But the presence of the overhang makes them even more valuable. Finding an extra grantmaker or entrepreneur can easily unlock millions of dollars of grants that would otherwise be left invested.
If we really think that this is the case for EA / charity entrepreneurs I think we should consider the following:
We spend too little effort on recruiting entrepreneurial types in the movement. Being relatively new in the movement (coming in as an entrepreneur), I think we should foster a more entrepreneurial culture than we currently do. I know some fellow entrepreneurs that dropped out of / didn’t enter the movement because they felt EA is an intellectual endeavour with too little focus on actually doing something.
Adjacent to this argument I think that we should spend more resources on upskilling entrepreneurial EAs. Charity Entrepreneurship is doing a great job with their incubation program, but their current capacity is limited and there is definitely room for growth given the large interest in the program. In addition to this we should also encourage cheap tests of EA entrepreneurship within national / local chapters. Currently the focus is mainly on community building and running fellowships.
Entrepreneurial projects at local chapters are currently considered as nice-to-have and as a way to attract people to the community. But if Ben´s statement is true we should consider national groups as the breeding ground for entrepreneurs. They are the first part of the EA entrepreneur pipeline with a next possible step being CE´s incubation program or starting a charity right away. In this model local and national group leaders should support these aspiring entrepreneurs with advice and connections to other people in the movement.
I agree—people able to run big EA projects seem like one of our key bottlenecks right now. That was one of my motivations for writing this post, and this mini profile.
I’m especially excited about finding people who could run $100m+ per year ‘megaprojects’, as opposed to more non-profits in the $1-$10m per year range, though I agree this might require building a bigger pipeline of smaller projects.
I also agree it seems plausible that the culture of the movement is a bit biased against entrepreneurship, so we’re not attracting as many people with this skillset as we could given our current reach. I’d be keen to do more celebrating of people who have tried to start new things.
This said, it might be even more pressing simply to reach 2x as many people, and then we’ll find a bunch of founders among them.
I’d also want to be cautious about using the term ‘entrepreneur’ to describe what we’re looking for, since I think that tends to bring to mind a particular silicon valley type, which is often pretty different from the people who have succeeded running big projects in EA. E.g. classic entrepreneurship is often about quickly testing lots of things, whereas many EA projects require really good judgement. That’s why I cached it in terms of ‘people who could run big projects in EA’ (leaving it open about exactly which skills are most needed there).
To give a concrete example, I mention the example of ‘the type of person who could found CSET’ - and the skills there seem pretty different from the people who typically self-identify as entrepreneurs on HN etc.
I’m especially excited about finding people who could run $100m+ per year ‘megaprojects’, as opposed to more non-profits in the $1-$10m per year range, though I agree this might require building a bigger pipeline of smaller projects.
Do you think it is useful to speculate about what these orgs could be, in any sense (cause area, purpose, etc.)?
Maybe this speculation could be useful to give some sense/hint/structure to how these orgs can be fostered (as opposed to directly encouraging someone to create such an org). For example, it may guide focus on certain smaller orgs or promoting some kind of cultural change.
To give a concrete example, I mention the example of ‘the type of person who could found CSET’ - and the skills there seem pretty different from the people who typically self-identify as entrepreneurs on HN etc.
To try to be helpful, here’s a sample of some founders from orgs who received the 3 largest Open Phil grants.
I’d also want to be cautious about using the term ‘entrepreneur’ to describe what we’re looking for, since I think that tends to bring to mind a particular silicon valley type, which is often pretty different from the people who have succeeded running big projects in EA.
Indeed, at their current life stage (Sam Altman was a SV founder) these people are very different from the “move fast and break things” startup style.
Touching on @Ben_West’s comment, many of these founders seem similar in profile to founders at middle or larger size companies and also have significant scientific experience.
Matheny was a scientist and manager of research and Malaria Consortium’s founding team has multiple strong scientists. At the same time, these are people have very high human capital in the form of executive experience. Their profile seems normal for “CEOs”.
While many CEOs do have scientific degrees, the level of scientific prestige and activity among this group might be uncommon.
This pattern could be useful in some way (most obviously, you could just ask the current senior research leaders of EA aligned orgs/think tanks if they have a vision for a useful project).
Thanks for your response Benjamin (and Ben West asking a question)
Sorry for not being completely clear about this, but I pointed towards the profile of a (EA-style) charity entrepreneur which is indeed different from the regular SV co founder (although there are similarities, but let’s not go into the details). I think the mini profile you wrote about a non profit entrepreneur is great and I am happy to see that 80k pushes this. Hopefully the Community Building Program will follow since national and local chapters are for many people the first point of entrance into EA. It would be good if this program also encouraged local and national chapters to make valuable cheap tests in non profit entrepreneurship viable.
I am also very happy that you acknowledge that reaching out to get 2x as many people in is probably desirable. Also here I think that the “common EA opinion” shifted quite a lot over the ~two years I’ve been involved in EA, great to see!
As someone who’s spent a fair amount of time with the SV startup scene (have cofounded multiple companies) and the EA scene, I’d flag that the cultures of at least these two are quite different and often difficult to bridge.
Most of the large EA-style projects I’d be excited about are ones that would require a fair amount of buy-in and trust from the senior EA community. For example, if you’re making a new org to investigate AGI safety, bio safety, or expand EA, senior EAs would care a lot about the leadership having really strong epistemics and understand of existing EA thinking on the topic.
One problem is that entrepreneurship culture can present a few challenges: 1) There’s often a lot of overconfidence and weird epistemics 2) Often there’s not much spare time to learn about EA concepts 3) Leaders often seem to grow egos
The key thing, to me, seems to be some combination of humility and willingness to begin at the bottom for a while. I think that becoming well versed in EA/longtermism enough to found something important, can often require beginning in a low-level research role or similar.
One strategy some people give is something like, “I don’t care about buy-in from the EA community, I could start something myself quickly, and raise a lot of other money”. In sensitive areas, this can get downright scary, in my opinion.
Of my current successful entrepreneur friends, I can’t see many of them going the “go low-status for a few years route”, but I could see some. Most people I know don’t seem to want to go down a few status and confidence levels for a while.
There are definitely some prominent examples in EA of people who have done similar things (I’d flag Ben West, who seems have pulled off a successful transition, and is discussed in these comments), but there aren’t all too many.
The FHI RSP program was a nice introductory program, but was definitely made more for researchers than entrepreneurs. I could imagine us having similar transitionary programs for entrepreneur-types in the future. There are probably some ways more programs and work in this area could make things easier; for instance, they could seem really prestigious (flashy branding), in part to make it more palatable for people taking status-decreases for a while.
If there are successful entrepreneurs out there reading this interested in chatting, I’d of course be happy to (just message me), though I’m sure 80k and other groups would be interested as well.
(Note: I think Charity Entrepreneurship gets around this a bit by first, focusing on younger people with potential to be entrepreneurs, rather than people who are already very successful, and second, focusing on particular interventions that can be done more independently.)
I feel like these conversations often get confusing because people mean different things by the term “entrepreneur”, so I wonder if you could define what you mean by “entrepreneur” and what you think they would do in EA?
Even with very commercializable EA projects like cellular agriculture, my experience is that the best founders are closer to scientists than traditional CEOs, and once you get to things like disentanglement research the best founders have almost no skills in common with e.g. tech company founders, despite them both technically being “entrepreneurs” in some sense.
One extra thought is that there was a longtermist incubator project for a while, but they decided to close it down. I think one reason was they thought there weren’t enough potential entrepreneurs in the first place, so the bigger bottleneck was movement growth rather than mentoring. I think another bottleneck was having an entrepreneur who could run the incubator itself, and also a lack of ideas that can be easily taken forward without a lot more thinking. (Though I could be mis-remembering.)
I think they were pretty low profile, and the types of things that Jan-WillemvanPutten is suggesting are about being more present/visible in EA in order to attract a subculture to develop more. I think this example supports his main point more actually, because movement growth is quite driven by culture and attractors for different subcultures.
(As an aside, I was engaged with the longtermist incubator and found it helpful/useful.) (Another aside, I can think of a few downsides of Jan-WillemvanPutten’s specific suggestion, but I think the important part is the visibility and culture building aspect.)
Agree that this seems neglected. EA Germany (and I personally) are happy to support EA projects that have potential to grow into impactful EA organisations. If you have ideas on how to better do that (within the limited capacity of national group organisers), feel free to get in touch!
(I also agree on the importance of having founders that are value-aligend and have good epistemics, which I think some entrepreneurs are but many others may not be)
One comment regarding:
But the presence of the overhang makes them even more valuable. Finding an extra grantmaker or entrepreneur can easily unlock millions of dollars of grants that would otherwise be left invested.
If we really think that this is the case for EA / charity entrepreneurs I think we should consider the following:
We spend too little effort on recruiting entrepreneurial types in the movement. Being relatively new in the movement (coming in as an entrepreneur), I think we should foster a more entrepreneurial culture than we currently do. I know some fellow entrepreneurs that dropped out of / didn’t enter the movement because they felt EA is an intellectual endeavour with too little focus on actually doing something.
Adjacent to this argument I think that we should spend more resources on upskilling entrepreneurial EAs. Charity Entrepreneurship is doing a great job with their incubation program, but their current capacity is limited and there is definitely room for growth given the large interest in the program. In addition to this we should also encourage cheap tests of EA entrepreneurship within national / local chapters. Currently the focus is mainly on community building and running fellowships.
Entrepreneurial projects at local chapters are currently considered as nice-to-have and as a way to attract people to the community. But if Ben´s statement is true we should consider national groups as the breeding ground for entrepreneurs. They are the first part of the EA entrepreneur pipeline with a next possible step being CE´s incubation program or starting a charity right away. In this model local and national group leaders should support these aspiring entrepreneurs with advice and connections to other people in the movement.
I agree—people able to run big EA projects seem like one of our key bottlenecks right now. That was one of my motivations for writing this post, and this mini profile.
I’m especially excited about finding people who could run $100m+ per year ‘megaprojects’, as opposed to more non-profits in the $1-$10m per year range, though I agree this might require building a bigger pipeline of smaller projects.
I also agree it seems plausible that the culture of the movement is a bit biased against entrepreneurship, so we’re not attracting as many people with this skillset as we could given our current reach. I’d be keen to do more celebrating of people who have tried to start new things.
This said, it might be even more pressing simply to reach 2x as many people, and then we’ll find a bunch of founders among them.
I’d also want to be cautious about using the term ‘entrepreneur’ to describe what we’re looking for, since I think that tends to bring to mind a particular silicon valley type, which is often pretty different from the people who have succeeded running big projects in EA. E.g. classic entrepreneurship is often about quickly testing lots of things, whereas many EA projects require really good judgement. That’s why I cached it in terms of ‘people who could run big projects in EA’ (leaving it open about exactly which skills are most needed there).
To give a concrete example, I mention the example of ‘the type of person who could found CSET’ - and the skills there seem pretty different from the people who typically self-identify as entrepreneurs on HN etc.
Do you think it is useful to speculate about what these orgs could be, in any sense (cause area, purpose, etc.)?
Maybe this speculation could be useful to give some sense/hint/structure to how these orgs can be fostered (as opposed to directly encouraging someone to create such an org). For example, it may guide focus on certain smaller orgs or promoting some kind of cultural change.
To try to be helpful, here’s a sample of some founders from orgs who received the 3 largest Open Phil grants.
CSET—Jason Matheny—https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Gaverick_Matheny
OpenAI—Sam Altman—https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Altman
Malaria Consortium—Sylvia Meek—https://www.malariaconsortium.org/sylvia-meek/dr-sylvia-meek-1954-2016.htm
Indeed, at their current life stage (Sam Altman was a SV founder) these people are very different from the “move fast and break things” startup style.
Touching on @Ben_West’s comment, many of these founders seem similar in profile to founders at middle or larger size companies and also have significant scientific experience.
Matheny was a scientist and manager of research and Malaria Consortium’s founding team has multiple strong scientists. At the same time, these are people have very high human capital in the form of executive experience. Their profile seems normal for “CEOs”.
While many CEOs do have scientific degrees, the level of scientific prestige and activity among this group might be uncommon.
This pattern could be useful in some way (most obviously, you could just ask the current senior research leaders of EA aligned orgs/think tanks if they have a vision for a useful project).
This is being done here: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ckcoSe3CS2n3BW3aT/what-ea-projects-could-grow-to-become-megaprojects
Thanks for pointing this out!
Thanks for your response Benjamin (and Ben West asking a question)
Sorry for not being completely clear about this, but I pointed towards the profile of a (EA-style) charity entrepreneur which is indeed different from the regular SV co founder (although there are similarities, but let’s not go into the details). I think the mini profile you wrote about a non profit entrepreneur is great and I am happy to see that 80k pushes this. Hopefully the Community Building Program will follow since national and local chapters are for many people the first point of entrance into EA. It would be good if this program also encouraged local and national chapters to make valuable cheap tests in non profit entrepreneurship viable.
I am also very happy that you acknowledge that reaching out to get 2x as many people in is probably desirable. Also here I think that the “common EA opinion” shifted quite a lot over the ~two years I’ve been involved in EA, great to see!
As someone who’s spent a fair amount of time with the SV startup scene (have cofounded multiple companies) and the EA scene, I’d flag that the cultures of at least these two are quite different and often difficult to bridge.
Most of the large EA-style projects I’d be excited about are ones that would require a fair amount of buy-in and trust from the senior EA community. For example, if you’re making a new org to investigate AGI safety, bio safety, or expand EA, senior EAs would care a lot about the leadership having really strong epistemics and understand of existing EA thinking on the topic.
One problem is that entrepreneurship culture can present a few challenges:
1) There’s often a lot of overconfidence and weird epistemics
2) Often there’s not much spare time to learn about EA concepts
3) Leaders often seem to grow egos
The key thing, to me, seems to be some combination of humility and willingness to begin at the bottom for a while. I think that becoming well versed in EA/longtermism enough to found something important, can often require beginning in a low-level research role or similar.
One strategy some people give is something like, “I don’t care about buy-in from the EA community, I could start something myself quickly, and raise a lot of other money”. In sensitive areas, this can get downright scary, in my opinion.
Of my current successful entrepreneur friends, I can’t see many of them going the “go low-status for a few years route”, but I could see some. Most people I know don’t seem to want to go down a few status and confidence levels for a while.
There are definitely some prominent examples in EA of people who have done similar things (I’d flag Ben West, who seems have pulled off a successful transition, and is discussed in these comments), but there aren’t all too many.
The FHI RSP program was a nice introductory program, but was definitely made more for researchers than entrepreneurs. I could imagine us having similar transitionary programs for entrepreneur-types in the future. There are probably some ways more programs and work in this area could make things easier; for instance, they could seem really prestigious (flashy branding), in part to make it more palatable for people taking status-decreases for a while.
If there are successful entrepreneurs out there reading this interested in chatting, I’d of course be happy to (just message me), though I’m sure 80k and other groups would be interested as well.
(Note: I think Charity Entrepreneurship gets around this a bit by first, focusing on younger people with potential to be entrepreneurs, rather than people who are already very successful, and second, focusing on particular interventions that can be done more independently.)
A lot of this rings true to me.
I feel like these conversations often get confusing because people mean different things by the term “entrepreneur”, so I wonder if you could define what you mean by “entrepreneur” and what you think they would do in EA?
Even with very commercializable EA projects like cellular agriculture, my experience is that the best founders are closer to scientists than traditional CEOs, and once you get to things like disentanglement research the best founders have almost no skills in common with e.g. tech company founders, despite them both technically being “entrepreneurs” in some sense.
One extra thought is that there was a longtermist incubator project for a while, but they decided to close it down. I think one reason was they thought there weren’t enough potential entrepreneurs in the first place, so the bigger bottleneck was movement growth rather than mentoring. I think another bottleneck was having an entrepreneur who could run the incubator itself, and also a lack of ideas that can be easily taken forward without a lot more thinking. (Though I could be mis-remembering.)
I think they were pretty low profile, and the types of things that Jan-WillemvanPutten is suggesting are about being more present/visible in EA in order to attract a subculture to develop more. I think this example supports his main point more actually, because movement growth is quite driven by culture and attractors for different subcultures.
(As an aside, I was engaged with the longtermist incubator and found it helpful/useful.)
(Another aside, I can think of a few downsides of Jan-WillemvanPutten’s specific suggestion, but I think the important part is the visibility and culture building aspect.)
Agree that this seems neglected. EA Germany (and I personally) are happy to support EA projects that have potential to grow into impactful EA organisations. If you have ideas on how to better do that (within the limited capacity of national group organisers), feel free to get in touch!
(I also agree on the importance of having founders that are value-aligend and have good epistemics, which I think some entrepreneurs are but many others may not be)