Interesting concept! A few considerations on your impact calculation, though:
The 500 users would all need to be non-EAs (as EAs probably would’ve given similar if not the same amount to effective charities anyway, perhaps only using the app for its UI, progress tracking etc.). Also, I don’t know if you have already considered this, but the 500 members would have likely counterfactually given money to (albeit probably less effective) charities anyway, and so you would need to consider this in an accurate estimation of your impact.
Another thing to consider is that the range of charities you provide can have big effect on your impact calculation. Your EA investors would have, presumably, given their money to top EA causes, and if your users don’t use their money as effectively as this it will lessen your impact.
Another thing to consider is that your EA investors actually potentially wouldn’t have given their money to charities, but to another EA start-up. That makes the counterfactual much harder to properly understand (evidently they thought that giving to Sparrow had higher expected value than top EA charities, and presumably they could’ve found another group with similar expected value).
Although none of this probably makes much difference when considering your higher user counts, I would worry that your lower estimates may be misleading.
100% agreed with everything you said here. We’ve thought through some of these scenarios you brought up but didn’t want to get too bogged down in more complicated estimates in the main post. Our more in depth estimates might place it closer to 1000 breaking even, perhaps a few thousand to be very safe. Happy to discuss more in depth, but as you say it becomes less relevant once the numbers get larger.
Interesting concept! A few considerations on your impact calculation, though:
The 500 users would all need to be non-EAs (as EAs probably would’ve given similar if not the same amount to effective charities anyway, perhaps only using the app for its UI, progress tracking etc.). Also, I don’t know if you have already considered this, but the 500 members would have likely counterfactually given money to (albeit probably less effective) charities anyway, and so you would need to consider this in an accurate estimation of your impact.
Another thing to consider is that the range of charities you provide can have big effect on your impact calculation. Your EA investors would have, presumably, given their money to top EA causes, and if your users don’t use their money as effectively as this it will lessen your impact.
Another thing to consider is that your EA investors actually potentially wouldn’t have given their money to charities, but to another EA start-up. That makes the counterfactual much harder to properly understand (evidently they thought that giving to Sparrow had higher expected value than top EA charities, and presumably they could’ve found another group with similar expected value).
Although none of this probably makes much difference when considering your higher user counts, I would worry that your lower estimates may be misleading.
100% agreed with everything you said here. We’ve thought through some of these scenarios you brought up but didn’t want to get too bogged down in more complicated estimates in the main post. Our more in depth estimates might place it closer to 1000 breaking even, perhaps a few thousand to be very safe. Happy to discuss more in depth, but as you say it becomes less relevant once the numbers get larger.