My thoughts, apologies if I am just reiterating what you already know.
It seems like there are 3 very difficult things to get a ballpark estimate of:
The likelihood of developing a successful fake chicken as a function of the number of investment dollars. This seems like a scientific/technical question. The impact-driven EA investor will want to know the impact of his/her $1 on this probability, i.e., the slope of this given the likely level of other’s investment. I.e., if I expect others will invest $1 million, I consider how the probability of a chicken differs when investment increases from $1 million to $1 million +1. (Or to $1 million + 1*leverage multiplier, see below).
The multiplier effect of a (donated) investment dollar, including both
a. The leverage of a dollar (how much more you could borrow at a reasonable interest rate with an additional dollar of equity collateral); I think this could be estimated under some reasonable assumptions
b. The effect of an additional investment dollar on subsequent investors/altruists willingness to invest. This seems like the hardest thing to calculate, and it is not completely clear whether that effect should even be positive. This is the ‘seed money’ question. It might be that when altruists see a greater amount of investment already, they see their own contribution as less vital, and invest less.
The likely overall distribution of total amount invested; the $1 million in the example in part 1.
My thoughts, apologies if I am just reiterating what you already know.
It seems like there are 3 very difficult things to get a ballpark estimate of:
The likelihood of developing a successful fake chicken as a function of the number of investment dollars. This seems like a scientific/technical question. The impact-driven EA investor will want to know the impact of his/her $1 on this probability, i.e., the slope of this given the likely level of other’s investment. I.e., if I expect others will invest $1 million, I consider how the probability of a chicken differs when investment increases from $1 million to $1 million +1. (Or to $1 million + 1*leverage multiplier, see below).
The multiplier effect of a (donated) investment dollar, including both a. The leverage of a dollar (how much more you could borrow at a reasonable interest rate with an additional dollar of equity collateral); I think this could be estimated under some reasonable assumptions b. The effect of an additional investment dollar on subsequent investors/altruists willingness to invest. This seems like the hardest thing to calculate, and it is not completely clear whether that effect should even be positive. This is the ‘seed money’ question. It might be that when altruists see a greater amount of investment already, they see their own contribution as less vital, and invest less.
The likely overall distribution of total amount invested; the $1 million in the example in part 1.