FWIW, while EAV was running I assumed there was at least some funding committed. I knew funders could decline to fund individual projects, but my impression was that at least some funders had committed at least some money to EAV. I agree EAV didn’t say this explicitly, but I don’t think my understanding was inconsistent with the quotes you cite or other EAV communications. I’m almost positive other people I talked to about EAV had the same impression I did, although this is admittedly a long time ago and I could be misremembering.
you attempt to show an inconsistency in the evaluation of EA Ventures by contrasting the following paragraphs…
I don’t think there’s a logical inconsistency between the views in those two paragraphs. But I do think that if “the best projects are often able to raise money on their own” was a significant factor, then you should have mentioned that in your original list of reasons why the project closed. Similarly, if a lack of committed funding was “a big part of the issue with the project”, that should have been mentioned too. Taking a step back, this all points to the benefit of doing a proper post-mortem: it’s a place to collect all your thoughts in one place and explicitly communicate what the most important factors are.
the tone of the piece seems to suggest that something untoward was happening with the project in a way that seems quite unfair to me.
My overall take on EAV is that it was ill-conceived (i.e. running a grantmaking project without committed funds is a mistake) and poorly executed (e.g. the overly elaborate evaluation process, lack of transparency, and lack of post-mortem). I think these problems fall under the umbrella of “sometimes stuff just goes wrong and/or people make mistakes” (though I do believe failure to do a post-mortem had problematic repercussions). To the extent I implied these issues resulted from “something untoward” I apologize.
That said, the shifting narratives about the project definitely rubs me the wrong way and I think it’s legitimate to express frustration around that (e.g. if during the project you say the quality and quantity of projects exceeded expectations and after the project you say “the number of exciting new projects was smaller than we expected” I really think that warrants an explanation.)
I think EA Ventures was probably a worthwhile experiment (although it’s hard to be certain)
FWIW, while EAV was running I assumed there was at least some funding committed. I knew funders could decline to fund individual projects, but my impression was that at least some funders had committed at least some money to EAV. I agree EAV didn’t say this explicitly, but I don’t think my understanding was inconsistent with the quotes you cite or other EAV communications. I’m almost positive other people I talked to about EAV had the same impression I did, although this is admittedly a long time ago and I could be misremembering.
I don’t think there’s a logical inconsistency between the views in those two paragraphs. But I do think that if “the best projects are often able to raise money on their own” was a significant factor, then you should have mentioned that in your original list of reasons why the project closed. Similarly, if a lack of committed funding was “a big part of the issue with the project”, that should have been mentioned too. Taking a step back, this all points to the benefit of doing a proper post-mortem: it’s a place to collect all your thoughts in one place and explicitly communicate what the most important factors are.
My overall take on EAV is that it was ill-conceived (i.e. running a grantmaking project without committed funds is a mistake) and poorly executed (e.g. the overly elaborate evaluation process, lack of transparency, and lack of post-mortem). I think these problems fall under the umbrella of “sometimes stuff just goes wrong and/or people make mistakes” (though I do believe failure to do a post-mortem had problematic repercussions). To the extent I implied these issues resulted from “something untoward” I apologize.
That said, the shifting narratives about the project definitely rubs me the wrong way and I think it’s legitimate to express frustration around that (e.g. if during the project you say the quality and quantity of projects exceeded expectations and after the project you say “the number of exciting new projects was smaller than we expected” I really think that warrants an explanation.)
In my opinion, EAV could have been a worthwhile experiment, but since lessons from EAV weren’t properly identified and incorporated into future projects, it is better characterized as a missed opportunity.