With this in mind, I generally think the person best-suited to found an organization is the person who feels such strong conviction that the organization ought to exist (and can succeed) that they can hardly imagine working on anything else. This is the kind of person who tends to have a really clear idea of what theyâre trying to do and how to make the tradeoffs gestured at above, and who is willing and able to put in a lot of work without much reliable guidance.
So my general approach to entrepreneurship would be: if thereâs no organization you have a burning desire to create (or at least, a strong vision for), itâs probably not time to be an entrepreneur. Instead it could make more sense to try for a job in which youâre learning more about parts of the world youâre interested in, becoming more aware of how organizations work, etc. - this could later lead to identifying some âgap in the marketâ that youâre excited to fill.
This sounds probably right to me, and also aligns with advice Iâve heard elsewhere. On the other hand, it seems to me that Charity Entrepreneurship-incubated charities have had more total success, and more consistently gone at least fairly well, than I mightâve expected or than this general advice would seem to predict.
So I currently feel fairly uncertain about this matter, and Iâm fairly open to the hypothesis that that general advice just doesnât apply if thereâs a very well run incubation program (including good ideas for what to found, good vetting, good training, etc.) and a very strong pool of applicants to it, or something.
For roughly this reason, Iâm also more optimistic about the Longtermist Entrepreneurship Fellowship than that general advice might suggest (which also seems in line with Claire Zabelâs view, given the grant that was provided to that project).
All that said, I havenât looked super closely into any of this, so these are just tentative views.
This sounds probably right to me, and also aligns with advice Iâve heard elsewhere. On the other hand, it seems to me that Charity Entrepreneurship-incubated charities have had more total success, and more consistently gone at least fairly well, than I mightâve expected or than this general advice would seem to predict.
So I currently feel fairly uncertain about this matter, and Iâm fairly open to the hypothesis that that general advice just doesnât apply if thereâs a very well run incubation program (including good ideas for what to found, good vetting, good training, etc.) and a very strong pool of applicants to it, or something.
For roughly this reason, Iâm also more optimistic about the Longtermist Entrepreneurship Fellowship than that general advice might suggest (which also seems in line with Claire Zabelâs view, given the grant that was provided to that project).
All that said, I havenât looked super closely into any of this, so these are just tentative views.