- philanthropic advisor / grantmaker—
spent 10 years earning-to-give as a hedge fund manager
- built and led a 20-evaluator grants process
- fund manager, AI Safety Tactical Opportunities Fund
- chair, investment committee, Founders Pledge
- board member, Rethink Priorities
- board member / seed funder, Suvita
- board member / seed funder, Family Empowerment Media
- speculation grantor, Survival and Flourishing Fund
- advisor, Charity Entrepreneurship
This is an observation, not an inference.
1) I recently compiled an (admittedly imperfect) list of the 10 senior investors most qualified to give EA investing advice. To avoid calling anyone out, [0 to 1] of the top 10 investing posts are authored by one of these senior folks, and scrolling quickly through top comments, [0 to 2] comments on these posts are by these senior folks.
2) I recently tried to gather 8 of the 10 to discuss investing strategy. 6 of us were able to meet, and our #2 and #3 deliverables coming out of that were “write a forum post on why not to get financial advice from the forum” and “create a basic advice doc”. This is #1, and when combined with the Charity Entrepreneurship book excerpt, hopefully is #2.
Some of what’s on the forum is thoughtful and interesting. But financial professionals structurally cannot refute what isn’t accurate. The most common failure mode is building castles in the sky – theorizing without a basis in reality / without chatting with any actual investors.