I am quite curious to understand the funding situation among ‘EA startup projects’ better. Perhaps the survey Jade Leung recently conducted as part of her incubator project will help shed light on this.
My questions/confusions include:
How many EA projects that ‘should’ get funding don’t—and for that reason don’t happen? (ie What’s the ‘false negative’ rate for our community answering the question, “Should X startup project be funded?”)
What are the biggest costs of funding too many such projects?
Is the cost of ‘false positives’ primarily just the money lost?
Should we model the time spent by the founders etc as a major cost? (I suspect not—because I would guess that doing projects like these are a great way to increase the skills of the founders, regardless of project success.)
Are there significant downside risks for projects with no obvious way to do real harm—such as attracting less-aligned founders into the community?
Is it valuable to the success of the project to require certain things in the funding application project (e.g. a solid business plan)? (I have generally attempted to cause as little extra work for donees as possible, but I could imagine the right application process being helpful.)
I suspect that once we answer these questions, the issue of Bay/Hub (or not) will sort of fade away, though there will still be questions of the best ways to get the best would-be-projects to actually happen, and connect them with the right funders.
I am quite curious to understand the funding situation among ‘EA startup projects’ better. Perhaps the survey Jade Leung recently conducted as part of her incubator project will help shed light on this.
My questions/confusions include:
How many EA projects that ‘should’ get funding don’t—and for that reason don’t happen? (ie What’s the ‘false negative’ rate for our community answering the question, “Should X startup project be funded?”)
What are the biggest costs of funding too many such projects?
Is the cost of ‘false positives’ primarily just the money lost?
Should we model the time spent by the founders etc as a major cost? (I suspect not—because I would guess that doing projects like these are a great way to increase the skills of the founders, regardless of project success.)
Are there significant downside risks for projects with no obvious way to do real harm—such as attracting less-aligned founders into the community?
Is it valuable to the success of the project to require certain things in the funding application project (e.g. a solid business plan)? (I have generally attempted to cause as little extra work for donees as possible, but I could imagine the right application process being helpful.)
I suspect that once we answer these questions, the issue of Bay/Hub (or not) will sort of fade away, though there will still be questions of the best ways to get the best would-be-projects to actually happen, and connect them with the right funders.