Lightcone spent more than $3.3MM on renovation in 2022? How many square feet of renovations is this for? How much does Lightcone usually spend a year on renovation?
Hmm, this comment indicates some misunderstanding. We “usually” spend $0 on renovations, because we’ve never owned any real estate before. We have purchased an extremely run-down hotel that needs renovations before it can be made operational as a retreat venue, office and community space.
The total interior square footage of the hotel is around 20,000 sq. ft., with some additional 10,000 sq. ft. of outdoor space. I expect we will have some upkeep cost in the future, but probably something around the $500k/yr range.
Especially in the context of renovations we work with a lot of contractors, but also otherwise we pay salaries to more than 7 staff listed on the website. Some examples:
We pay Jim Babcock as a contractor to help develop LessWrong and the EA Forum
We pay Aaron Silverbook to help us with operations on a surge basis
We pay for a full time design consultant and renovation manager
We pay Justis to provide editing services for LessWrong authors
We paid Sam Kennedy to trial as someone owning the printing of the LessWrong books and other books we want to print
We pay Vlad as a coding tutor for LessWrong developers to improve their coding skills for a few hours a week on-average
We pay CFAR for providing fiscal sponsorship and accounting services/help to us
We paid for many ops people for the Icecone retreat
We covered half of the cost of the first MLAB that we collaborated in with Redwood
We pay rent for the Lighthouse system and pay for cleaners and repairs to the rental properties
And probably a bunch more I am forgetting. We’ve done a lot of things in 2022.
We don’t yet have any public accounting for 2022, and previous years aren’t that informative for modeling our spending since we did very different things previously, but you will eventually be able to find out public finances as part of the CFAR non-profit finances documentation.
I am currently also in the middle of preparing our accounting for the tax deadline and might be able to share a more detailed breakdown of spending when I am done with that.
Hmm, this comment indicates some misunderstanding. We “usually” spend $0 on renovations, because we’ve never owned any real estate before. We have purchased an extremely run-down hotel that needs renovations before it can be made operational as a retreat venue, office and community space.
The total interior square footage of the hotel is around 20,000 sq. ft., with some additional 10,000 sq. ft. of outdoor space. I expect we will have some upkeep cost in the future, but probably something around the $500k/yr range.
Especially in the context of renovations we work with a lot of contractors, but also otherwise we pay salaries to more than 7 staff listed on the website. Some examples:
We pay Jim Babcock as a contractor to help develop LessWrong and the EA Forum
We pay Aaron Silverbook to help us with operations on a surge basis
We pay for a full time design consultant and renovation manager
We pay Justis to provide editing services for LessWrong authors
We paid Sam Kennedy to trial as someone owning the printing of the LessWrong books and other books we want to print
We pay Vlad as a coding tutor for LessWrong developers to improve their coding skills for a few hours a week on-average
We pay CFAR for providing fiscal sponsorship and accounting services/help to us
We paid for many ops people for the Icecone retreat
We covered half of the cost of the first MLAB that we collaborated in with Redwood
We pay rent for the Lighthouse system and pay for cleaners and repairs to the rental properties
And probably a bunch more I am forgetting. We’ve done a lot of things in 2022.
We don’t yet have any public accounting for 2022, and previous years aren’t that informative for modeling our spending since we did very different things previously, but you will eventually be able to find out public finances as part of the CFAR non-profit finances documentation.
I am currently also in the middle of preparing our accounting for the tax deadline and might be able to share a more detailed breakdown of spending when I am done with that.
Thanks for this comment, appreciate the clarity!
Minor note RE: CFAR documentation-I’m probably looking in the wrong place but I can’t find anything after 2018 in the official records.
Oops, looks like nobody has updated the website in a while. Here you can find stuff until 2020: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/453100226