Thanks for this post! Reading through these lessons has been really informative. I have a few more questions that I’d love to hear your thinking on:
1) Why did you choose to run the fellowship as a part-time rather than full-time program?
2) Are there any particular reasons why fellowship participants tended to pursue non-venture projects?
3) Throughout your efforts, were you optimizing for project success or project volume, or were you instead focused on gathering data on the incubator space?
4) Do you consider the longtermist incubation space to be distinct from the x-risk reduction incubation space?
5) Was there a reason you didn’t have a public online presence, or was it just not a priority?
1) How come you choose to run the fellowship as a part-time rather than full-time program?
We wanted to test some version of this quickly, part time meant:
It was easier to get a cohort of people to commit at short notice as they could participate alongside other commitments
We could deliver a reasonable quality stripped back programme in a short space of time and had more capacity to test other ideas at the same time
With that said, if we were to run it again, we almost certainly would have explored running a full-time program for the next iteration.
2) Are there any particular reasons why fellowship participants tended to pursue non-venture projects?
Do you mean non-profits rather than for-profits? If so, I think this is because nonprofits present the most obvious neglected opportunities for doing good. Participants did consider some for profit ideas.
3) Throughout your efforts, were you optimizing for project success or project volume, or were you instead focused on gathering data on the incubator space?
The latter—we were trying to learn rather than optimise for early success.
4) Do you consider the longtermist incubation space to be distinct from the x-risk reduction incubation space?
Yes, mostly insofar as the Longtermist space is broader than the x-risk space—there are ideas that might help the long term future or reduce s-risk without reducing x-risk.
5) Was there a reason you didn’t have a public online presence?
I think having an online presence that is careful about how this work is described (e.g. not overhyping entrepreneurship or encouraging any particular version of it) is important and therefore quite a bit of work. We felt we could be productive without one for the time we were working on the project so decided to deprioritise it. If we had continued to work on the project, we would have spent time on this.
Thanks for this post! Reading through these lessons has been really informative. I have a few more questions that I’d love to hear your thinking on:
1) Why did you choose to run the fellowship as a part-time rather than full-time program?
2) Are there any particular reasons why fellowship participants tended to pursue non-venture projects?
3) Throughout your efforts, were you optimizing for project success or project volume, or were you instead focused on gathering data on the incubator space?
4) Do you consider the longtermist incubation space to be distinct from the x-risk reduction incubation space?
5) Was there a reason you didn’t have a public online presence, or was it just not a priority?
Thanks, great questions! In response:
1) How come you choose to run the fellowship as a part-time rather than full-time program?
We wanted to test some version of this quickly, part time meant:
It was easier to get a cohort of people to commit at short notice as they could participate alongside other commitments
We could deliver a reasonable quality stripped back programme in a short space of time and had more capacity to test other ideas at the same time
With that said, if we were to run it again, we almost certainly would have explored running a full-time program for the next iteration.
2) Are there any particular reasons why fellowship participants tended to pursue non-venture projects?
Do you mean non-profits rather than for-profits? If so, I think this is because nonprofits present the most obvious neglected opportunities for doing good. Participants did consider some for profit ideas.
3) Throughout your efforts, were you optimizing for project success or project volume, or were you instead focused on gathering data on the incubator space?
The latter—we were trying to learn rather than optimise for early success.
4) Do you consider the longtermist incubation space to be distinct from the x-risk reduction incubation space?
Yes, mostly insofar as the Longtermist space is broader than the x-risk space—there are ideas that might help the long term future or reduce s-risk without reducing x-risk.
5) Was there a reason you didn’t have a public online presence?
I think having an online presence that is careful about how this work is described (e.g. not overhyping entrepreneurship or encouraging any particular version of it) is important and therefore quite a bit of work. We felt we could be productive without one for the time we were working on the project so decided to deprioritise it. If we had continued to work on the project, we would have spent time on this.