us, and the emergency funding we give out are, to my knowledge, unconditional. I did see one grant that stipulated additional non-emergency funding contingent on producing policy-actionable research, but that doesn’t benefit Nonlinear either.
During the 2-hour call when Kat, Luca and I discussed the Emergency Fund, the 2 main focuses were:
Prioritising immediate financial/personal emergencies of grantees
Prioritising counterfactual impact on EA work This means bridge-funding projects/work that would otherwise have to be stopped as grantees have to cease their work. I won’t give names, but let’s just say I was very surprised to see projects I’d used before/applied to.
At no point did I hear ulterior motives. And frankly, I feel like launching an emergency fund of your own money, when you don’t have to, isn’t the kind of thought process a selfish opportunist jumps at.
Implications Also, keep in mind that, at the time:
Nonlinear also lost $250k in funding from FTX Future Fund. I have been told some of the team also had larger personal funds on FTX. If anything, FTX is paying Nonlinear if clawbacks occur.
Kat was entirely focused on the community. Video calling someone on a treadmill while she earnestly details plans to distribute six figures in emergency funding, right after a third of EA funding vanished overnight, is a very surreal experience.
Kat had no reassurance that any other funders would also step up for any of the grantees. Hence the explicit assumption was that Nonlinear’s founders would self-fund the grantees out of their own pockets. I distinctly recall her saying “If we need to fund them, that’s a good thing to do.”
Conclusion I’ve told this story because:
This thread about the Nonlinear Emergency Fund has gotten wildly off tangent, so I might as well update the community with positive news. Hi!
I wanted to provide a contrasting perspective. The team I’ve interacted with has been talking about helping the EA community this entire time, actively coordinating and willingly paid out of pocket for people directly. While this doesn’t invalidate or excuse alleged mistreatment, I just figured my perspective would be significantly belief-updating to people who have only read accusations of morally unscrupulous behaviour for the past month.
Good to know Drew treats you well, though you’re right that the allegations so far aren’t directed at him.
Given your impressions of Kat are largely based off a 2 hour call, I don’t know if I’d consider this “significantly belief-updating” compared to other claims on this thread, though I’m glad you shared your experience.
Out of curiosity, did anyone ask you, or Luca to make comments on this post, or was this completely unprompted (aside from seeing the recent forum comments?
Hi!
I’m Minh, current intern at Nonlinear. Since this thread is clearly picking up again, I’d like to provide my perspective as someone who’s worked at Nonlinear, and on the Emergency Fund. First, context:
All this is my own experience and opinion. The fact that I had overall positive experiences does not invalidate someone else’s negative experience. I admit it’s … not a good look to have such a high rate of strong negative sentiment.
I’ve been working with Nonlinear for ~3 months. About 80% of my interaction is with Drew Spartz [1]and Luca (the other intern). The other 20% is Kat who I’ve had one 2-hour meeting with when planning the Nonlinear Emergency Fund and text correspondence/coordination as Nonlinear processes applications. I have never interacted with Emerson.
What I can do is provide additional context. So far, we’ve received ~40 applications for the Nonlinear Emergency Fund. Kat has been personally following up on requests, coordinating with external funders and handling relevant documents for dozens of grantees. To my knowledge, ~10 of the most time-sensitive requests have been approved. The responsibility is kind of insane, since improper follow-up/delay has immediate consequences on the grantee’s end. About 8 requests indicated they needed to hear back in less than a week, and the shortest was less than three days.
Motivations behind the Emergency Fund
Keep in mind that none of this is something Nonlinear actually has to do. There’s practically no direct impact to us, and the emergency funding we give out are, to my knowledge, unconditional. I did see one grant that stipulated additional non-emergency funding contingent on producing policy-actionable research, but that doesn’t benefit Nonlinear either.
During the 2-hour call when Kat, Luca and I discussed the Emergency Fund, the 2 main focuses were:
Prioritising immediate financial/personal emergencies of grantees
Prioritising counterfactual impact on EA work This means bridge-funding projects/work that would otherwise have to be stopped as grantees have to cease their work. I won’t give names, but let’s just say I was very surprised to see projects I’d used before/applied to.
At no point did I hear ulterior motives. And frankly, I feel like launching an emergency fund of your own money, when you don’t have to, isn’t the kind of thought process a selfish opportunist jumps at.
Implications
Also, keep in mind that, at the time:
Nonlinear also lost $250k in funding from FTX Future Fund. I have been told some of the team also had larger personal funds on FTX. If anything, FTX is paying Nonlinear if clawbacks occur.
Kat was entirely focused on the community. Video calling someone on a treadmill while she earnestly details plans to distribute six figures in emergency funding, right after a third of EA funding vanished overnight, is a very surreal experience.
Kat had no reassurance that any other funders would also step up for any of the grantees. Hence the explicit assumption was that Nonlinear’s founders would self-fund the grantees out of their own pockets. I distinctly recall her saying “If we need to fund them, that’s a good thing to do.”
Conclusion
I’ve told this story because:
This thread about the Nonlinear Emergency Fund has gotten wildly off tangent, so I might as well update the community with positive news. Hi!
I wanted to provide a contrasting perspective. The team I’ve interacted with has been talking about helping the EA community this entire time, actively coordinating and willingly paid out of pocket for people directly. While this doesn’t invalidate or excuse alleged mistreatment, I just figured my perspective would be significantly belief-updating to people who have only read accusations of morally unscrupulous behaviour for the past month.
Drew is great btw, but the accusations so far aren’t directed at him.
Good to know Drew treats you well, though you’re right that the allegations so far aren’t directed at him.
Given your impressions of Kat are largely based off a 2 hour call, I don’t know if I’d consider this “significantly belief-updating” compared to other claims on this thread, though I’m glad you shared your experience.
Out of curiosity, did anyone ask you, or Luca to make comments on this post, or was this completely unprompted (aside from seeing the recent forum comments?