[Link] Seed stage philanthropy

https://nadiaeghbal.com/seed-philanthropy

Really interesting post. EA is significantly related to philanthropy and Nadia’s posts offers some useful frameworks to think about seed stage philanthropy, many of which could be relevant to EA cause areas.

e.g.

The idea that groundbreaking work is driven by individuals probably makes sense to a lot of people, yet in practice, there’s no readily available funding for individuals. That’s crazy! The availability of funding pushes people towards organizations (whether nonprofits, companies, or academia), yet oftentimes, unfiltered creative work is particularly suited to not being at an organization. Sometimes, an individual just needs a check, and a vote of confidence from someone they respect, to keep going.

Similarly, I hope that philanthropy starts to move downstream, so that we see more seed- and pre-seed funding made available to individuals early on. We still need bigger institutional funding to support “growth stage” efforts. But there’s a ton of uncaptured opportunity at these earlier stages. [1]

And if you like Nadia’s article, you’d probably also like this one: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/11/philosophy-emergent-ventures.html