Just to give a perspective from the ‘other’ (donor) side:
I was excited about EA Ventures, partly because of the experimental value (both as an experiment in itself, and it’s effect on encouraging other people to experiment). I also agreed with the decision to cease operation when it did, and I think Kerry’s read of the situation basically concurs with my own experience
Also, as Kerry said, I think a large part of what happened here was that “the best projects are often able to raise money on their own without an intermediary to help them”. At the time EA Ventures was running, EA was (and may still be) a close-enough community that I was finding out about several of the opportunities EAV was presenting via my own network, without EAV’s help. That’s not at all to say EAV was providing zero value in those cases since they were also filtering/evaluating, but it meant that the most promising charity (in my opinion) that I heard about via EAV was something I was already funding and keen to continue to fund up to RFMF/percentage-of-budget constraints.
Just to give a perspective from the ‘other’ (donor) side:
I was excited about EA Ventures, partly because of the experimental value (both as an experiment in itself, and it’s effect on encouraging other people to experiment). I also agreed with the decision to cease operation when it did, and I think Kerry’s read of the situation basically concurs with my own experience
Also, as Kerry said, I think a large part of what happened here was that “the best projects are often able to raise money on their own without an intermediary to help them”. At the time EA Ventures was running, EA was (and may still be) a close-enough community that I was finding out about several of the opportunities EAV was presenting via my own network, without EAV’s help. That’s not at all to say EAV was providing zero value in those cases since they were also filtering/evaluating, but it meant that the most promising charity (in my opinion) that I heard about via EAV was something I was already funding and keen to continue to fund up to RFMF/percentage-of-budget constraints.