Bringing up that possible concern is a good point Remmelt! My paragraph was specifically suggesting that established EA funders should share applications with one another. As I mentioned in my comment to Ruth, if the application systems of 5 funders capture equal fractions of all projects in existence, each funder would only be able to make funding decisions with a pool of projects that is 1⁄5 the size of the total number of opportunities. Arbitrarily limiting the pool of projects to evaluate seems clearly suboptimal.
I agree that people may be concerned about inexperienced EA funders making unwise funding decisions. People with that concern should actually be supporting the EA Angel Group, because if they had read our introductory article or my recent comment about this they may have realized that:
the EA Angel Group [has] an initial staff review of projects followed by funders sharing their evaluations of projects with each other to eliminate the possibility of one funder funding something while not being aware of the opinion of other funders.
We help individual funders of all experience levels avoid issues like the unilateralist’s curse by benefiting from the perspectives of other funders. Funders can point out potential risks or downsides of a project and strongly warn each other against funding a project that appears to have a material chance of causing significant harm.
But that’s just a guess and I don’t really know. I do share in the sentiment that the option to downvote something is too easy for people who pattern-match abstract EA ideas like that, instead of putting in the somewhat strenuous and vulnerable work of sharing their impressions and asking further in the comment section about how the platform concretely works.
It is unfortunate that people may be downvoting without engaging in what is actually being proposed. I think that asking good questions or commenting is far better for everyone involved than giving a strong downvote based on a quick impression (possibly wiping out several standard upvotes) and leaving.
@Brendon, I thought you tried to address possible risks of a making applications available online in a previous post.
That is correct, I wrote about that in my post about the EA Projects Platform, which I recently mentioned has been indefinitely delayed. The EA Angel Group does not and was not designed to make projects available online.
How do you think right now about how to address funder blindspots in built-up knowledge and evaluation frameworks – for both established EA grantmakers and new venture capitalist-style funders (who might have valuable for-profit start-up experience to build on)?
I don’t have a readily prepared analysis of addressing funder blindspots. Something that might be helpful in reducing that would be having funders share evaluations with one another, so that if one funder recognizes a potential risk that is hard to detect, other funders can factor it into consideration as well. To prevent groupthink, funders should use a process where they conduct an initial or full evaluation before seeing what other funders think about a proposal.
Can you elaborate on what a “new venture capitalist-style funder” is? I’m not sure what this refers to, I believe the EA early-stage funding space is currently made of small number of entities like EA Grants and BERI grants and a larger number of individual donors.
I realise now I was actually confused by your sentence myself.
I took
Rather than hiding opportunities from other funders like venture capitalists in the for-profit world, I believe that EA funders such as EA Grants, BERI Grants...”
to mean
“EA Grants, BERI Grants, etc. should not hide opportunities from funders like VCs from the for profit sector”.
The rest of your article can be coherently read with that interpretation. To prevent that I’d split it into shorter sentences:
“Venture capitalists in the for-profit sector hide investment opportunities from others for personal monetary gain. EA grantmakers have no such reason for hiding funding opportunities from other experienced funders. Therefore, …
Or at the very least, make it “Rather than hiding opportunities from other funders like venture capitalists in the for-profit world DO, I believe that...”
Bringing up that possible concern is a good point Remmelt! My paragraph was specifically suggesting that established EA funders should share applications with one another. As I mentioned in my comment to Ruth, if the application systems of 5 funders capture equal fractions of all projects in existence, each funder would only be able to make funding decisions with a pool of projects that is 1⁄5 the size of the total number of opportunities. Arbitrarily limiting the pool of projects to evaluate seems clearly suboptimal.
I agree that people may be concerned about inexperienced EA funders making unwise funding decisions. People with that concern should actually be supporting the EA Angel Group, because if they had read our introductory article or my recent comment about this they may have realized that:
We help individual funders of all experience levels avoid issues like the unilateralist’s curse by benefiting from the perspectives of other funders. Funders can point out potential risks or downsides of a project and strongly warn each other against funding a project that appears to have a material chance of causing significant harm.
It is unfortunate that people may be downvoting without engaging in what is actually being proposed. I think that asking good questions or commenting is far better for everyone involved than giving a strong downvote based on a quick impression (possibly wiping out several standard upvotes) and leaving.
That is correct, I wrote about that in my post about the EA Projects Platform, which I recently mentioned has been indefinitely delayed. The EA Angel Group does not and was not designed to make projects available online.
I don’t have a readily prepared analysis of addressing funder blindspots. Something that might be helpful in reducing that would be having funders share evaluations with one another, so that if one funder recognizes a potential risk that is hard to detect, other funders can factor it into consideration as well. To prevent groupthink, funders should use a process where they conduct an initial or full evaluation before seeing what other funders think about a proposal.
Can you elaborate on what a “new venture capitalist-style funder” is? I’m not sure what this refers to, I believe the EA early-stage funding space is currently made of small number of entities like EA Grants and BERI grants and a larger number of individual donors.
Thanks, that clarifies a bunch of things for me.
I realise now I was actually confused by your sentence myself.
I took
to mean
“EA Grants, BERI Grants, etc. should not hide opportunities from funders like VCs from the for profit sector”.
The rest of your article can be coherently read with that interpretation. To prevent that I’d split it into shorter sentences:
“Venture capitalists in the for-profit sector hide investment opportunities from others for personal monetary gain. EA grantmakers have no such reason for hiding funding opportunities from other experienced funders. Therefore, …
Or at the very least, make it “Rather than hiding opportunities from other funders like venture capitalists in the for-profit world DO, I believe that...”
Thanks for the suggestion Remmelt! I just added your primary wording recommendation to the post.