When founding something new, how do you balance money and impact?
I’m (attempting to be) an EA entrepreneur, but I find it difficult to balance finding product-market-fit+scaling with actual impact. At different times, I’ve found myself focusing too much on building something “big” that doesn’t have any actual object-level impact, or being too perfectionist about optimising impact versus simply doubling down on something that works and is influential/makes lots of money.
I haven’t figured it out and don’t expect this to be an easy answer, so just curious what your thoughts are on the resource/impact tradeoffs in decision making.
My sense is that the companies which have managed to be impactful and profitable create products which require substantial capital investment but which are profitable while still having massive positive externalities if created. Importantly “we will create X, but after having created X we will go on to create Y and Y will be good for the world” seems to have a pretty dubious track record.
(I guess this is an elaborate way of saying “impact + profit” companies work if and only if there aren’t market failures.)
I have a general bias in favor of focus and simplicity, which makes me think that people should usually focus either on EtG or impact but not both, but it’s really hard to give universal advice here. I think if I were you I would just BOTEC out the value of the two products you are considering, and then do the one which has the higher number.
When founding something new, how do you balance money and impact?
I’m (attempting to be) an EA entrepreneur, but I find it difficult to balance finding product-market-fit+scaling with actual impact. At different times, I’ve found myself focusing too much on building something “big” that doesn’t have any actual object-level impact, or being too perfectionist about optimising impact versus simply doubling down on something that works and is influential/makes lots of money.
I haven’t figured it out and don’t expect this to be an easy answer, so just curious what your thoughts are on the resource/impact tradeoffs in decision making.
My sense is that the companies which have managed to be impactful and profitable create products which require substantial capital investment but which are profitable while still having massive positive externalities if created. Importantly “we will create X, but after having created X we will go on to create Y and Y will be good for the world” seems to have a pretty dubious track record.
(I guess this is an elaborate way of saying “impact + profit” companies work if and only if there aren’t market failures.)
I have a general bias in favor of focus and simplicity, which makes me think that people should usually focus either on EtG or impact but not both, but it’s really hard to give universal advice here. I think if I were you I would just BOTEC out the value of the two products you are considering, and then do the one which has the higher number.