# Funders want to follow other funders The contrast between [[Fast Grants]]’ ability to raise money ([[collisonWhatWeLearned2021]]) and other projects is striking. `We were pleasantly surprised that so many donors were willing to support a completely unproven project. This might sound anodyne but it’s worth emphasizing: a number of individuals made seven-figure contributions without ever speaking with us.` Patrick and Tyler don’t say this, but I suspect that a large part of the sight-unseen support for an unproven project had *absolutely nothing to do with the project* (there were plenty of other high-urgency COVID projects). Perhaps it’s a stretch, but I suspect that the massive blind support also had very little to do with Patrick and Tyler’s reputations as smart people who have thought deeply about how to enable science better (there are plenty of people with that reputation who struggle to raise money). Instead, my hunch is that it had everything to do with the fact that *they see Patrick and Tyler as fellow funders*. Why should that matter? I get the impression that there’s also this feeling of being overwhelmed by a giant field of undifferentiated potentiality. [[It is hard for precommercial scitech projects to differentiate themselves]]. In that flat landscape, one of the strongest signals is simply what other people are willing to put skin in the game into. 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. Adam Marblestone also found it much easier to start getting money for FROs once they had gotten a small but public commitment from Eric Schmidt. Funders following other funders makes sense in the light of the fact that [[Precommercial scitech funding is taste based]]. Taste dominates when there’s no objective measure and no definition of what ‘works’ means. Most people do not create their own taste from scratch in most things but instead follow other people’s taste. [[People like funding winners]] and when there is no objective measure, ‘winners’ are just what other people think are winners. You see the same phenomenon in Venture capital investing where its extremely common to have a bifurcation between oversubscribed “hot” companies and completely ignored companies. It is relatively easy to find investors who will follow-on but very hard to find lead investors. Taste as a signal has implications for [[Getting the ball rolling on precommercial scitech funding]] — specifically, that abstracting funding away from funders may be a bad idea. Without the taste signal for funders, projects that need a lot of capital or capital over time will find themselves floundering. Instead, taste making suggests that a productive thing would be to go make it easier or higher status for funders to be ‘champions’ of projects in the same way that Patrick and Tyler did for Fast Grants. [Web URL for this note](http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Funders+want+to+follow+other+funders) [Comment on this note](http://via.hypothes.is/http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Funders+want+to+follow+other+funders)