If you want there to be more great organisations, don’t lower the bar
I sometimes hear a take along the lines of “we need more founders who can start organisations so that we can utilise EA talent better”. People then propose projects that make it easier to start organisations.
I think this is a but confused. I think the reason that we don’t have more founders is due to a having few people who have deep models in some high leverage area and a vision for a project. I don’t think many projects aimed at starting new organisations are really tackling this bottleneck at its core and instead lower the bar by helping people access funding, or appear better positioned than they actually are.
I think in general people that want to do ambitious things should focus on building deep domain knowledge, often by working directly with people with deep domain knowledge. The feedback loops are just too poor within most EA cause areas to be able to learn effectively by starting your own thing. This isn’t always true, but I think it’s more often than not true for most new projects that I see.
I don’t think the normal startup advice where running a startup will teach you a lot applies well here. Most startups are trying to build products that their investors can directly evaluate. They often have nice metrics like revenue and daily active users that track their goals reasonably well. Most EA projects lack credible proxies for success.
Some startups also lack credible success proxies such as bio startups. I think bio startups are particularly difficult for investors to evaluate and many experienced vcs avoid the sector entirely unless they have staff with bio PhDs and even then it’s still pretty hard to evaluate the niche area the startup is working in. Anecdotally, moderately successful bio startups seem much more likely to have a BS product than the average tech startup at a similar level of funding/team size.
Of course, I do think there are founders that are above the bar, but I think starting a new project is actually often very hard and a poor learning environment and I would probably prefer the bar was a bit higher and there were fewer nudges for early career people towards starting new things.
If you want there to be more great organisations, don’t lower the bar
I sometimes hear a take along the lines of “we need more founders who can start organisations so that we can utilise EA talent better”. People then propose projects that make it easier to start organisations.
I think this is a but confused. I think the reason that we don’t have more founders is due to a having few people who have deep models in some high leverage area and a vision for a project. I don’t think many projects aimed at starting new organisations are really tackling this bottleneck at its core and instead lower the bar by helping people access funding, or appear better positioned than they actually are.
I think in general people that want to do ambitious things should focus on building deep domain knowledge, often by working directly with people with deep domain knowledge. The feedback loops are just too poor within most EA cause areas to be able to learn effectively by starting your own thing. This isn’t always true, but I think it’s more often than not true for most new projects that I see.
I don’t think the normal startup advice where running a startup will teach you a lot applies well here. Most startups are trying to build products that their investors can directly evaluate. They often have nice metrics like revenue and daily active users that track their goals reasonably well. Most EA projects lack credible proxies for success.
Some startups also lack credible success proxies such as bio startups. I think bio startups are particularly difficult for investors to evaluate and many experienced vcs avoid the sector entirely unless they have staff with bio PhDs and even then it’s still pretty hard to evaluate the niche area the startup is working in. Anecdotally, moderately successful bio startups seem much more likely to have a BS product than the average tech startup at a similar level of funding/team size.
Of course, I do think there are founders that are above the bar, but I think starting a new project is actually often very hard and a poor learning environment and I would probably prefer the bar was a bit higher and there were fewer nudges for early career people towards starting new things.