Marco worked at ProVeg International (a ‘stand-out charity’ according to ACE at the time), and donates 4% of his annual income to high-impact charities (such as Give Directly, Clean Air Task Force, Animal Welfare Fund, and others).
Marco is now the founder of SageWealth, a sustainable investment advisory platform, in partnership with two renowned German banks (Bank für Vermögen and Baader Bank). Since launching in mid-2021, we are now managing €1.4M in our clients’ assets. Due to our rapid growth, we have raised a €500,000 pre-seed investment from top European business angels, such as the founders of Clue, Nebenan.de, and Crosslend.
We can tell you from our own experience giving talks in other spaces, that those who know how to invest are not interested in our solution, but those who are new to investing find it extremely useful! So this doesn’t surprise us at all.
Something that surprises us is that our EAGxBerlin talk is being framed solely as an ‘advertisement’. When we ensured that 95% of the content was purely educational, and only discussed our solution shortly at the end.
As mentioned above, we are keen to maximize for truth-seeking where possible, and have no issue with giving more attention to reasons people should NOT buy our product. In fact, this is why we have a pros and cons list above. The problem is that right now there are no guidelines on how a for-profit can engage in the EA community. We would be happy to adhere to them if these were made clear!
We appreciate your feedback on separating the “investing to give” and “offering our solutions”. We are just trying to put ourselves out there to see how the community responds, so we are learning as we go along how EA feels about us as an investment solution that is for-profit. So these thoughts are very helpful, thanks!
Thanks for your comment. We plan on adding EA-specific donation features that would sell-off a certain percentage of your portfolio to automatically donate to a highly effective charity. Also, we are working on a retirement calculator that would take your donation goals into account. Would either of these be useful to you?
Thanks for your comment. If I may ask, would you have upvoted if we had split sections 1&2 into their own posts and only linked to sections 3&4 externally? Regarding your point on advertisement: If, for example, I wrote a post on how to run local groups more effectively using the productivity software that I also happened to sell, would this also cross the line? Is it ever OK for an EA to want to share their solution with the community if it is a for-profit?
Thank you sharing your thoughts here. We appreciate your feedback on SageWealth and how we can relate to the EA community. Some thoughts on your points:
Regarding your sentiment that “it was wrong” for us to attend EAG(x). We would like to clarify that we did not initially build SageWealth with EAs in mind. However, gradually over time, we noticed a lot of interest coming from EAs in our circle—many who were booking advisory calls and opening accounts. This eventually led to the realization that EAs could really benefit from a platform like ours, and we decided to participate in EA events. We are 100% supportive of educational platforms like “Yield & Spread”, but also noticed that most people it’s not enough to just learn about investing, and they need more guidance and a platform that helps put things into action. We understand the ‘skepticism’ that kicks-in because we are a for-profit. But the truth is that we are better able to solve people’s core problem by building a technical platform that makes the investment process easier!
Taking a step back, I think the main issue here is that there are no guidelines on how a for-profit can engage with the EA community. We simply applied and got accepted. We would be excited to be part of this conversation. I’m sensing an implicit assumption that simply by being a ‘for-profit’ that we are a corrupting force, when in reality the world is filled with businesses that are serving peoples’ needs and solving problems. We believe that we can be a positive force in the community, by helping EAs better retire and grow their wealth for donations, and don’t think our for-profit positioning runs counter to these benefits.
And lastly, we appreciate your point on nuclear energy and GMOs. This feedback is helpful, and we have now amended our sustainability article for consistency.
Marco Vega
Marco is an avid futurist, who co-wrote ‘An Introduction to Transhumanism’, and was previously the founder of Nootropics.com. Marco previously interned at the Effective Altruism Foundation (Switzerland) and was personally mentored by suffering-focused ethicist and Transhumanist, David Pearce.
Marco worked at ProVeg International (a ‘stand-out charity’ according to ACE at the time), and donates 4% of his annual income to high-impact charities (such as Give Directly, Clean Air Task Force, Animal Welfare Fund, and others).
Marco is now the founder of SageWealth, a sustainable investment advisory platform, in partnership with two renowned German banks (Bank für Vermögen and Baader Bank). Since launching in mid-2021, we are now managing €1.4M in our clients’ assets. Due to our rapid growth, we have raised a €500,000 pre-seed investment from top European business angels, such as the founders of Clue, Nebenan.de, and Crosslend.
Thanks for your comment. We plan on adding EA-specific donation features that would sell-off a certain percentage of your portfolio to automatically donate to a highly effective charity. Also, we are working on a retirement calculator that would take your donation goals into account. Would either of these be useful to you?
Thanks for your comment. If I may ask, would you have upvoted if we had split sections 1&2 into their own posts and only linked to sections 3&4 externally? Regarding your point on advertisement: If, for example, I wrote a post on how to run local groups more effectively using the productivity software that I also happened to sell, would this also cross the line? Is it ever OK for an EA to want to share their solution with the community if it is a for-profit?
Hi Patrick,
Thank you sharing your thoughts here. We appreciate your feedback on SageWealth and how we can relate to the EA community. Some thoughts on your points:
Regarding your sentiment that “it was wrong” for us to attend EAG(x). We would like to clarify that we did not initially build SageWealth with EAs in mind. However, gradually over time, we noticed a lot of interest coming from EAs in our circle—many who were booking advisory calls and opening accounts. This eventually led to the realization that EAs could really benefit from a platform like ours, and we decided to participate in EA events. We are 100% supportive of educational platforms like “Yield & Spread”, but also noticed that most people it’s not enough to just learn about investing, and they need more guidance and a platform that helps put things into action. We understand the ‘skepticism’ that kicks-in because we are a for-profit. But the truth is that we are better able to solve people’s core problem by building a technical platform that makes the investment process easier!
Taking a step back, I think the main issue here is that there are no guidelines on how a for-profit can engage with the EA community. We simply applied and got accepted. We would be excited to be part of this conversation. I’m sensing an implicit assumption that simply by being a ‘for-profit’ that we are a corrupting force, when in reality the world is filled with businesses that are serving peoples’ needs and solving problems. We believe that we can be a positive force in the community, by helping EAs better retire and grow their wealth for donations, and don’t think our for-profit positioning runs counter to these benefits.
And lastly, we appreciate your point on nuclear energy and GMOs. This feedback is helpful, and we have now amended our sustainability article for consistency.