This was a lot more spending than we had in previous years. In-general we’ve mostly been funded by Open Phil, SFF and in 2022 a bunch by the FTX Future Fund :(
The Rose Garden Inn was also purchased on a loan from Jaan Tallinn (I’m not quite sure how the finances worked but we weren’t given the funds directly), and so we owe him ~$16MM-or-a-hotel at some point in the future.
Out of curiosity, what else does Lightcone spend $ on?
After excluding the $3MM for operating costs of Lightcone Offices, there’s still $6.5MM, not including the 3.3MM construction loan. Was the 16MM Rose Garden Inn a separate loan to the above?
The $16.5MM Rose Garden loan was in the same transaction, it just all went into the property so felt weird to list as income.
We’ve spent more than just the loan amount on renovation, so that’s where a lot of money is going (I have deep deep hatred for mold and water damage problems, which are making things more expensive).
Besides that there are core staff salaries as well as events like Icecone, EAG after parties, LW server costs and software subscriptions, prizes for the LW review, printing books and a lot of other misc things.
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?
That leaves ~3MM, which I assume is mainly going towards salaries (how many staff are being paid for from this 3MM outside of the 7 listed on the website?), as the LW review prizes appear to be in the hundreds per prize, and less than 10k overall. There was only 1 EA Global event in 2022 in the Bay (did Lightcone fund after parties at other EAGs?), and presumably events are going to be in the ~10s of thousands range at most. I don’t know how much LW server costs, but I’d be surprised if it was more than 10s of thousands/year.
Instead of me speculating, are you happy to share any more detailed breakdowns on the above? Are any of Lightcone’s financials publicly available?
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.
San Fran really needs the Sabs Solution to stop people doing this kind of thing ever again, it’s just such a terrible Schelling point for the tech industry. So much value is being destroyed by having so many productive people and firms clustered in this nightmarish and incredibly expensive hellhole. One medium-sized nuclear device. That’s all it takes.
Where did/does Lightcone get the money to run?
Our income in 2022 was:
FTX Future Fund February: $2,000,000
FTX Future Fund August $500,000
Open Philanthropy August: $4,500,000
FTX Future Fund November: $1,500,000
SFF November: $1,000,000
Construction loan (from Jaan Tallinn): $3,300,000
This was a lot more spending than we had in previous years. In-general we’ve mostly been funded by Open Phil, SFF and in 2022 a bunch by the FTX Future Fund :(
The Rose Garden Inn was also purchased on a loan from Jaan Tallinn (I’m not quite sure how the finances worked but we weren’t given the funds directly), and so we owe him ~$16MM-or-a-hotel at some point in the future.
Out of curiosity, what else does Lightcone spend $ on?
After excluding the $3MM for operating costs of Lightcone Offices, there’s still $6.5MM, not including the 3.3MM construction loan. Was the 16MM Rose Garden Inn a separate loan to the above?
The $16.5MM Rose Garden loan was in the same transaction, it just all went into the property so felt weird to list as income.
We’ve spent more than just the loan amount on renovation, so that’s where a lot of money is going (I have deep deep hatred for mold and water damage problems, which are making things more expensive).
Besides that there are core staff salaries as well as events like Icecone, EAG after parties, LW server costs and software subscriptions, prizes for the LW review, printing books and a lot of other misc things.
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?
That leaves ~3MM, which I assume is mainly going towards salaries (how many staff are being paid for from this 3MM outside of the 7 listed on the website?), as the LW review prizes appear to be in the hundreds per prize, and less than 10k overall. There was only 1 EA Global event in 2022 in the Bay (did Lightcone fund after parties at other EAGs?), and presumably events are going to be in the ~10s of thousands range at most. I don’t know how much LW server costs, but I’d be surprised if it was more than 10s of thousands/year.
Instead of me speculating, are you happy to share any more detailed breakdowns on the above? Are any of Lightcone’s financials publicly available?
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
San Fran really needs the Sabs Solution to stop people doing this kind of thing ever again, it’s just such a terrible Schelling point for the tech industry. So much value is being destroyed by having so many productive people and firms clustered in this nightmarish and incredibly expensive hellhole. One medium-sized nuclear device. That’s all it takes.