You could both be right. My impression is that there are a whole bunch of ambitious people in the Bay, so being there for funding has advantages. I also think that non-Bay ventures are fairly neglected. Overall I (personally) would like to see more funding and clarity in basically all places.
Also, note that the two ventures Tim funded were non-bay ventures. Bay connections are useful even for understanding international projects.
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.
You are correct that people in the Bay can find out about project in other places. The project I know about are also not in the same location as me. I don’t expect being in the Bay has an advantage for finding out about projects in other places, but I could be wrong.
When it comes to project in the Bay, I would not expect people who lack funding to be there in the first place, given that it is ridiculously expensive. But I might be missing something? I have not investigated the details, since I’m not allowed to just move their my self, even if I could afford it. (Visa reason, I’m Swedish)
Then maybe these lots of people should gang up and start a new hub, literally anywhere else. Funding problem mostly solved.
If people are not seriously trying this, then it’s hard for me to take seriously any claims of lack of funding. But as I said, I might be missing something. If so, pleas tell me.
Earning potential goes down with distance to the Bay (less so in COVID times, but even then that is still true, as many companies still adjust their salaries based on cost of living), which matters because people have friends and spouses who don’t want to live an ascetic EA lifestyle.
Also, many, if not most of these projects could not be started outside of the Bay or any of the other global hubs, because they benefit from being part of an ecosystem of competent people. You could maybe pull them off in other major global cities (like New York, London, Hong Kong, Tokyo), but the rent prices won’t differ that much between them, because the demand for being close to all the other good people drives prices up. The best people are in the big cities because that’s where the other good people are. Not moving to one of the hubs of the world is for most people career suicide, and in general I am much more optimistic about projects and organizations that are located in one of the global talent hubs, because they get to leverage the local culture, service ecosystem, talent availability and social networks that come with those hubs that extend far beyond what the EA and Rationality communities can provide on their own.
I know that my effectiveness would have dropped drastically had I moved out of a global hub, and my overall impact trajectory would have been much worse, so I am hesitant to recommend that anyone else do so, at least for the long term (I think temporarily moving to lower cost places is a good strategy for many people, and many should consider it, but it’s not really solving the funding problem much, since I don’t really think people should do that for more than 6 months, or maybe at the most a year).
Edit: Also COVID changes all of this at least a bit, though I don’t really know how much and for how long. But it seems likely to me that the overall trends here are pretty robust and we will continue seeing high prices in the places where I would want people to be located.
You could both be right. My impression is that there are a whole bunch of ambitious people in the Bay, so being there for funding has advantages. I also think that non-Bay ventures are fairly neglected. Overall I (personally) would like to see more funding and clarity in basically all places.
Also, note that the two ventures Tim funded were non-bay ventures. Bay connections are useful even for understanding international projects.
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.
You are correct that people in the Bay can find out about project in other places. The project I know about are also not in the same location as me. I don’t expect being in the Bay has an advantage for finding out about projects in other places, but I could be wrong.
When it comes to project in the Bay, I would not expect people who lack funding to be there in the first place, given that it is ridiculously expensive. But I might be missing something? I have not investigated the details, since I’m not allowed to just move their my self, even if I could afford it. (Visa reason, I’m Swedish)
I think a lot of people in the Bay lack funding.
Then maybe these lots of people should gang up and start a new hub, literally anywhere else. Funding problem mostly solved.
If people are not seriously trying this, then it’s hard for me to take seriously any claims of lack of funding. But as I said, I might be missing something. If so, pleas tell me.
Earning potential goes down with distance to the Bay (less so in COVID times, but even then that is still true, as many companies still adjust their salaries based on cost of living), which matters because people have friends and spouses who don’t want to live an ascetic EA lifestyle.
Also, many, if not most of these projects could not be started outside of the Bay or any of the other global hubs, because they benefit from being part of an ecosystem of competent people. You could maybe pull them off in other major global cities (like New York, London, Hong Kong, Tokyo), but the rent prices won’t differ that much between them, because the demand for being close to all the other good people drives prices up. The best people are in the big cities because that’s where the other good people are. Not moving to one of the hubs of the world is for most people career suicide, and in general I am much more optimistic about projects and organizations that are located in one of the global talent hubs, because they get to leverage the local culture, service ecosystem, talent availability and social networks that come with those hubs that extend far beyond what the EA and Rationality communities can provide on their own.
I know that my effectiveness would have dropped drastically had I moved out of a global hub, and my overall impact trajectory would have been much worse, so I am hesitant to recommend that anyone else do so, at least for the long term (I think temporarily moving to lower cost places is a good strategy for many people, and many should consider it, but it’s not really solving the funding problem much, since I don’t really think people should do that for more than 6 months, or maybe at the most a year).
Edit: Also COVID changes all of this at least a bit, though I don’t really know how much and for how long. But it seems likely to me that the overall trends here are pretty robust and we will continue seeing high prices in the places where I would want people to be located.