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 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
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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
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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).

Vincent van der Holst Jul 22, 2023, 2:01 PM
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Jason’s comment on: Vincent van der Holst’s Quick takes
Replies in bold. It’s messy, unedited and I’m tired, so keep that in mind!
I think this was a helpful comment in that it demonstrates a sophisticated awareness of and an attempt to grapple with a key challenge of PFG models (as I see it). I can’t speak for anyone else, but I feel like some of the material I’ve read in the past promoting PFG doesn’t pay enough attention to how competitors might be able to exploit PFG’s challenges in raising capital. By far the biggest bottleneck I have come across when talking to dozens of entrepreneurs trying to get PFGs off the ground is the lack of access to capital. Getting founders to start PFGs is not the biggest problem (our cofounder job applications had great pipelines), getting great employees is certainly not the problem (we hire less than 1% of applicants) and customers see the model as an extra reason to buy. From the PFGs I talked to this seems to generalise, although I did hear a view having some trouble finding cofounders. They all struggle with raising capital, and they raise less than their for-profit competition. I do think this can be solved, because philanthropy is hundreds of billions, but we need some of it to go to testing this model more rigourously.
Do you think it’s fair to view [large potential market + bigger profit margins + market that is naturally prone to centralize on a few dominate players] as a set of circumstances in which competitors would be more willing to commit large sums to sinking a PFG upstart? Unfortunately, those are probably also factors that give a PFG enterprise the best shot at delivering massive amounts of money to charity. This does seem to be the high capital-at-risk / high potential-reward quadrant of potential PFG enterprises. Let’s call that playing on hard mode. In contrast, competitors in the market for (say) premium-ish salad dressings have weaker incentives to burn lots of money to bury a competitor. I don’t have a prior but I do expect that they’ll try to sink a PFG upstart, but I’m not sure if they would try and sink it more than a for-profit upstart. They will also have to do it in stealth mode, because otherwise we’ll drag them through the PR dirt. On another note companies are still run by humans and I’m not sure how comfortable they would be with actively trying to kill a company that’s here to save kids’ lives. It’s hard to say but I don’t think they’ll try to kill us any harder than other startups doing it for-profit, and we have benefits they cannot match (tax benefits, hiring mission driven employees, employees willing to work harder/smart, free software, advice etc.). Overall I don’t see this as the biggest risk. I see the biggest risk as underfunding as opposed to the competition. My main worry is another company does the same thing with 50 million in venture capital model and we’re too slow because we only have 1% of that.
From your last paragraph, it sounds like a lot of your theory of change comes from showing the world that PFG is a solid model and spurring other founders to choose a PFG model. Given that, I’m curious why you’ve chosen what seems to be a “hard mode” field. Do you think the “hard mode” problem permeates (almost) all potential PFG opportunities, or do you think the added impact of succeeding on hard mode is worth the added risk? There are successful PFG upstarts who’ve done up to a couple million in donations with easier modes. I think the real change comes when you can show that you can do a PFG unicorn. That will start raising everyone’s eyebrows and get people thinking. There are billion dollar PFGs (Bosch, Patagonia, Carl Zeiss) but they only turned PFG when they had the cashflow to do it. The most successful PFG startup that made it is Newman’s own but they did not have the funding bottleneck. I think that’s an amazing case because it was a hyper competitive market and they made it work, perhaps because they were the only unique one with their business model. Commodities in general can be interesting. If you can buy 1 liter of detergent for 5 bucks or 1 liter of detergent for 5 bucks that donates to [charity you like], I think people will start choosing the PFG. The problem is getting to that stage with a funding bottleneck.
I’m just a public-interest lawyer (so not wealthy), but if I were a potential investor one of the questions I’d be asking here is whether the showing-the-world objective could be obtained for less financial risk in a market where competitors are less able and/or less motivated to subsidize than the likes of eBay. By analogy to how we fund global health work, I’d ask why we couldn’t run a less capital intensive pilot as a trial (cf. an RCT) before committing to something that risked deep coffers (cf. funding at scale). We only need 2 million to break even (we can likely choose earlier break even but at the cost of growth and future impact potential) and 500K right now (we can do with less, even 150-200K but would be suboptimal). I wouldn’t consider that massive as opposed to the funding other EA orgs get, which is very often within or (far) beyond this range. I think we can only get EA funding if the upside is massive. If I start a PFG clothing line it might do reasonably well, but it might only move a million to charity when successful, and I don’t think EA funds things that move a million when successful.

I think we’re at a stage where PFG already has had some good trials with good results (preliminary research showing they live longer and hint to higher profitability). The date on the massive PFGs is that they outperform the competition. I think these results are good enough to warrant a slightly bigger bet in the range of 500K-2M I talked about above.

A potential problem for EA funding this I believe is their lack of knowledge on judging startups. There aren’t many EAs who can judge the profit potential of a for-profit startup correctly, and they often don’t deeply understand the business, market and business model so they end up too unsure and not funding this. I should also note that there are two EA entrepreneurs who are skeptical but supportive of this idea. Both haven’t been updated with our progress in a year so they might be less skeptical now. We might not be funded because people think our team and/or business sucks, and if they are right that’s fine. However, from the PFGs I talked to they don’t seem funded by PFGs, even the ones I talked to who I thought had great teams and ideas and who I believe would certainly be funded in the for-profit space. They usually end up unfunded, finding funding outside of EA from startup investors, either as a PFG or when they turn for-profit.
BOAS has had serious interest from for-profit investors (3 last round accelerator declines and multiple investors hinting they would invest if it was for-profit), and we were often asked to go ⁵⁰⁄₅₀ or for-profit and me donating shares. I’m reasonably confident that we would have already been funded or in a good accelerator if this was for-profit. This also means we’re moving slower and competition with funding might start to catch up with us.
If fundraising fails, I might restart a similar company for profit and donate almost all my shares, but 90% of shares (if successful) would not go to charities and there would be zero impact of showing the model works and getting more PFGs to start, and it would be strong evidence for others not to start PFGs. However, if that company secures funding quickly from reputable investors/accelerators, it would have been a strong sign that EA missed out on an opportunity, and maybe it would signal to investors that they should invest other PFGs.

Vincent van der Holst Jul 21, 2023, 7:46 AM
4 points
0 ∶ 1
in reply to: Jason’s comment on: Vincent van der Holst’s Quick takes
This concerns me too. Large for-profits have long and strong track records of buying up or outpricing competition until they die. I suspect they will try and do the same with PFG. They cannot buy PFG’s because they won’t be willing to donate profits, so they will resort to trying to outcompete them until they die. It will have to be relatively stealthy, because we enjoy a stellar reputation because of our business being fully aligned to doing good, and it’s a serious PR risk for any company to attack us directly. I do believe that if we show we can grow fast and profitable, it might become much easier for us to get more funding, and there is plenty of philanthropic money available if we have a very strong case in terms of traction (e.g. revenue growing quickly, strong path to strong profitability). If there’s a real shot we can take on the biggest vintage fashion platforms, I believe there will be big philanthropists who will recognize the opportunity to get a whole industry to go PFG. Once you have a dominant PFG in an industry, it will be hard for for-profits to compete, because buying from them would only make sense if they are much cheaper or have much better buying experiences, because otherwise people prefer to buy from PFG’s. And even if a for-profit competitor is doing something disruptive the PFG can just buy them like the for-profits do now and donate more to charities in the future.
The other concern I have and forgot to list is a for-profit competitor with the same strategy as BOAS popping up and being backed faster and with more money. I now spend most of my time trying to raise funding for this. If there’s someone out there with the same strategy and for-profit motives, they will have an easier time raising, so they raise more and raise faster. This means they can build and scale faster and we might end up losing because it takes us too long to raise too little.

The small shot we have at showing everyone startups can donate all non-reinvested profits and scale fast, and the impact of that (mostly through many other companies starting with the model and people realizing they can buy the change they want to see in the world) makes me only willing to try the PFG route. I have been urged to change to a for-profit model and donate my shares (sometimes by for-profit investors), but we wouldn’t have the indirect impact on other stakeholders to start moving their profits to work on important problems, and if it turned out highly succesful, 90% of shares would be held by shareholders, who share around 5-8% of that through philanthropy. So the net profits actually going to philanthropy would likely be at least 90% lower, and the indirect impact would be zero. Even in the most conservative scenario I end up with having to try this model.

Vincent van der Holst Jul 20, 2023, 6:56 PM
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Jason’s comment on: Vincent van der Holst’s Quick takes
Hi Jason, replying in bold.

Without expressing a broader opinion (because I don’t have a fully formed one), I think there’s a coordination problem here. I don’t know how much capital one would need to create an organization that could divert large buckets of money to effective charities, but I would imagine it is pretty significant. Failing to raise a sufficient amount will cause the enterprise to be ineffective, and likely lead to any contributions generating zero impact. It’s difficult for any of us to assess the probability that BOAS will receive adequate capital, but the response so far to fundraising requests from PFG corporations suggests the odds may be fairly low. We forecast to break even after 4 years and need a total of 2 million dollars to reach that point. This might be too aggressive, so in reality it might be significantly more. We have forecasted for quick and aggressive growth, but our business model does allow for earlier break even, but we would return less profits to charities. So far PFG’s had a hard time raising any capital and my personal experience is that it is (much) harder than raising with the same thing if it was multiplying money for investors. EA however has funded many things with millions, and there is plenty of philanthropic capital. We work with a fundraising company in The Netherlands called Generous Minds, who raise capital for impact businesses and they have an 80% success rate. That’s the most impartial and accurate number I can give for our fundraising odds too.
To my knowledge, there’s also no centralized entity with a track record vetting which PFG ideas and teams are more likely to generate profits. Although you can use founders’ past experiences and other proxies, that’s less likely to be predictive than a trusted evaluator. Few EA funders are in a position to evaluate a clothing platform well. PFG ideas are for-profit ideas, so they can be vetted by anyone who has experience in vetting startup profit making potential. I agree few EA funders have that experience. I have some experience and when I judged EA for-profit funding I thought it was subpar so won’t argue against it. EA does however have some donors who have made their money in startups and should have above average experience vetting PFG ideas. A great example are all the founders pledge members.
In contrast, consider a Charity Entrepreneurship potential incubatee. In addition to the external vetting, my understanding is that the incubated organization isn’t going to launch unless it attracts enough funding to have a realistic launch trajectory. If I were one of the CE seed funders and offered $10K, but no one else stepped up to the plate, I assume the charity wouldn’t launch and I could re-deploy my $10K elsewhere. Same would go for BOAS. We’re happy for investors to wait for others to be on board too so they know we can raise the full amount. Not optimal for our impact potential but if that’s what an investor wants we’re happy to oblige.
If a new charity gets enough funding to launch but ultimately falters a few years down the road because it couldn’t sustain funding, it probably accomplished at least some good in the interim. If a PFG enterprise fails while it is still in the reinvest-and-attract-capital phase (which I imagine could last for a number of years), its impact is basically zero. Therefore, “risk of failure due to not attracting enough capital” is a greater and longer risk for a PFG enterprise than a charity. Yes, if it was not clear: we’re certainly a higher risk bet.
I wonder if some sort of capped-profit model might work better. Perhaps for-profit investors could buy up to 49% of the shares at an appropriate discount but with a rule that the amount of their return would be limited to 10X (or whatever) of their investment? That would create a legible signal for the philantrophic community that third parties with skin in the game believed in the PFG enterprise’s profitability, would reduce the coordination risks, and would still allow a “most of our profits go to charity” marketing claim. If the enterprise were doing well but was being hampered by the “most” claim, it would be easier for the EA community to buy out those capped-profit investors and donate the shares to the nonprofit (or similarly eliminate them) which would enable an “all profits” claim. I have thought about this endlessly and can fill a book with my thoughts on it. I ultimately believe showing that companies can donate all profits and actually grow faster and more profitable because they do (because customers prefer PFGs and employees rather work for them), is such a strong signal to founders, philanthropists and customers that anything else would be much lower EV for me to work on. I must say I’m unsure about this, and many people disagree and think we should do ⁵⁰⁄₅₀.

Vincent van der Holst Jul 20, 2023, 6:41 PM
2 points
0 ∶ 1
in reply to: Nathan Young’s comment on: Vincent van der Holst’s Quick takes
Hi Nathan, thank you for the suggestion. I actually asked whether it was a good fit and the initial answer was that their grantees usually do not fund things like this (that makes sense because our project is very unusual). I have asked follow up questions but I suspect it is because they want it to be more longtermist. You could argue that changing the capitalist business model so that profits are used to tackle important problems (by donating them or investing in effective organisations) would be longtermist, because it’s a sustainable way to generate funding in the future, without relying on voluntary philanthropy (something that has caused EA much suffering the last year).

I will see what they say and we might put our project on there.

Vincent van der Holst Jul 20, 2023, 11:57 AM
12 points
3 ∶ 0
on: Vincent van der Holst’s Quick takes
BOAS is requesting funding to scale up our vintage fashion platform that donates all (non-reinvested) profits to effective charities. If you are interested we can share the pitch deck with you, or email me on vin at boas . co

Disclaimer: I couldn’t find the policy on making to the community aware of a funding requests. I sometimes see these requests, but I erred on the side of caution by doing a quick take instead of a post. Please let me know if funding requests on the forum are not appropriate and we’ll take it down.
Here are the key details:
- BOAS is a reverse auction vintage fashion platform that donates all profits to effective charities.
- BOAS aims to make buying vintage fashion 10 times faster than Vinted/Ebay and 4 times cheaper than Zalando
- User friendly iOS, Android apps
- BOAS donates all (non-reinvested) profits to effective organizations with a mission to save one million kids’ lives (this is the simple message we communicate to customers)
- BOAS and this Profit for Good (PFG) model are endorsed by Rutger Bregman, ‘the Dutch wunderkind of new ideas’, TED speaker and double NYT bestseller
- Research indicates people prefer buying from and working for PFG’s that donate profits to charities, so they grow faster and more profitable than for-profit competitors, possibly making them more effective at multiplying money than traditional philanthropy. There is also research that finds no statistically significant increase in profitability
- BOAS is pioneering with a reverse auction in online retail, with a surge in revenue per visit of 500% when they launched the feature (more research on RA’s driving higher revenues and prices)
- Unlike competitors, BOAS ensures quality and product popularity by purchasing vintage fashion in bulk. This means you can confidently know what you’re getting and make purchases within minutes
- BOAS is currently seeking €596K in grants, equity, convertible notes, or loans. The terms will be tailored based on the impact and risk profile of each investor
- BOAS has received a 10K unsecured loan from two EA’s so we can show more traction (we didn’t have the liquidity to buy enough stock to further grow revenue before)
EA arguments we’ve heard against funding us and our clarifications
Argument: if you have a for-profit business model you should be able to raise for-profit investment
Clarification: we believe this to be an understandable but common misconception. Companies that generate profits for charities cannot raise for-profit investment. No for-profit investor will invest in something that returns to charities rather than themselves.

Argument: “with FTX we have a strong prior against funding companies who donate profits”
Clarification: it’s up to everyone individually to assess the fairness of comparing a vintage fashion platform to a crypto criminal. FTX did not donate profits, SBF donated his part of the profits/shares. We donate profits directly, they don’t go through founders or shareholders, that’s philanthropy. Our financials are 100% transparent, so they can be scrutinised by the community at all times.

Argument: why would a philanthropist donate to you instead of donating to an effective charity directly?
Clarification: direct donations are great and generate direct impact and we encourage them. In addition, we have a riskier startup model that has the potential to multiply investment (e.g. invest €1 in BOAS and we try and turn it into €10-100) for effective charities. Because there is some preliminary research that PFG’s grow faster and more profitable, this would make them more effective money multipliers than investing in for-profits and donating (part of) the returns. Example: you have company A and it returns profits to anonymous shareholders, and you have the same company A returning profits to charities, people generally prefer to work from and buy from company A returning profits to charities, which leads to several business advantages like easier customer acquisition, better employees and longer employee retention. This drives higher profits.

Argument: why don’t you start a for-profit company and donate your shares?
Clarification: there are three reasons why we’re not doing that at this moment. Firstly, if it’s true that PFG’s are more profitable, they are better money multipliers, so going this route would be more effective. Secondly, I can donate my shares, but if the company ends up being a billion dollar company, generally 90% of shares will be held by other founders and investors who will not donate the majority of their shares. Thirdly, we expect most of the impact to come from showing other companies and philanthropists that the PFG model works. We have already influenced other entrepreneurs and their companies to donate more or all of their profits. If we show it can grow fast and get funded, we believe to accelerate the amount of entrepreneurs and companies to donate more or all of their (non-reinvested) profits. I have pledged 100% of my personal shares to charity through Founders Pledge already and the company is a GWWC company pledger too. We want to take it a step further by having all shares of the company pledged to charity.
Argument: your team is weak and/or your idea is weak.
Clarification: I believe this was certainly true, but a lot has changed. In the beginning I was a solo founder for a long time working on a business (sustainable Amazon) that wasn’t unique or differentiated apart from the PFG model. We are now 3 founders with 6 former startups, 3 successful exits, an early employee of a unicorn (startup going to 1 billion valuation) and 30 years of experience in the e-commerce field. Our employees include Oxford, Harvard (AI) and IIT graduates. We are adding a fourth founder with a strong track record soon. In addition, we have pivoted to a faster growing market (used fashion is 25% per year) with a unique idea (a reverse auction) and a unique way of buying (we buy in bulk where competition is peer-to-peer or buys from individual customers). We have for-profit investors who wrote us they would consider investing if it was for-profit, including 3 startup accelerators who declined us for our profit destination in the last rounds. I’m happy to share this external validation with interested investors.
Argument: you need to show more traction so we know this works
Clarification: I agree this would be great. The reality for us right now is that we have almost no budget to buy used fashion, making it impossible to sell much more (no stock=no sales). We also have a marketing budget that’s only €300 per month. We managed to grow fast in the first three months after launching but flatlined because we were limited by only having 100 products live. With an early €12K investment we can show more growth again, and expect €2.000 in July and €3.500 in August, but expect to flatline again after because of liquidity reasons.
Argument: this isn’t longtermist (for investors who focus there)
Clarification: our profit destination (global health) is mostly not, because it’s hard to sell longtermism to the average consumer. The Profit for Good model might be considered longtermist, if it succeeds in getting many companies to donate their profits, rather than most profits going to shareholders (who give an average of about 5-10% to charities in the form of philanthropy). It might help get more profits to charities and if the business model prevails it does so sustainably without the voluntary decision of wealthy people to donate or not
Things we’re unsure about ourselves:
- We can’t asses our % odds of getting funding, versus doing the same thing for-profit. We are fairly certain it’s more likely this gets funded if it returned profits to shareholders
- As an early stage startup our odds of failure are high, probably still at well over 50%. There’s a big chance we’re going to turn funding into negligible amounts to effective charities and only a small chance we’re going to turn it into millions ore more for effective charities
- We’re unsure about the tax benefits of investors investing in our model. They might not get the same benefits as investing in foundations
- We’re not sure how motivated founders are by money versus doing the same thing for charities. We have great founders, and our current best guess is we attract above average founders, because successful founders have the financial means to join something that’s not for themselves but for effective charities. This might not scale to one million companies unless philanthropists fund founders
- We’re unsure how big the added effect is of funding Profit for Good versus funding for-profits and donating the returns
- Funding in BOAS might lower the direct funding to effective charities (i.e. the money invested in BOAS would lower money going to effective charities), so it might have a negative short term impact even if we succeed in the long term
- Giving from PFG’s might not be democratic (e.g. the founders decide where it’s donated). We are slightly reassured because the counterfactual is mostly philanthropy and that’s similarly undemocratic
- Donated profits might lower taxes, leaving less for governments to fund important causes
- Many companies might follow, but donate to less effective charities but choose popular ones (because that helps them grow faster). Philanthropists might make more considered donations because they are less burdened by what’s popular
We’re more than happy to get more arguments against this project in the comments!
What links here?
- Vincent van der Holst's comment on Compilation of Profit for Good Redteaming and Responses by Brad West🔸 (Sep 19, 2023, 2:09 PM; 14 points)

Vincent van der Holst’s Quick takes

Vincent van der HolstJul 20, 2023, 11:57 AM

4 points

16 comments EA link

Vincent van der Holst Jul 19, 2023, 10:26 AM
7 points
2 ∶ 0
in reply to: John Salter’s comment on: John Salter’s Quick takes
I’ve strongly had this experience. I have written 5 NYT bestsellers a cold email, and 3 replied. I get good rates with C-levels and I get the poorest rates at lower levels.
But it strongly does depend on your story or organisation in my experience. Your org has a strong story so it warrants a reply. But I did a lot of marketing and some PR for dime in a dozen companies and if you lack a strong story, you can expect reply rates of senior people to be close to zero.

Vincent van der Holst Jun 22, 2023, 1:27 PM
3 points
2 ∶ 3
on: We can all help solve funding constraints. What stops us?
EDIT: I’m seeing this post being disagreed with strongly by two people. It would be great if they can clarify why they disagree so strongly in the comments. Always looking for more people who think the below is a terrible idea!

What are your blockers, and what could help?
This is obviously biased, but I founded a company that has a great team (6 former startups, 3 exits, early unicorn employee, 31 years relevant experience), good growth traction, a tech USP and it’s in a market that grows 25%. This company is not being funded because we donate all profits to close AMF’s funding gap. It would certainly have had funding if we gave it to rich investors rather than AMF.
I know at least 5 other companies that have above average odds of making tons of money for charities, but don’t get funded because our funding system is there to maximise shareholder returns rather than funding effective charities with funding gaps.
There’s data and research that suggests these profit for good companies actually grow faster and more profitable than their shareholder value maximisation competitors. These companies exist from small startups until billion dollar companies (Bosch, Patagonia, Newman’s Own). This might make them better money multipliers than traditional companies. So not only do they return all profits to charities (rather than shareholders who give only 5-10% to charity) , they generate more profits than these competitors. If this really works it could be the biggest source of funding for (effective) charities by far, because the world has 10 trillion dollars in profits every single year.
There’s also a lot of talk about EA being serious about systems change and funding high-risk, high-reward opportunities but funding a systems change that would be, by far, the biggest source of money for good causes isn’t being funded. I have talked to many EA’s and EA organisations and AFAIK they seem completely uninterested (with the exception of 2 individuals) in the idea of funding any of these organisation (not now and not in the ‘funding overhang’ era).
I think our assumptions our modest, our funding asks have been modest and many believe what we’re working on is worthy of at least exploring. Until we do, EA and all charities in the world are always going to be dependent on Philanthropists deciding to share their wealth with those less fortunate.
What would help is if you’re interested in funding any of these orgs or know someone who might. Email me on vin @ boas dot co if you can make introductions or are able to fund.

Vincent van der Holst May 31, 2023, 4:23 PM
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: MMathur🔸’s comment on: Announcing a new animal advocacy podcast: How I Learned to Love Shrimp
@James Özden if you consider this also consider using print on demand TPOP in combination with shopify. Hyper easy to set up, no up front costs, great designs, ships directly to customers and organic cotton. You can see an example from us here: https://boas.co/pages/this-is

Vincent van der Holst May 31, 2023, 4:20 PM
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: MaxRa’s comment on: Announcing a new animal advocacy podcast: How I Learned to Love Shrimp
FWIW I have a marketing/branding background and I think the name of the podcast is amazing and wanted to flag here that I wouldn’t change it. The name is meant as a hook to draw you in and start listening and it does that really well. A more inclusive name is less likely to get people in. The way I read the name is as follows: nobody thinks about, let alone love, shrimps, and it really wants to make you learn what you mean and why it matters. Each podcast has another title you can use to cover other subjects, so once you’re drawn in by the title you’ll quickly learn it’s not only about shrimp. You could also take 20 seconds in the intro of the podcast to explain why the title is what it is and mention you’re not only about shrimps.
I might still be wrong. I run a lot of AB tests and I’m very often wrong, so you might want to do the same with a couple names to see what gets people to listen.

Anyways, love this project and the name, keep doing what you’re doing!

Vincent van der Holst May 31, 2023, 4:10 PM
1 point
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: James Herbert’s comment on: Updates from the Dutch EA community
Great takeaways. What worked for me in getting NYT bestsellers and CEO’s (obviously aiming high) to respond is the same: send highly relevant DMs that show you know their work deeply. This can actually be a 10 page email contrary to everyone saying it has to be short. You have to make sure your message is different/better than 99% of what they get, and you can only do that by building something that takes long/hard work so no shortcuts there.

Vincent van der Holst May 31, 2023, 9:24 AM
4 points
1 ∶ 0
on: Updates from the Dutch EA community
Impressive results and great seeing the community grow so fast.

Any tips on getting high-level endorsements? What’s your strategy? We had Rutger Bregman write about us too and it moved the needle on a bunch of levels, but we’re still wondering what’s the best way to replicate.

Vincent van der Holst May 31, 2023, 6:50 AM
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Joey🔸’s comment on: Tips for people considering starting new incubators
I agree M/E and fundraising are harder for NGO’s or even impact startups who have concessionary returns, I’ve seen that a lot. I’m not completely sure how that translates to more (difficult to get) skills being needed by NGO entrepreneurs than for-profit entrepreneurs. There are certainly skills an NGO entrepreneur need that for-profit entrepreneurs don’t need, but I think that goes the other way too.

Thank you for the view on the 20%. I guess it depends on what you think “suits” means. To me that’s people who enjoy being a founder and have higher than average odds of being a succesful founder, and with that in mind I think the number is close to 5% than 20%.

I’m very happy CE exists, because it enables people who care to start NGO’s that solve problems they think are important. I think there are a lot of potential founders who want to start NGO’s or impact first businesses, but don’t because the organizations, people, information and infrastructure that’s out there for them lacks a lot compared to those who want to start a for-profit.

Vincent van der Holst May 26, 2023, 9:44 AM
3 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: SebastianSchmidt’s comment on: Tips for people considering starting new incubators
Founder talent or employee talent? What stage of the company? I found that they are different people in many cases.

These are quick thoughts, I hope they are helpful.

In general for early stage founders:
- If they founded before that’s great, first time founders make many mistakes that second time founders don’t
- Ask for prior work, which is a much better predictor than an interview. Were they succesful in getting 1 million followers, securing 10 contracts for another startup etc.?
- Do a one month trial project and make expectations clear. If their output is amazing they might be a founder, if it’s anything less they are not
- I think it helps if they complement you, if you agree on everything that’s probably not going to be good and if you have the same skills that’s probably not going to be good either.

Common mistakes in for-profit (impact) startups vetting:
- Hiring big company talent. Someone who managed a large team in a slow organization is not going to do well in a fast and small organization. There are many exceptions though. If someone applies who’s currently at Google, that’s a yellow flag for me, even though that seems counterintuitive.
- Hiring based on study background. I have found zero correlation to the quality output of an employee and where they studied for roles like marketing, sales, strategy etc. This will be different for some tech or engineering roles, but I believe to be true for roles that aren’t taught well in school like entrepreneurship, management, sales, marketing, etc. I have stopped looking at study background because it biased me and makes hiring less inclusive (99% of global people can’t get into “good” universities).
- Hiring based on experience that’s unrelated to what you’re doing. You should count highly relevant experience only and nothing else.
- Hiring someone who you don’t get along with, especially if it’s a founder. You’re working a lot and you might see your founder more than your spouse, so if you can’t get along it’s not going to work.
- Hiring someone without a strong why, founders without a strong why can’t put in the work needed.

Vincent van der Holst May 26, 2023, 9:33 AM
1 point
0 ∶ 0
on: Tips for people considering starting new incubators
Great post! Follow-up funding and founders is so important!

I want to challenge some thoughts or get your clarification on the numbers.

You write: “I don’t believe that it is a career path that can absorb a high number of people (my guess would be less than 5% of people are actually suited to founding a nonprofit). It is my opinion that other career paths, like for-profit founding or policy, suit a much larger percentage of people (maybe 20%)”.

I’d like to understand why you think four times more people can be succesfull for-profit founders than non-profit founders? My personal experience (might be totally off!) is that far less than 20% of people can be a succesful for-profit founder. I’d put potential for-profit founders at around 5%, and of those 20% are also going to be responsible for 80% of the success.
For moral compass founders in the for-profit space, I have found quite a lot, but my sample is probably dirty since those who approach me usually have a strong moral compass since I’m an impact founder myself (with Profit for Good model). I can understand why it might be very different for non-profits. I do have the feeling that founders with a moral compass might outperform those mostly in it for money reasons. Those who have a why to live for can bear almost any how, and with founding being as hard as it is, money alone is not going to be as effective at keeping founders going as long and as hard as is needed. A good why is.
You might want to talk to for-profit founders and VC’s and see if they think it’s 20% or if they also think it’s less.

Vincent van der Holst

Vin­cent van der Holst’s Quick takes

Vincent van der Holst’s Quick takes