Tech founder turned impact investor & aspiring EA.
Am doing 4 active EA projects:
EA Talkmasters - improve public speaking in a friendly supportive group
BetterBite.vc - Alt protein VC in Asia
GoalsWon.com - accountability coaching app
EAforKids.org - EA storybooks for kids
Help with advice, support on any of the EA projects I'm working on
Any advice on entrepreneurship, seeking investment, building startups. Also free accountability coaching.
Aim to finish up 2023 having donated:
This year wanted to shift more toward existential risk, vs last year which was mostly global health and well being - given the increased concerns and seemingly accelerating timelines.
Also put money into EA community side-projects:
Happy with the year - also took the GivingWhatWeCan pledge - better late than never!
ps - thanks for all the folks working hard in non-profits, fighting the good fight...
Thanks and likewise, got and continue to get a lot out of Toastmasters, and trying to extend that benefit to EA community, especially those who can't get to a local club in person. Please use the same form, organizing the next event shortly and will reach out to all the emails via the form to call for roles etc. Thanks
Thanks for sharing the experience, can resonate with the emotional rollercoaster - always the challenge to figure out how to soften the lows and maintain separation when the failures and setbacks inevitably happen but still be able to enjoy and celebrate the wins and little steps forward.
Agreed about the increased need to to consciously plan for physical/mental health to help provide a strong foundation for taking on this type of role.
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).
Thanks for the analysis.
Curious about the big difference in effective per-person costs between this intervention in Ecuador vs in sub-Saharan Africa, is there any main factor that leads to the much lower cost in Latin America.
Congrats on the launch!
Curious about how it scales, does the training of facilitators take place always in person, I could imagine over 100 hours is quite a long time to spend to get new recruits up and going, and would they be able to attend it if they are from a remote area etc?
Are orgs / movements like Doctors without Borders, Greenpeace, Peace Corps , Rotary etc considered relatively high trust too?
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.
There are calculators out there, like this simple one from the UN for example: https://offset.climateneutralnow.org/footprintcalc
(includes lifestyle factors like meat as well as travel)