I wanted to add a brief comment about EA Ventures.
I think this piece does a fair job of presenting the relevant facts about the project and why it did not ultimately succeed. However, 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.
For example, you say:
Personally, I (and others) suspect the main reason EAV failed is that it did not actually have committed funding in place.
That this was a big part of the issue with the project is correct, but also, the lack of committed funding was no secret!
The launch announcement included this line about the role of funders
For funders Effective Altruism Ventures is a risk-free way of gaining access to higher quality projects. We will learn about your funding priorities and then introduce you to vetted projects that meet your priorities. If you don’t like a project you are free to decline to fund it. We simply ask that you provide us with your reasons so we can improve our evaluation procedure.
Additionally, the tagline under “funders” on the website included the following:
Impact-focused backers who review proposals vetted by our partners and experts
Similarly, you attempt to show an inconsistency in the evaluation of EA Ventures by contrasting the following paragraphs:
When piecemeal evaluations have surfaced, they’ve offered conflicting evidence as to why EAV failed. In a 2017 comment thread, EAV co-founder Kerry Vaughn wrote: “We shut down EA Ventures because 1) the number of exciting new projects was smaller than we expected; 2) funder interest in new projects was smaller than expected and 3) opportunity cost increased significantly as other projects at CEA started to show stronger results.”
Vaughan has also suggested in 2017 that “Part of the problem is that the best projects are often able to raise money on their own without an intermediary to help them. So, even if there are exciting projects in EA, they might not need our help.” That explanation seems quite different from the original three reasons he supplied; it also seems easy to prove by listing specific high quality projects that applied to EAV but were instead funded by others.
But you fail to note that the comment cited in the second paragraph was in reply to a comment from the first paragraph!
I was merely responding to a question about how it can be the case that the project received fewer exciting projects than expect while also having a harder time funding those projects than expected. There’s nothing inconsistent about holding that while also holding that the three reasons I cited are why the project did not succeed.
Overall, I think EA Ventures was probably a worthwhile experiment (although it’s hard to be certain), but it was certainly a failure. I think I erred in not more cleanly shutting down the project with a write-up to explain why. Thanks for your assistance in making the relevant facts of the situation clear.
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)
I wanted to add a brief comment about EA Ventures.
I think this piece does a fair job of presenting the relevant facts about the project and why it did not ultimately succeed. However, 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.
For example, you say:
That this was a big part of the issue with the project is correct, but also, the lack of committed funding was no secret!
The launch announcement included this line about the role of funders
Additionally, the tagline under “funders” on the website included the following:
Similarly, you attempt to show an inconsistency in the evaluation of EA Ventures by contrasting the following paragraphs:
But you fail to note that the comment cited in the second paragraph was in reply to a comment from the first paragraph!
I was merely responding to a question about how it can be the case that the project received fewer exciting projects than expect while also having a harder time funding those projects than expected. There’s nothing inconsistent about holding that while also holding that the three reasons I cited are why the project did not succeed.
Overall, I think EA Ventures was probably a worthwhile experiment (although it’s hard to be certain), but it was certainly a failure. I think I erred in not more cleanly shutting down the project with a write-up to explain why. Thanks for your assistance in making the relevant facts of the situation clear.
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.