Vincent van der Holst

Karma: 1,063

Founder of BOAS, a fast vintage fashion platform that donates 90% of profits to the most effective charities that save lives.

Our vision is to move as many of the world’s trillions in profits to effective organisations through Profit for Good businesses (where charities receive most profits instead of shareholders).

BOAS’ mission is save jeans and lives. Peter Singer is an investor in our business.

We’re fundraising, so if you can help, send me an email at vin at boas . co

We’re almost always looking for interns, so if you’re interested please reach out.

Thanks, Vin

Vincent van der Holst Apr 18, 2024, 1:27 PM
3 points
3 ∶ 0
in reply to: Alix Pham’s comment on: Lies and disrespect from the EA Infrastructure Fund
We also had feedback with very clear inconsistencies (e.g. saying we had closed accounting, even when it was publicly available and clearly linked. Saying our application had not changed from last rejection, even though we applied with a completely different project). Disrespectful.

Vincent van der Holst Apr 18, 2024, 1:18 PM
14 points
0 ∶ 2
on: Lies and disrespect from the EA Infrastructure Fund
@Igor Ivanov my experience with Caleb and EAIF have been incredibly similar (with the exception of Michael Aird who is smart, helpful and emphatic). I’m unfortunately not surprised to see this post and its many upvotes, and I know of multiple people who have ranted about EAIF’s disrespectful and unemphatic ways of working. I hope they will also start speaking up, and your post has persuaded me to do so, so thanks for that!
I will disclose the email I sent to Caleb below. In his defence: he did reply with feedback after this email for which I’m thankful. Unfortunately the feedback contained factual errors about our application and company, and made it clear that our application was not carefully reviewed (or reviewed at all). We recently got another application rejected by Caleb, even though I specifically asked for someone else to review it too, because I believe he has something against me (no clue what that would be since he always ignored me and we never met).
I still believe EAIF and its managers are good people trying to do a good job, I just don’t think they are actually doing a good job based on others and my experiences.
Here’s the email:

Hi Caleb,
I hope you are well!
I know it’s not your policy, but after many applications that are, and I mean this respectfully, wasting a lot of time on both ends, I think it’s in both our interests if we have some clarity on our applications. Many others and myself think EAIF is an incredibly good fit with our common goals, but after the declined applications it’s clear EAIF does not think so (at least currently). That’s fine, but because we continue to believe this is a good fit we’re continuing to apply and up until now wasting a lot of EA’s time. At this stage I’m confident it would help a lot if you could give a little bit of feedback, even if it’s just one line of feedback, so we can either move on or reapply with something that we both agree if effective.
I hesitated to write this because I’m anxious it will hurt our future within EA because I believe you and EAIF have a position of power, but I have decided honesty is more important and it’s more helpful if you know who this is coming from so I decided not to be anonymous. This might be emotional and irrational and not at all true, but I have the feeling you don’t like me or the work that I’m doing. If true, I haven’t figured out why, but I’d prefer to hear that out loud so I can stop frustrating you (if I am) and I can stop being frustrated by not being answered. For context: I have read up on EAIF’s and your work, I’ve been to two office hours on two EAG’s, I went to your talk and I tried to get both written or F2F feedback at multiple occasions, each time emphasizing I’d do whatever would be easiest for you, and even if it was one minute of feedback it would help us a lot. I tried to be very respectful of your time because I completely understand you are incredibly busy. You wrote me back once that you could give feedback but after replying I was again ignored. If I may be completely frank I have found it quite disrespectful, considering how respectful I tried to be with your time and space, and how much time we put into our applications.
These are just emotional observations and they do not constitute truth, but I think it’s helpful for you to know the impression you and EAIF (although others at or affiliated to EAIF did reply to our requests for help, most of them pointing to you to ask for feedback) are leaving on me. I’m very sorry if this is making you feel bad, I don’t at all think that you are a bad person and I admire the amazing work you do. I’m just sharing the impression our encounters (or the lack thereof) have made me feel.

Any feedback would be helpful because I believe it will help EAIF save considerable time in the future. I would appreciate it if our next EAIF will be reviewed by someone else so we can remove any personal biases there might be between you and us. We continue to believe the fit is great and won’t give up until we get clear feedback saying otherwise.

Thanks and all the best,

Vin
What links here?
- Vincent van der Holst's comment on Vincent van der Holst’s Quick takes by Vincent van der Holst (Jul 8, 2024, 10:18 AM; 6 points)

Vincent van der Holst Dec 13, 2023, 6:39 PM
13 points
1 ∶ 0
on: TEDx Talk on Profit for Good as a Means of Funding Effective Charities
Congrats Brad! I hope and think the Ted stage gets more people otherwise unfamiliar with effective giving and profit for Good to take action.

Vincent van der Holst Nov 21, 2023, 5:36 PM
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: lynn’s comment on: HearMeOut—Networking While Funding Charities (Looking for a founder and beta users)
That’s very relevant information! It’s very similar to our idea, so I’d love to talk to him. Could you share his contact details with me on vin at boas dot co ?

Vincent van der Holst Nov 15, 2023, 5:38 PM
3 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: JamesN’s comment on: HearMeOut—Networking While Funding Charities (Looking for a founder and beta users)
You raise an important potential downside. It was already hard for people with shallow pockets to reach people with deep pockets and this might make it harder.
For me personally, I would do the following. Someone cold calls or emails me. If this is an aspiring entrepreneur who has no deep pockets and a good pitch, I will meet with them for free. Same for any NGO or individual making the world a better place. If this is a for-profit company that has X profits I will charge a Y amount that I think is fair for that company to pay me for my time, through a donation to an effective charity. If facebook wants my time I will charge a million.
There’s pros and cons to everything, but the additional money flowing to charities seems more important to me, but we should think of ways for people who can’t afford donations to not be excluded. Replying with your HearMeOut link depending on who cold emails or calls you seems like a simple but effective solution, at least for me, but I’m curious to hear what others think!

Vincent van der Holst Nov 15, 2023, 5:32 PM
3 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Larks’s comment on: HearMeOut—Networking While Funding Charities (Looking for a founder and beta users)
That’s a great question. @Brad West is a lawyer and can probably answer this for the US.
In the EU this would be possible if you just redirect someone to make a donation to the charity directly and upload their receipt as payment verification so they can book the meeting. This is a workaround solution, and I think this can be made tax deductible directly through HearMeOut as well, but if the beta goes well we should have a lawyer answer this depending on the country.

Vincent van der Holst Nov 15, 2023, 5:29 PM
6 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: david_reinstein’s comment on: HearMeOut—Networking While Funding Charities (Looking for a founder and beta users)
You write “Again, you would feel icky paying a company for this, but you might feel OK doing it in exchange for a donation.” And that’s why we think HearMeOut can work so well, because it donates rather than pays to individuals. People are likely much more opposed to giving someone a lot of money for their time (e.g. paying a billionaire to meet with them), but would be more in favor of doing that when it goes to charities.
I will beta test this with anyone who cold calls or emails me. I’ll simply tell them that for a €100 donation they can have an hour of my time, and see what happens.

Vincent van der Holst Oct 3, 2023, 3:20 PM
1 point
0 ∶ 0
on: How have you become more hard-working?
I’ve tried many things but by far the biggest contributor to me working hard was working on something that I truly believed in. I find it much harder to work on something I don’t actively believe in (to the point where I will quit or pretend to work) and now that I do what I believe in it’s hard for me to not work on it.
I am currently at 60-70 hours per week (although I intend to optimise to 50 hours per week because it’s more sustainable over an entire career) and I receive no pay (I’m a profit for good startup founder) and I used to be at 40 hours per week with pretty good pay.
The second thing that has tremendous effects on me are sleeping well, excercising, having stable relationships with my GF, friends and family and eating well, in that order of importance.
Other things that worked for me to work smarter or harder, which might be only 10% where the others above are 90% for me:
- focusmate.com
- telling people I will do X. It’s more likely I do X when I promised it to someone else than when I promise it to myself

Vincent van der Holst Oct 3, 2023, 3:12 PM
1 point
0 ∶ 0
on: Small Scale Local Interventions: A Cost-Effectiveness Analysis of Passing Sunscreen at Outdoor Events
I just wanted to add that I’ve been at events in The Netherlands where sunscreen manufacturers were giving away free sunscreen (either by people or in dispensers) so the cost was zero (it was basically marketing by sunscreen brands).

Vincent van der Holst Sep 19, 2023, 2:35 PM
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Brad West🔸’s comment on: Compilation of Profit for Good Redteaming and Responses
I just saw they are. For those interested, I provided comments to the red teaming working document.

Vincent van der Holst Sep 19, 2023, 2:09 PM
14 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Compilation of Profit for Good Redteaming and Responses
Disclaimer: I sometimes work with Brad and I founded a PFG so I am biased towards thinking PFG’s can work.

There’s some more red teaming in the comments of a quick take I did about the fundraising round that the PFG I founded is going through. That’s here.

We also did a red teaming session on Profit for Good at EAGxRotterdam. This was filmed but unfortunately never released (I think the video person literally said they lost the recording :/).

Generally the biggest reasons against Profit for Good, based on my experience of founding one called BOAS:
- Raising capital is (at least currently) harder. It’s hard for me to put a number on it but I’d say it’s at least 3 times less likely you’ll receive funding.
- You will raise less capital and slower than the competition so they might outcompete.
- Legal issues. Depending on the country there’s not set company structure for this.
- Lack of capital means you cannot retain talent (based on my experience getting talent is easier as a PFG) as easily as having deep venture capital funded pockets.
- Lack of understanding of stakeholders: generally a lot of people assume PFG’s cannot scale because they donate profits. It’s important people understand PFG’s can reinvest profits just like regular for-profits.
- Status quo bias: just because people think it hasn’t been done (it has, but people don’t generally know that) they assume it cannot be done, even when presented with arguments (e.g. the successful PFG’s already out there and the research on them).
- Some people argue that people are selfish and founders start companies to get rich, so they wouldn’t want to start/run PFG’s. Based on our founder pipeline it suggests the opposite. It was full of people who could make more money doing less work, and many applied because we were a PFG, not in spite of.

Vincent van der Holst Aug 15, 2023, 12:34 PM
6 points
4 ∶ 0
in reply to: NickLaing’s comment on: I saved a kid’s life today
I would quickly add to what Nick said by saying that donating to charities that save kids’ lives (e.g. AMF) likely improves all of your bullets.
- Families become happier if they receive the health interventions they need (and they almost certainly don’t rate themselves ⁴⁄₁₀ on the happiness scale, your quoting the wrong thing as Nick mentioned)
- I think it’s also unfair to single out the Burkina Faso alone, when you donate to these effective charities they cover dozens of countries, most with far lower FGM rates
- You say they will spend their lives in ‘extreme boredom’, but your link doesn’t really state any evidence for that

It’s true that the lives we can save might still be ones full of hardship, but the evidence suggests that they will be happier and healthier lives. The counterfactual is death, and even in your bullets (that seem a bunch of pick and choose to bolster your argument) I don’t see strong evidence that suggests we shouldn’t be funding these charities.

Vincent van der Holst Aug 10, 2023, 10:33 AM
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: calebp’s comment on: EA Funds organisational update: Open Philanthropy matching and distancing
Thanks! I’m multiplying the quoted numbers in the OP.

Just to be clear, I’m not anti-overhead (often the opposite), and 4% is low. @calebp I wrongfully thought this was just EAIF, not all funds, so thank you for making me aware of my mistake. It’s interesting to learn that most of the operational cost goes to the grant making side and I’m happy it’s on that side. Thanks and good luck with the funds!

Vincent van der Holst Aug 4, 2023, 3:23 PM
1 point
0 ∶ 1
in reply to: calebp’s comment on: EA Funds organisational update: Open Philanthropy matching and distancing
So you estimate 2.4M in donations this year and 700K operations? How was that ratio last year? And how much do you expect to decrease operations if donations remain low/decline?

Vincent van der Holst Aug 4, 2023, 2:59 PM
3 points
1 ∶ 0
on: Vincent van der Holst’s Quick takes
How are we making sure unsatisfied people fill in (EA) surveys?
I was reading survey outcomes and I was wondering if it wasn’t filled in, for whatever reason, by people who are more satisfied than the average, because satisfied people are more likely to fill in surveys than unsatisfied people.

I’m reasoning from own experience so the intuition might be wrong. But I’m often less likely to fill in forms for movements/companies/events when I’m unsatisfied. For example: I never fill out my landlord’s satisfaction survey because I know their service is not good and am not hopeful the survey will change anything about that (or they even do the survey for anything else than regulation forcing them to do it). When someone actively asks me to do a satisfaction survey, I’m much more likely to do it for them if I’m satisfied than when I’m not satisfied. I wonder if this generalises. I can also see others being more likely to fill out a survey when they are unsatisfied, and I’m unsure whether there is a known bias for this kind of thing (maybe it has been researched).

Vincent van der Holst Jul 30, 2023, 12:50 PM
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Gage’s comment on: Launching the meta charity funding circle (MCF): Apply for funding or join as a donor!
All clear Gage, thanks! Our application is in and I’ll send the opportunity to some who I think should apply. I’ll also apply as a member. I believe I’ll have poor judgement on some areas (and be clear about that) but might add something meaningful to others like business models, economic viability and marketing.

Vincent van der Holst Jul 27, 2023, 4:55 PM
10 points
0 ∶ 2
on: Launching the meta charity funding circle (MCF): Apply for funding or join as a donor!
Really happy to see a more diversified funding landscape and I think this is very important. EA funds and Open Phil do a great job, but only a dozen people making most significant grants is likely going to lead to biases and knowledge gaps. It’s good the group of people evaluating projects will expand and I like the strategy to focus on what’s not being funded by EA funds and Open Phil.
I want to apply with our organisation (declined by EAIF multiple times, likely too small for Open Phil funding), but I also want to contribute as a member and evaluate projects where I might have some knowledge, especially in marketing, (for-profit) entrepreneurship and economy (areas where I believe I can bring most value comparative to current grantmakers).
Would that be a possible conflict of interest?
I’m going to apply in the upcoming week to be a member and apply with our org, but please decline my membership if you think there could be a conflict of interest. FYI I obviously don’t want a part in our own grant process.
I also know organisations that were not funded by current EA grantmakers where I thought they should. What’s your policy on being a member and encouraging these orgs to apply? Part of me would argue I would be above average in evaluating these projects because I know their work and founders, but I could also argue I might be too biased and should refrain from evaluating (but encouraging applications and independent evaluations). Like many on this forum, I’m concerned by the amount of people/orgs getting funded by current grant makers that are (in)directly linked to these organisations and people, but in some cases I do see that might lead to better decisions. I’m very interested to know what people think and your policies on potential conflicts of interest.

[EDIT]: I now see that there is a minimum of ‘$100,000 per year minimum of expected donations’. But in this post I see ‘and philanthropic advisors each moving $100,000 or more per year to meta charities’. Just to confirm, do you need to donate 100K a year to the fund to be an advisor or do you need to move (of other people’s money) 100K a year?

Vincent van der Holst Jul 26, 2023, 4:34 PM
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Vincent van der Holst’s comment on: Vincent van der Holst’s Quick takes
FYI it’s now live on manifund (I was encouraged to push it live there): https://manifund.org/projects/investment-in-boas-to-generate-5-10k-monthly-sales-to-secure-full-investment

Vincent van der Holst Jul 25, 2023, 3:31 PM
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Jason’s comment on: Vincent van der Holst’s Quick takes
Replies in bold.
Celebrities are very often willing to put their face on anything for money. There’s literally millions of examples of that.
Yes, but it’d still be difficult for a for-profit salad dressing company to fully clone the Newman endorsement. I think the Newman endorsement is synergistic with Newman Own’s PFG status—the consumer understands that Newman is endorsing because he really stands behind Newman’s Own and its mission, not because someone is lining his pockets. It’s like the difference between repeated favorable press coverage in the New York Times and buying advertisements in the New York Times—they aren’t really the same thing. Moreover, I think whoever is hawking Kraft would face some unfavorable comparisons to Newman, and would thus demand a higher fee than in the counterfactual where Newman doesn’t exist. I agree with all of this.
I don’t think my main concern is “bad PR” per se. It’s my view that companies with characteristics similar to BOAS often run at a loss and/or need to re-invest almost all their profits into the business for an extended period of time. I think that is particularly likely where established market players will try to muscle it out, and a competitor could arise with easy access to VC money (both analyzed upthread). The PFG value proposition is much less legible if the company has been around several years and little has been donated to charity. So the crux here is how much time consumers will allow BOAS to start actually delivering meaningful sums to AMF, and how quickly BOAS can do that. My priors are skeptical, but I don’t claim expertise in evaluating specific business plans. We thought about this a lot. We allow voluntary checkout donations (no cost to us) which is already generating donations. We can also work with donation matching from a philanthropist. Suppose you’re a philanthropist that donates to AMF already, it would be interesting to do that partly through BOAS (e.g. for every purchase we match a €5 donation), where it wouldn’t be riskier or costlier, but you have the benefit of helping BOAS grow, with the potential to make large sums for AMF. We’re also transparent about needing money to grow so our donations will be relatively low. Transparency, donation matching and voluntary donations add up to amounts that seem significant to customers (e.g. a €10.000 total charity donation might seem substantial when you’ve only had €1 million in sales). Many PFGs, in my opinion, donate too much too early and hurt their future profit/donation potential. It might be because their customers demand it, but I don’t have data or knowledge on that. If customers demand earlier/higher donations that hurt growth, that might be an argument against PFG. On the whole we’ll have to see what the value of better employees and more loyal customers is as opposed to the negative value lower odds of raising funding and the potential necessity to donate.
Companies like Bosch were—i assume—already profitable when they transitioned to PFG, so they could immediately show (rather than tell) their charitable plans. Part of my point about Newman was that his involvement may have provided reassurance to early-stage consumers that this was eventually going to work out and monies would eventually flow to charities. So neither would give me a strong sense of how long consumers would give BOAS a “PFG boost” without big donations flowing to AMF. The successful large PFG’s, with the exception of Newman’s Own indeed pivoted to PFG when they had the cashflow/profits to do so. Based on what I’ve learnt from BOAS and talking to other smaller PFG’s I haven’t seen issues where customers would stop believing in PFGs. They either do well and donate some money to charities (in our case, voluntary donations and hopefully donation matching) or they die for various reasons (possibly sometimes because they’re not funded because of their PFG model).
Incidentally, I own a Bosch dishwasher, which is not a minor purchase (~$1000), and had zero idea that they were predominately PFG (92%). They don’t seem to be advertising on that. AFAIK no one I talked to knew about Bosch and they don’t seem to advertise with it. Employees of Bosch sometimes know but not always, and the region where they spend their profits does seem aware. I’m interested to know why Bosch decided to not actively promote their PFG status, where usually PFGs do. The same goes for Carl Zeiss. I believe it’s because they either don’t know the value and/or want to be modest families who rather give in silence. In Europe it’s not common to be vocal for philanthropists about their giving.

Vincent van der Holst Jul 25, 2023, 7:52 AM
3 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Jason’s comment on: Vincent van der Holst’s Quick takes
- I think it’s quite likely that the Paul Newman’s endorsement had a large effect. It’s impossible to say how well the brand would have done without his endorsement. My best guess is that it would have made it with just the charitable destination of profits, because it didn’t have a funding bottleneck. I do think it would have grown slower without Paul Newman actively endorsing it.
- Celebrities are very often willing to put their face on anything for money. There’s literally millions of examples of that. I’m at least 99% sure you could get a celebrity to put their name on a sauce for the right amount of money, I haven’t googled but I’m sure there are examples of celebrity people on food packaging. How well it would work is hard to answer though.
- Some people are cynical towards PFG’s. We were endorsed by one of the most famous authors in The Netherlands (Rutger Bregman) and there was some cynicism in the comments (I believe there were around 300 comments), but the vast majority of people seemed positive. The difference I think is really between giving away all your profits or just donating a small part to charity, which can be seen as charity washing. I have talked to a bunch of PFGs and they really do seem to enjoy great reputations. I specifically asked if they ever had to deal with bad PR and none had. For the major PFGs like Patagonia and Bosch, I’m aware that Patagonia had some negative PR about PFGs being a way to evade taxes, but the reporting on that was much smaller than the positive new (and you could say that any press is good press, which I’ve usually found to be true for the sales of brands after press, even negative press).