Maybe the most important point to clarify here is, I’m not arguing that for-profit investing is the best thing to do to increase civilizational resilience. It might be a good career option for some people but this will depend heavily on personal fit and other factors. I’m rather trying to test an argument that I envisage using with (not necessarily EA-familiar) VC investors for why civilizational resilience should be an explicit goal of for-profit investing.
On your specific points
What I mean by “safety sells” is that there does seem to be some overlap of the actions one would take if merely trying to build a profitable business and the actions one would take if trying to increase civilizational resilience. For instance, obtaining non-dilutive government funding is good from a financial perspective and meeting the criteria for such government funding may be aligned with increasing civilizational resilience. The link is of course not nearly as strong (yet) as I would want from a long-termist EA perspective but in some cases, it is there—so the title is admittedly somewhat aspirational. I kept it anyway because it encapsulates what I would like VC investors to see: Civilizational Resilience is important and it can be (like sustainability) one of the goals your business can have that positively influence both financials and impact
I fully agree there may be interesting opportunities to increase civilizational resilience by building profitable businesses outside the bioeconomy. My personal subject matter expertise is in biotech and I had limited time, hence the focus—I’m excited to see people started looking into PPE and indoor air monitoring/cleaning, for instance!
On whether there may be opportunities for for-profit investing into civilizational resilience in cause areas outside food security and biosecurity—I hope so but I’m uncertain. It may be worth looking into but could be that some of the favorable dynamics in food security and biosecurity (alignment between impact and government interest, the fact that there are “defense-native” technologies) are important and don’t apply to other cause areas
Agree more work on the investor toolbox is needed—for instance, to me, one key advantage of VC is that it is a bit of a “wild west” space in that you can write almost anything into a Shareholder’s agreement. There may be amazing ways of using this power as a team of aligned investors and founders that haven’t yet been (publicly) tried. Also, I’d love to learn more about what works vs. what doesn’t (How good are Safety and Ethics Boards really at influencing a company’s course of action, what are known failure modes? Which implementations of civilizational resilience in ESG frameworks are most effective, what are different ways to measure this? …)
I’m curious on the last point about “investor toolbox” & governance more generally. I don’t know how much research has gone into startup governance more broadly and if it has been done, I ’m assuming most of it has been done in terms of advancing business vs ensuring an alignment to a specific mission / value. OpenAi’s recent board events make me doubt the long-term effectiveness of structure like Ethics Boards.
In the VC industry more generally, the “wild west” phenomena is true but from personal experience, the weirder a shareholder agreement gets, the easier it is to scare of future investors. I think this highlights a critical point in the VC model: You would need investors that are aligned with this governance structure throughout the company’s entire fundraising journey.
Thanks for your in-depth comment, Sanjay!
Maybe the most important point to clarify here is, I’m not arguing that for-profit investing is the best thing to do to increase civilizational resilience. It might be a good career option for some people but this will depend heavily on personal fit and other factors. I’m rather trying to test an argument that I envisage using with (not necessarily EA-familiar) VC investors for why civilizational resilience should be an explicit goal of for-profit investing.
On your specific points
What I mean by “safety sells” is that there does seem to be some overlap of the actions one would take if merely trying to build a profitable business and the actions one would take if trying to increase civilizational resilience. For instance, obtaining non-dilutive government funding is good from a financial perspective and meeting the criteria for such government funding may be aligned with increasing civilizational resilience. The link is of course not nearly as strong (yet) as I would want from a long-termist EA perspective but in some cases, it is there—so the title is admittedly somewhat aspirational. I kept it anyway because it encapsulates what I would like VC investors to see: Civilizational Resilience is important and it can be (like sustainability) one of the goals your business can have that positively influence both financials and impact
I fully agree there may be interesting opportunities to increase civilizational resilience by building profitable businesses outside the bioeconomy. My personal subject matter expertise is in biotech and I had limited time, hence the focus—I’m excited to see people started looking into PPE and indoor air monitoring/cleaning, for instance!
On whether there may be opportunities for for-profit investing into civilizational resilience in cause areas outside food security and biosecurity—I hope so but I’m uncertain. It may be worth looking into but could be that some of the favorable dynamics in food security and biosecurity (alignment between impact and government interest, the fact that there are “defense-native” technologies) are important and don’t apply to other cause areas
Agree more work on the investor toolbox is needed—for instance, to me, one key advantage of VC is that it is a bit of a “wild west” space in that you can write almost anything into a Shareholder’s agreement. There may be amazing ways of using this power as a team of aligned investors and founders that haven’t yet been (publicly) tried. Also, I’d love to learn more about what works vs. what doesn’t (How good are Safety and Ethics Boards really at influencing a company’s course of action, what are known failure modes? Which implementations of civilizational resilience in ESG frameworks are most effective, what are different ways to measure this? …)
This all makes sense, thank you :-)
Very interesting investment thesis.
I’m curious on the last point about “investor toolbox” & governance more generally. I don’t know how much research has gone into startup governance more broadly and if it has been done, I ’m assuming most of it has been done in terms of advancing business vs ensuring an alignment to a specific mission / value. OpenAi’s recent board events make me doubt the long-term effectiveness of structure like Ethics Boards.
In the VC industry more generally, the “wild west” phenomena is true but from personal experience, the weirder a shareholder agreement gets, the easier it is to scare of future investors. I think this highlights a critical point in the VC model: You would need investors that are aligned with this governance structure throughout the company’s entire fundraising journey.