I think that promoting startups which offer what CE calls “flowthrough effects” is probably a large part of CE’s value add here, so it would be nice if some of the analysis of fields and the potential for impact within them looked a little more developed in future. I can see some value in EA founder-matching, but I think the existing startup funding ecosystem provides a lot of information on how to get into accelerators and what a high growth business model looks like etc already.
Despite sharing others’ scepticism about the 40% into YC and implied unicorn exit projections, I can see the numbers working purely because I think the 50% of founder share value CE is asking to be donated will tend to work out as a greater percentage of share value than a typical accelerator or angel takes (and so even a modest acquihire potentially represents ~$1m to effective charity, for relatively little initial input).
But I think it’s a little disappointing that CE seems to be writing off the “double bottom line” space in between pure charity and VC-funded moonshots. It’s true that those sort of companies don’t tend to become as big as the outlying VC-funded successes, but that’s not really the point: since they’re not asking for philanthropic capital to sustain them and can generate recurring moderately positive impact, they’re still potentially a very efficient use of their founders time and initial resource input. Some of them operate in niches much larger than some of the charities CE is incubating too, and whilst “ethics” isn’t a big “buy me” signal to VCs and acquirers, it can be to consumers. I’d have thought CE’s focus on quantifying impact worked well in this space too.
If CE is looking to broaden what it incubates goals and work with the for-profit sector, it would also be interesting to see what it could do with corporate partners with some of its purely impact driven ideas too: in particular the SMS-reminder ideas feel like something that could be advanced most effectively in partnership with a mobile telecoms provider
I think that promoting startups which offer what CE calls “flowthrough effects” is probably a large part of CE’s value add here, so it would be nice if some of the analysis of fields and the potential for impact within them looked a little more developed in future. I can see some value in EA founder-matching, but I think the existing startup funding ecosystem provides a lot of information on how to get into accelerators and what a high growth business model looks like etc already.
Despite sharing others’ scepticism about the 40% into YC and implied unicorn exit projections, I can see the numbers working purely because I think the 50% of founder share value CE is asking to be donated will tend to work out as a greater percentage of share value than a typical accelerator or angel takes (and so even a modest acquihire potentially represents ~$1m to effective charity, for relatively little initial input).
But I think it’s a little disappointing that CE seems to be writing off the “double bottom line” space in between pure charity and VC-funded moonshots. It’s true that those sort of companies don’t tend to become as big as the outlying VC-funded successes, but that’s not really the point: since they’re not asking for philanthropic capital to sustain them and can generate recurring moderately positive impact, they’re still potentially a very efficient use of their founders time and initial resource input. Some of them operate in niches much larger than some of the charities CE is incubating too, and whilst “ethics” isn’t a big “buy me” signal to VCs and acquirers, it can be to consumers. I’d have thought CE’s focus on quantifying impact worked well in this space too.
If CE is looking to broaden what it incubates goals and work with the for-profit sector, it would also be interesting to see what it could do with corporate partners with some of its purely impact driven ideas too: in particular the SMS-reminder ideas feel like something that could be advanced most effectively in partnership with a mobile telecoms provider