This was a really courageous post. Itâs not easy to make yourself vulnerable even among EA âfriendsâ. Your orgâs shutdown and that of other recently incubated charities makes me wonder if the whole startup-type approach of co-founding an organization with 2 people and ~$100K and a few months of research isnât just setting people up for failure. The work you were trying to do takes years of effort and deep expertise but you were clearly under the gun from funders to get results quickly. I canât see how anyone else, no matter how brilliant and motivated, wouldnât end up in the same place you did without substantially more resources and time. I think you are right that a much narrower focus or limiting efforts to a specific political initiative/âmotion would have worked better but it still seems like an uphill battle.
This was a really courageous post. Itâs not easy to make yourself vulnerable even among EA âfriendsâ. Your orgâs shutdown and that of other recently incubated charities makes me wonder if the whole startup-type approach of co-founding an organization with 2 people and ~$100K and a few months of research isnât just setting people up for failure. The work you were trying to do takes years of effort and deep expertise but you were clearly under the gun from funders to get results quickly. I canât see how anyone else, no matter how brilliant and motivated, wouldnât end up in the same place you did without substantially more resources and time. I think you are right that a much narrower focus or limiting efforts to a specific political initiative/âmotion would have worked better but it still seems like an uphill battle.