they hear multiple VCs telling making strongly negative comments—“effective altruism my ass”, etc. The mood on Twitter is overwhelmingly negative.
Even before November, I can’t imagine using the words “Effective Altruism” as part of central part of a pitch for a for-profit, especially if you thought you had a promising investment. You would show your product/team/customers, etc.
Also, I’m skeptical that a non-profit would ever rely on it’s “EA status” when communicating to non-EA donors. This is based on experience with “neartermist” interventions (ones that developed a lot of external faculty and impressiveness in the last two years, and existed outside of the pre-Nov 2022 longtermist funding environment).
My immediate reaction would be that this VC reaction was prompted by a very poor attempt at grift. But that behavior seems undesirable anyway?
You misunderstand me, I’m not talking about how VCs respond to a pitch, I’m talking about unprompted disdainful comments. For example, here is a new clip of two prominent bay-area investors:
Sacks: “Story after story here about how SBF was going to create this billion dollar philanthropy-”
Chamath: “What a joke”
Sacks: “to save the world, improve humanity’s long-term prospects, number-two donor to the entire democratic party, and on and on and on. And quite frankly, what this shows is you want to know what effective altruism means? It means that you steal other people’s money while bragging about saving the world, while taking a big chunk for yourself, that’s what it means”
I think that anyone who decides to press on with EA branding is going to see a lot more such reactions over the coming years.
There are truly formidable people and talent in EA causes, or associated with EA. Maybe one situation where a pitch involves EAs, is where their products and concepts are truly valuable, and proved by use by EAs, or virtuous, hard working people trying to improve the world.
Even before November, I can’t imagine using the words “Effective Altruism” as part of central part of a pitch for a for-profit, especially if you thought you had a promising investment. You would show your product/team/customers, etc.
Also, I’m skeptical that a non-profit would ever rely on it’s “EA status” when communicating to non-EA donors. This is based on experience with “neartermist” interventions (ones that developed a lot of external faculty and impressiveness in the last two years, and existed outside of the pre-Nov 2022 longtermist funding environment).
My immediate reaction would be that this VC reaction was prompted by a very poor attempt at grift. But that behavior seems undesirable anyway?
You misunderstand me, I’m not talking about how VCs respond to a pitch, I’m talking about unprompted disdainful comments. For example, here is a new clip of two prominent bay-area investors:
I think that anyone who decides to press on with EA branding is going to see a lot more such reactions over the coming years.
There are truly formidable people and talent in EA causes, or associated with EA. Maybe one situation where a pitch involves EAs, is where their products and concepts are truly valuable, and proved by use by EAs, or virtuous, hard working people trying to improve the world.