The results of our evaluation indicate that there is insufficient evidence to recommend making donations directly to Effective Altruism Ventures at this time. This is consistent with our current plan of running the project on a volunteer basis for 3-6 months before fundraising to support operational costs.
It seems to me that for many of the organizations you fund, if they wouldn’t otherwise be funded by other people, a verdict of “wait for more evidence” will have approximately the same impact as a verdict of “do not fund.” EAV seems somewhat special in that its founders’ funders are aligned with their goals enough to be fine with them spending substantial time on the project. I hope you take this into account when making recommendations for other organizations.
In cases where a project is promising but not yet ready to receive funding, we can define the conditions under which we might fund the project. For example, if a project lacks the necessary technical talent, but is otherwise promising we might provide this feedback in the evaluation. I think this kind of conditional feedback might make it significantly easier for the project to acquire the necessary talent because it comes with a strong likelihood of funding associated with it.
Over time we can also gain the necessary expertise to positively impact the plans of the entrepreneurs. In the way that 80K measures career plan changes, we might measure venture plan changes as an additional success metric.
You need to specify how and when you’re going to get the evidence. It’s like if a doctor said “Wait for evidence of diabetes” and just left it at that. Instead, they specify whether they’re going to a) do a test b) watch and wait, with scheduled follow-up c) do nothing. And that seems right for EA Ventures too. For startups, you can’t really not reject them, not do a test and not follow-up.
It seems to me that for many of the organizations you fund, if they wouldn’t otherwise be funded by other people, a verdict of “wait for more evidence” will have approximately the same impact as a verdict of “do not fund.” EAV seems somewhat special in that its founders’ funders are aligned with their goals enough to be fine with them spending substantial time on the project. I hope you take this into account when making recommendations for other organizations.
I agree.
In cases where a project is promising but not yet ready to receive funding, we can define the conditions under which we might fund the project. For example, if a project lacks the necessary technical talent, but is otherwise promising we might provide this feedback in the evaluation. I think this kind of conditional feedback might make it significantly easier for the project to acquire the necessary talent because it comes with a strong likelihood of funding associated with it.
Over time we can also gain the necessary expertise to positively impact the plans of the entrepreneurs. In the way that 80K measures career plan changes, we might measure venture plan changes as an additional success metric.
You need to specify how and when you’re going to get the evidence. It’s like if a doctor said “Wait for evidence of diabetes” and just left it at that. Instead, they specify whether they’re going to a) do a test b) watch and wait, with scheduled follow-up c) do nothing. And that seems right for EA Ventures too. For startups, you can’t really not reject them, not do a test and not follow-up.
I completely agree and this is basically our plan with respect to feedback for entrepreneurs.