Brad has touched on the other subjects and I mostly agree with those so I won’t touch them.
About why we’re doing BOAS: at first we thought this was almost completely new, and we wanted to show the world that this is a good idea, that it can work, can scale, and is a high EV opportunity. I’m now reasonably convinced that this is a good idea, because we know it works, scales and is high EV (because these companies would be better investments for philanthropists versus their competitors if they gave to EA charities).
Convincing existing GC’s to give according to EA principles seems like EA’s job to me, together with CPI. EA is trying to globalize their principles and if they are successful there are no more GC’s to persuade. Unfortunately, I don’t think EA is good at marketing itself to become truly big, and with my background marketing that might be an area that I someday want to take a stab at, but I’m focusing my work on proving EA aligned GC for now (which I think has much higher EV because almost no-one is working on that versus many movement builders).
I think we haven’t seen this taking off apart from Denmark because of a lack of awareness and choice. You can’t choose to buy your car from a GC or in the case of BOAS, you can’t buy anything sustainable from a GC. So it’s critical to create the awareness and we know from Amazon smile that this could work (high growth with relatively little marketing and awareness), and it’s also critical to build choices. I’m focusing on building that choice and then move on to create awareness.
Writing a bestselling book about this idea, convincing 1000 people to start GC’s, resulting in 100 successful businesses and 10 GC unicorns might be higher value, but then again, I’m a terrible writer.
Convincing 10 billionaires this is a great idea also seems like high EV, and I think that’s something we’re already trying to do with BOAS in the form of showing it can be done and we can multiply their money. But again, I view this more as the job of EA as a whole.
Another high EV would be to establish a GC VC fund that can fund 100 of these businesses and see a couple turn into unicorns, and then we hope more and more will follow.
I have many ideas, but I’m focusing on execution right now.
Brad has touched on the other subjects and I mostly agree with those so I won’t touch them.
About why we’re doing BOAS: at first we thought this was almost completely new, and we wanted to show the world that this is a good idea, that it can work, can scale, and is a high EV opportunity. I’m now reasonably convinced that this is a good idea, because we know it works, scales and is high EV (because these companies would be better investments for philanthropists versus their competitors if they gave to EA charities).
Convincing existing GC’s to give according to EA principles seems like EA’s job to me, together with CPI. EA is trying to globalize their principles and if they are successful there are no more GC’s to persuade. Unfortunately, I don’t think EA is good at marketing itself to become truly big, and with my background marketing that might be an area that I someday want to take a stab at, but I’m focusing my work on proving EA aligned GC for now (which I think has much higher EV because almost no-one is working on that versus many movement builders).
I think we haven’t seen this taking off apart from Denmark because of a lack of awareness and choice. You can’t choose to buy your car from a GC or in the case of BOAS, you can’t buy anything sustainable from a GC. So it’s critical to create the awareness and we know from Amazon smile that this could work (high growth with relatively little marketing and awareness), and it’s also critical to build choices. I’m focusing on building that choice and then move on to create awareness.
Writing a bestselling book about this idea, convincing 1000 people to start GC’s, resulting in 100 successful businesses and 10 GC unicorns might be higher value, but then again, I’m a terrible writer.
Convincing 10 billionaires this is a great idea also seems like high EV, and I think that’s something we’re already trying to do with BOAS in the form of showing it can be done and we can multiply their money. But again, I view this more as the job of EA as a whole.
Another high EV would be to establish a GC VC fund that can fund 100 of these businesses and see a couple turn into unicorns, and then we hope more and more will follow.
I have many ideas, but I’m focusing on execution right now.