# §Misalignment between funders and nonprofits in research * [[Comparing VC firms and funding institutions and programs is a useful intuition pump]] * [[Trust is a core driver of the funding mismatch]] * [[Pitching is a competition-driven equilibrium in precommercial scitech]] * [[Precommercial scitech funding is taste based]] * [[Funders want to follow other funders]] (probably because of the trust thing) * [[It is hard for precommercial scitech projects to differentiate themselves]] * This suggests that the goal for initial funding is not to show promising results but to show *differentiating* results * [[Philanthropists want things to become sustainable]] * ==needs work== [[I am not sold on the exact implementation or person but am sold on the goal]] * ==needs work==[[Nobody is running interference for new institutions]] * ==needs work==[[Precommercial scitech funding falls on spectrums of uncertainty around producing money and amount of control a funder has]] * [[Philanthropists want to be the catalytic dollar]] * ==needs work==[[More applications mean less time per application and less technical which biases towards snappy things]] * Funders want to see their dollars used efficiently, but [[Efficiency biases systems towards false negatives]] * ==needs work==[[Catalytic funding needs to launch into an existing ecosystem to be effective]] * Funders feel comfortable making small bets on weird things but small bets are much less useful without tranches * Something about double down problem * Small bets don’t address [[Shadows of the Future]] which creates a chicken-and-egg problem * How are private funders different than the government? [[Intuition pump]] * Unlike the government, private funders do not *have* to fund, which leads to a *high opportunity cost* * [[People want to be loved and be lovely]] — no matter how much we convince ourselves that we care about abstract concepts or the future, there are very few * [[People have different and unknown caring money thresholds]] * Feelings of ownership/control can stand at odds to letting people explore the weird * Many of the sorts of funders who are interested in science and technology bottlenecks are also very metrics driven either from a background in tech and KPIs or from a utilitarian standpoint. A strong focus on metrics *in that sense* stands at odds to a lot of research. * We don’t celebrate funders! See the derisive attitude of “rich person’s toys” * [[We do not give enough credit to good philanthropic funders]] * “Hope” mismatch/ people don’t like funding wicked problems * People want to se a “clever” solution /[[Precise why nows seem important for making people feel like they can intervene]] * But then this incentivizes people to make over optimistic estimates * Funders need to see paths to success — or maybe that’s not right but they need to see some expected value * This thing is vague and hard doesn’t cut it * Perception vs reality bottlenecks [[Bottlenecks]] * People were excited about geothermal because it *didn’t* seem bottlenecked. Or at least seemed tractably bottlenecked * Nobody wants to put money into something that’s hopeless — this is the tension * By contrast, People tend to be excited to intervene in areas where there is a clear intervention — maybe this is the right instinct. * Something weird in incentive misalignment where people go “if only we had an answer” and then I and other people are like HERE IS AN ANSWER but then they’re like “oh if only there was an answer” * Not very much coordination between wealthy individuals * Need a coordinator like the [[Sloan Foundation]] * Problem is that everybody wants the credit * Timescale mismatches * People don’t see science/technology funding as charity * Ambiguity over whether a project will be a public good or not * Almost by definition people trying to create new institutional structures are not creditable; people who have built things before generally get stuck in a different institutional mindset. * [[Pay-it-forward tithing is underrated]] — the attitude of “I should do this” instead of “I want to get something out of this” * Funders don’t actually use any of their *power* to help * [[Funding is a zero sum game]] * [[Funding for new institutions isn’t about the money]] ### Anecdotes * WorldCoin + [[Sam Altman]] * https://twitter.com/Ben_Reinhardt/status/1409858188971757573?s=20 * There is the anecdotal story of <unnammed billionaire> being willing to put in $100k only if another <unnamed billionaire> puts in $200k. This seems utterly ridiculous, but representative. * From [[Funders want to follow other funders]] * [[Dynamicland]]!?? * [[Philanthropy has pathetic traunching]] ### Related * [[People aren’t super excited about funding one off science projects]] * [[Funding unlocked might be a good way to measure the ROI on addressing bottlenecks]] * [[People like funding winners]] * [[Nobody will admit that a field is stuck]] * [[The only time you can get philanthropies to do interesting things is at the beginning]] [Web URL for this note](http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/§Misalignment+between+funders+and+nonprofits+in+research) [Comment on this note](http://via.hypothes.is/http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/§Misalignment+between+funders+and+nonprofits+in+research)