Simon Newstead
Bio
Participation3
Tech founder turned impact investor / aspiring EA.
3 active EA projects:
BetterBite.vc - Alt protein VC in Asia
GoalsWon.com - accountability coaching app
EAforKids.org - EA storybooks for kids
How others can help me
Help with advice, support on any of the EA projects I'm working on
How I can help others
Any advice on entrepreneurship, seeking investment, building startups. Also free accountability coaching: https://www.goalswon.com/giving-back
Posts 4
Comments19
Our venture capital fund (alt protein) recently did training into forecasting and decision making (based on approach from Superforecasting, How to Decide, The Scout mindset).
As a result, we're currently revamping our evaluation process to attempt to reduce bias and explicitly think in terms of scenarios, probabilities and expected value return multiples, rather than our old approach of guesstimating the likely outcome and scoring around that single scenario (we're also participating in some forecasting exercises to help us understand possible paths for the technology in more detail)
So far the key obstacles are to figure out how to adopt these new techniques without spending vastly more time in analysis, leaving us less time on generating dealflow and also making founders wait longer for feedback and go/no go decisions.
Another practical challenge is the actual nuts and bolts of how to take various expert inputs and then actually come up with the predictions (Superforecasting doesn't really go into the details).
2022 donations in USD:
5k to Maternal Health Initiative (new CE org, family planning in Africa)
5k to Vida Plena (new CE org, mental health in LATAM)
2k to Giving What We Can fund (short and longtermism causes)
2k to Cellular Agriculture Australia (developing cell ag industry)
Donated to own EA projects:
22k to GoalsWon (accountability coaching app, pro-bono for EAs)
1k to EA for Kids (EA storybook creation started)
Overall happy with the year, the best yet for contributions both directly and investing in own EA projects. Also thankful for all the collaboration and advice from the community.
Agreed stories are powerful, and the sentimental value can also remain strong over years.
If someone is thinking what book to give to a niece, or friend's kid, or their own kid in the future, they might think of those classics like The Giving Tree they resonated with years back...
(I'm imagining all those millions of young parents starting to read Harry Potter to their own kids now...)
Sure, we self studied from an agenda that the two of us put together:
- those 3 books
- some clearer thinking modules (great resource)
- practicing forecasting on metaculus
- reading some other articles and interviews
Here's a doc with all the details (also contains book notes if it's of info)