Download Subtitles for Tips on Winning Grants by Experts

okay fair well in that case welcome everyone and thank you to all of our guests for joining in today um today we'll be discussing primarily about grants as a funding model there are like a lot of ways people raise funding if you're a company you either if you're an Enterprise you'll go to Banks if you're a startup you have Venture Capital um and other different ways to raise funds but what do you do if you're an individual especially if you're starting early on if you have just an idea and that's where I think grants kind of fit in and as we'll hear from all of our guests today as well there are many different types of Grants there are different Focus areas and obviously this has been going on for centuries back as well where patronage um used to exist and now we've just entered the modern day era especially with the internet what we can do is I'll probably kick it off by having just a small introduction of um from all of our guests and the kind of grants that they're running and then we can kick it off with some of the questions I have Ben first on my screen uh Ben would you like to go first yeah great so um I'm Ben yo um my day job is actually in global equities uh portfolio management um I also have a podcast and a substack and the like uh but my grants are micro grants so they're about ,000 uh for positive impact so it's quite widely defined um I was a little bit inspired I guess by Nadia egal now aspero um Michael grants and then there was Eevee and the type and my thinking was uh well at the margin can individuals just give away money uh it turns out it is quite easy to give away money um and then there was a thought about what could I what could I do that maybe other people can't do or think about and so that's where sort of micr came along because you got people who think about Mala Nets you've got people who think about all of these type of things um but like a couple of others here I thought actually ,000 pound can really Kickstart certain kinds of people in certain kinds of projects so I thought that was more useful and I didn't see that much out in the marketplace and then from a personal point of view I thought it's very interesting uh this question around um applications and talent and questioning so I was kind of interested in that particularly at at the stage where ,000 might be uh interesting so it's been running for a couple of years now um I cross into the Arts and creative domains as well so a lot of Grants just focus on more measurable things uh I kind of believe that actually um arts and creative processes are extremely valuable but very hard to measure um so that's one of the difference and then I'm I look around uh sustainability and impact more broadly um as well as the sort of side thinking on education autism and and the like but really the main thing is looking for ideas which have um personal or other impact and I hand back to you awesome thank you so much for that you mentioned the point about smaller grants as well and we'll probably discuss that later on because arnard it specifically mentioned that I think on one of his tweets and we can probably dig into that later but AR do you would you like to go next sure um so my name is Arno I'm based in London um right now I run something called the polar ship which is uh the the core idea is uh sure like give give grants help people um get started but the maybe like the the core point is just an underlying belief that the expression of talent is this fundamentally social thing and so um especially in places like um Cambridge and Oxford and London which you would think you know very attractive to very talented people um but don't necessarily have this uh wellestablished um clusters of of people that are pursuing very high-risk things uh like you might have in in some places in the US um let's also try to Kickstart uh not communities but just peer groups right so uh kind of 10 15 20 people um per year and uh essentially introduce them to to each other create a a high trust environment for them sure give them a little bit of money but really the peer group is is the main output um on the side personally I also uh occasionally give give small grants um to people this this is mostly uh in the range of say 500 to to like 5K um and um I think the tweet that you're referring to is is just my constant amazement um at how much just giving like a relatively small amount of money um seems to to be able to completely alter um people's expectations of of themselves right and I I think it's probably uh like largely due to uh not necessarily the dollar amount not necessarily because they couldn't have found a way to scrape that money together um but it's also it gives them just permission to step just outside of um uh maybe the path that they uh they think other people expect them to pursue um and I I take that uh quite seriously even when I don't give someone a grant just you can I think have like versions of of that interaction um with with people uh very easily and yeah it's a it's a version of of Tyler's uh raising people's aspirations is a very high reward uh activity fully age fully agreed on that front um on that front probably shy you can go next yeah uh I mean very much along the lines of what uh Ben and Aro have already said uh my day job is also not the ground giving I'm an economist uh at the Lo sorry uh can everyone please mute their if they're not speak oh sorry I thought that was a question for me that I couldn't quite hear okay so I I'll carry on uh so my day job is an economist I work on the Indian political economy research at the mara Center you know the usual podcast substack all of those things uh the emerging mentes grants especially the India side of the grants uh is something I got involved with because I worked with Tyler and you know he started seeing some amazing application from India he was he thought Indian Talent is on to something and sort of you know in numbers that were large that even he was astonished by uh you know the the quality and the quantity of what he was receiving and he said I think we need someone who's more familiar with India to just look at this uh as a separate thing and I happened to be there right first and right time um I got involved with this and it's turned into a whole other thing we've given about 150 grants and it also helps that when you work with smaller uh numbers uh you know a dollar goes much farther in India so that actually helped you know for the same amount of money we could make a much bigger marginal impact in India you know and the the other part was it's much younger than most countries especially China United States western Europe so we saw a lot of young talent for whom again you know this kind of validation that a small grants program can provide uh is enormous you know normally people go to universities or Elite institutions they get credential but they also get a sort of validation or stamp and here I never thought that that's the service I was providing but it was partly that right like it's not that many of them can't scrape that money together as Arnold said it's more that they always feel like wow someone else is trusting me with this money they must believe in this idea they must think it's you know I'm on to something and it's great and this is especially group of people who are a little bit weird and working on out there ideas you know not the cookie cutter sort of folks you know who are trying to get into engineering college or get a VA in literature so you know Ed also attracted lots of those people so I think the the small amounts we provided plus raising the ambition plus the stamp of validation plus creating a cohort of Highly ambitious people all of this sort of you know had an effect where individually these things were useful but the sum was greater than its SPS and I can I wish I could take credit for this I can take very little credit like many of you this was you know who were inspired by Tyler's idea this was just what Tyler had developed for the United States and the rest of the world and I just ran with it and I got lucky that I was working on a country where there was such incredible talent and fully agreed that on India as well we've been seeing that like a smaller amount goes a much much farther away and that's kind of why we also started the smaller grants program um I'll just give a brief overview of the oy Fellowship so the fellowship and grants program is basically a one-year program where we offer 100 Fellowship to 10 people across the globe they can work on anything they want and the idea is that this helps them start building their life's work but apart from the fellowships we're also offering a 10K Grant to 20 people as well and we started this this year based on the learnings that we had from the first which is that the amount doesn't necessarily it's good to have but there are other things as well which you can do to really push the liie especially on just a broader scale but on the specific topic right just where we were discussing that the smaller amounts it's not about the amount but the trust that you're placing in people have you like have you found like in what ways has it changed people like any examples one thinking is like has it led to people thinking that they can do a lot more if they would not have gotten the grants instead I I do think um well p is only uh this is only the second year that we run the program properly right so in lots of ways too soon to tell especially given the kind of age group that that um we work with is is early in life right in kind of late teens early 20s um but it does it does seem to me like it's not only the the kind of internal validation of oh someone trusts me to do this and so I can now do it but um it's surprising how often people are holding back doing things because they feel like it just doesn't fit the identity that they they think that they project out in the world and just having um this label that they could put on in an email on like LinkedIn or what have you which is like I'm part of this thing right I'm I'm part of this that's why I'm reaching out um I think that's the the thing that's um always surprising how much that triggers people to to do things um and um within the the like first batch of Polaris um we've had people leave schools leave jobs um switch Fields um start start project that they've been thinking about for a while but um it had been kind of a after I do X things I'll get to it um so yeah it does feel like the the kind of additional nudge that you need to give them is very very small again independent of the of the dollar amount and um if anyone else is any views please feel free to chime in like one thing that I we've kind of not noticed with our fellowship program is that we're offering 100K globally there's no restriction you can still continue with your job and why isn't everyone applying so I get this the top of the funnel problem which is that you haven't reached enough people but even amongst people who've seen the application we found that people are not applying and I haven't quite been able to place on why that reasoning might be one reason obviously people think that they won't get it so they just self- select out but for those kind of people is there anything that people can do like to encourage them to apply or have you faced any issues on that front do we want everyone to apply I think that's the first question I would ask no the reason I say that is not because I'm trying to you know create some kind of elite system it's more that a lot of people are smart and a lot of people you know I mean a smaller subset of the smart people even have new and interesting ideas but what it takes to be a fellow who can build something out of 100K that's you know something you need something more than that right you need a certain kind of passion you need a work ethic you almost need like a kind of Relentless Obsession to build something and this thought process that you think the world will be lesser without it or like you know people will not be able to get on with their lives unless you created the thing that you you were trying to put out there in the world and I honestly don't think the numbers are that that large for that type of person you know I think if you were looking for a fellowship where you were just trying to find interesting people who were tinkering you know a little bit and experimenting I think that's a bigger group but the sort of Fellowship you guys have set out I mean that number I'd be amazed if you know there are hundreds and thousands of people who who who are that good and that Relentless that even they think that they deserve a fellowship that gives them 100K to drop everything else that oh sorry one second I know go ahead well Ju Just I think I think you should encourage uh people to self- select out instead of encouraging people to apply well um I think one thing that definitely does help people though is if they see people like them who have kind of actually made it it goes back to like Steve Jobs quote right that eventually one day you realize that the world around you was made by people like you so fully agree you don't want all application all applicants but there are like just encouraging and I think as you see people like you doing the same work or getting similar kind of awards that thing might help as well um we have a couple of audience hands so we'll go to Isabella right now yeah thank you everybody for uh being here and being so generous with your time so um I've received everything from 500 to 2.5 million grants and there's something and I've been the the the the supervisor of people who get these grants from very small to very big and I think you all are speaking about something very important around self-esteem and identity and so on with these small grants but I am also wondering I I do want to challenge this idea that the only per type of person we want to to truly be out there getting this money are the ones that are the kind of go-getters Relentless optimists the entrepreneurs the whatever and so I have two two questions about that one is I'm very interested in how to educate young people yes to have that go-getter attitude to one degree but also to think of their introversion or to think of their thoughtfulness or to think of their 10year plan because some things take 10 years as also valuable and the way to get their own ideas and and their products or productivity out in the world is to work with others really closely so that others can have the the hustle and somebody else can do the substack and others can do the Deep work of thinking and maybe not be so flashed they just don't know how to or or we don't have to train them on that so the two questions I have is one is there any I think Polaris you're doing some interesting things there around getting a cohort together um and at that point you find some of your own kind of group of people and some of them had different types of talents and you can work together and I'd love to hear a little bit more about whether um there are group dynamics that you're looking for with each co- that might be interesting for that and two whether any of you are looking at just prior to your applications to do a little and I mean a little like it would take a week of courses or even online courses to get people to think about them themselves as the kind of people to get the grants um and I know it would make your job much harder because you'd get more applicants probably but I'm just interested in that variability maybe I should um go first I suppose um it's worth saying that um Claris is is uh it's very small right it's like I said it's 20 people we do it in Oxford and Cambridge and and London it's 20 people per per city um and it's explicitely not trying to be very much for very many people right it's like a very very specific thing for a very small group of people um and the kinds of people that it's addressed to who um are in fact I think people that are um that are wanting to do relatively large things with with their lives right um and I I think it's it's worth at least I I have a a pretty strongly held underline belief that if you're that kind of person and and you're um you have like the underlying smarts the underlying Drive Etc like what you're actually saying that you're signing up signing yourself up to is um you're signing yourself up to like interact with the world in in in ways that you're trying to notice um ways in which uh kind of your mental model of the world is not quite true you're trying to to discover like some some kind of Truth um that most people haven't figured out like that's usually what big things um uh Sprat from is is you notice this this like discrepancy somewhere and I think that just does in fact require you confronting the world right I think this is not something that is um usually going to be be a result of very deep thought um uh Beyond a certain point and just kind of like removing yourself from um the these challenges and and and this hard work um but again Polaris is very narrow right it's it's not it's not meant to be uh like a very wide uh a very wide program um but I I still think even within that Port even within that group um uh I I think there's a lot um it feels like something because when you actually do achieve um what you uh well hope to achieve right if if you do pursue big goals um that is usually a very individualistic uh achievement right you kind of have to break out um and become uh separated from from most other uh PE people in in in your group uh to achieve something very big but but I think there's real value in just being embedded within um a group even for those individuals um where uh the like very early stage of those ideas very early stages of those um beliefs that will eventually lead you to important work um like there's a certain way of relating to them right there's a certain set of norms there's a certain trust um there's a certain um uh uh like respect for those those very early stages and that that is what really Polaris is focused on is like uh look there's communities um in the US that are very good and on some parts of the internet that are very good at at kind of um fostering that um but I think they R than most people realize um and I don't think you can quite get there by just funding individuals so why don't we try to bootstrap um a few more in a very again very small very thoughtful way hopefully um so I'm not sure I fully uh fully answered the the kind of first question but um I will say my sense is um the kinds of people that I am most leaning towards working with in this context um are are very much the people people that uh kind of want to go after things um and in very active and and probably quite um uh yeah that that are not going to be like very restrained in how they pursue things I might add just a couple oh no shooty guy sorry go ahead oh I just I'll be quick and do just two or three things just personally um so others have this at a much more professional level but essentially I use Scouts informal Scouts so basically they're your friends and acquaintances and you let them know so for instance I had one application which came in from Botswana because I had a friend not a close friend who I told about they were in batswana and they went you're exactly the kind of person and Grant that this would suit and the money goes an extremely long way in Botswana um so that's how I try and break down that so you know it's not an all out call out but people who kind of know what you're looking for is actually really good obviously VC used that model in a more official stance family offices do as well in their in their own sort of way so I think I do that um the second thing I do which is a little bit akin to all of that because I don't have the same sort of Fellowship Network as Polaris or EV um but I do something adjacent and essentially I organize my own mingles and these are where I cross Network so that's partly part of the power of them so to to get network mixing for these type of individuals uh but it's also a soft uh filter because it's relatively easy to find out that I'm doing mingles and turn up and if you do you can then ask me about the Grant and that's the soft filter for saying that and particularly if you're in London and you haven't even got over that relatively easy hurdle then that's uh then that's a sort of also soft signal or it's also another place where you know what I don't think it's a fit for me but why don't you come along to a mingle and you might find a funer a collaborator something along like that which I think these cohort base and I think particularly uh in an age of AI the value to in person when it's going to when it works is actually up which is kind of interesting so these are really valuable for certain things but in person is going to be really valuable uh for other things so those were probably the two uh small things that I would add uh and back to you I was actually going to go to shuti because emergent Ventures does Focus primarily on the Innovation side of things um so if you can share any color on that front with regards to the question so uh sorry with regards to B question just so I'm not I think the question that Isabella had asked oh okay oh yeah of course um so you know uh like uh you know couple of you have already talked about this I I don't think that being out there is the requirement I mean there are lots of EV uh winners who are introverts uh some a couple of them who are Anonymous you know who didn't even want to meet me or who don't want to come to an EV Meetup but they are still Relentless in that whatever is the idea that they are pursuing or whatever they are trying to build out uh they're quite obsessed with it so I think that's the thing that I care about more than you know the typical startup person who sort of every networking event and at every fundraising event that's not I I think what I'm looking for uh the second is I think so you know Eevee doesn't advertise at all uh uh you know we we put out a post on marginal Revolution through Tyler's distribution Channel which is pretty big and wider than most advertising I admit but still you know that's where the call for applications and the Winns are put out but other than that we don't you know spread it through our networks we I have never really encourage people to apply unless I already like the idea and I'm like that's an easy idea uh part of the test is to find Eed you know uh and a lot of the people in India you know when I first started doing this I was sort of terrified that all my academic and Economist friends will come out of the woodwork and start applying for book grants and you know these Big E you know economics trials and you know experiments uh but actually most people who applied are people have never known and never met and I was very encouraged by that because that's part of the EV test like who is this person who's up at 2 in the morning scraping the bottom of the barrel finding no funding anywhere else and then saying okay this is a half page application just 45 minutes let me give it a go you know and I've always observed that those are the people who make for the best candidates right so I think what I mean by Relentless is those sorts of things not so much someone who's come to in fact usually if someone if five different people tell me about the same application I'd consider that a very bad sign uh they usually tend to be a massive disappointments so you know that's that's part of what Isabella was talking about um on the Innovation thing I think the part that EV has to play is you know when we're sort of in elementary school the way we learn about Innovation is stories about you know very low teex stuff like you know Archimedes it's in a art tub and all you need is water and and closed space and suddenly you know the genius of the person solves the problem right like apple falls on Newton's head like this is so so the Innovation is very much tied with the genius of the individual right or at best we learn about Edison and you know the tinkering in the workshop kind of model uh what's happening now is quite different it's not just about genius it's about the ability to work with people it's the it's the ability to develop products or solutions that are laid on top of what other people have already built right and this normally requires teams and it requires a fair amount of time and money for development so the way I think about EV is um oftentimes it's sort of like the first step of drisking product development we know most of these efforts are going to fail very few are going to succeed uh but the way the funding model is set up people tend to give very large sums of money to someone who's already succeeded or you know someone who is already raised a fair bit of money or is very well networked and so on so what can we do in terms of small grants to just drisk product development such that all the tinkerers and experimental can just kind of keep chugging along right and if it works that's great we'll you know hasten the process of getting to the next step or raising the next Grant or raising the next amount from Angels or venture capital and if it doesn't work you know no harm no fou this was Private philanthropic money you know it was worth risking this right it's not like suddenly someone's filing for bankruptcy and you know old crazy things happening so that's really how I think about where we fit into the Innovation pipeline because it is a pipeline you know it's not Apple falling on someone's head it's it's a very long and expensive pipeline at that so yeah I'll stop there there well that's actually useful and it segue is beautifully to the next part which actually I think a lot of people might be interested in which is how do you find and identify these people and then how do you finally select them so there just the initial pipeline you mentioned a bit about again finding EV is one of the tests but okay let's assume people apply would be great to hear from all three of you on like what is the general selection process on how you decide on the final candidates and lonus I'll come back back to you after this one um well I can segue maybe um of what shti was saying uh so a couple of the things so this the same things that she mentioned like this Relentless Focus doesn't necessarily need to be outgoing um yeah I've uprated that over time uh I think uh Tyler has used this word h stamina um which is close and is kind of the we even people have you know grit resilience persist um that I don't think the word has quite been invented because it's all sorts of those sorts of things but it's something about that you do keep going on but it isn't uh it isn't just uh monotone which that's stamina just suggest you're like this um you know we have this joke about the Deo bunny you just go on and on and on but it isn't quite like that there there is something other you can bend as well even though you keep on you keep on going uh and so I do try and and you try and look for that um in artistic practice it's a little bit easier in the sense that mostly you will have to have a piece of work in public um and if you're not going to work in public particularly in Creative Arts uh it's going to be hard for you you can actually do a lot within R&D but there'll be something you want to show and I do think it makes it easier for us if you know this this this term now work in public substacks podcast or whatever is kind of really easy um some of that might be got um a portfolio of something else you might want to show um but that makes it easier and even if you've shown that over time that's some sort of signal for your call it this stamina piece even if it's actually a private something and there's other things like people who are Builders of physical stuff might not have the same thing to show but but there is there is something there um so I will look uh so I will look to that uh so those uh so those type of things um some of the more ed Ed cases which a little bit tricky um so I did uh sponsor one um and she wrote a book essentially on Coro poems and this is really out there because I don't think anybody really understands her work uh in particular me and so this is where you you know have an allowance for someone who the things seem really good it's a language that hasn't really spoken before so you get that say in the early days of quantum Computing or some areas with metascience we didn't have the words to describe it because you're so far in the tail um and that's where it helps that it's just private small amounts of money you know if the, didn't do anything it gave a person who probably needed the money more than me that's like your minimum hurdle for that uh so that's why I think it helps within that ecosystem and so I have a little bit of that so if you can convince that you're you're you've got some of the qualities of something so new that it's hard to describe you can describe some elements of it that is also something I look for um because it's this element of you're definitely not going to get funded by anything in the mainstream right because you can't even really describe it so how is a even a three person committee going to get anything on this and that's where you where you are at like probably preed when you're going kind of on the individual in some sort of idea there isn't a business model there isn't a sort of paper there is just something which shows the quality of the person the idea the stamina and that and then I'll just finish on something Adon shti I just checked if you put in microgrants you can get to my grant page but it's something like page seven or eight in Google which is great you don't want to be like on the first page or two which is often awful but you want to be like okay you can eventually get there if someone's going to go okay this is going to work that or they've applied to the first seven pages and there's like what's this strange page on page seven or or something like that when you put in micr Grants and so there is a little element of that because it's not meant to be like a hurdle for um you know like you want people to apply but you also for me it's if they could have got it somewhere else then they probably that somewhere else is maybe a better fit at first for the kind of thing that fits with me or that I'm looking for or it's just so quirky that your mainstream is just not going to look at it um it's probably also helped by particularly the creative art piece funding is lower um you know you still got MacArthur grants right and things like that but actually aside from that like world famous other ones are not really there so if you got quirky creative ideas you are probably scrambling around uh a little bit more anyway with that I'll go back to you well it resonate with the idea of the proof of work in the building public movement that's been going proof of work is kind of like one of our top criterias as well where it's like if you haven't done anything of significance then it's probably not you're probably not going to be a good foot it's better that you go ahead do something which about which you can talk about or at least show us the results that you've achieved and then probably consider applying um again I'll get back again but it would be great to hear from shuti and Arna first uh on the proof of work part or more generally just the general selection process like I'm a candidate I'm applying how would you how would you just select the final people who get you a couple of ways in which e is slightly different is we don't have like a set number of people that you know we target for every C nor do we have a fixed amount of money like it's extremely flexible right so I've given you know high school students who are building a robot you know $500 to buy a couple of raspberry pies and I've also given grants that run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars because they're trying to you know develop something that's quite large uh so that I think opens things up a little bit more for Ed relative to other fellowships so that's you know just just to keep somewhere at the back of your mind uh logistically our application's pretty straightforward we try to keep it simple you know because the barrier to entry should not be the application uh it should be you know that's not I think the only barrier to entry may be language and now even that's getting solved you know for all these chat GPT free versions and and so on uh the second part of it is those where the application has something interesting to me uh I will set up about a 30 to 40 minute call with them uh this tends to be just you know easy one-on-one audio over the phone not a video call I'm not interested in their body language their surroundings just really want to hear about themselves their project in in their voice you know and I think that's when I start realizing okay is this what I imagined when I was reading this application is it something completely different is it better is it worse it also gives me a chance to ask all all the questions I'm curious about because like Ben said there are many areas where I know nothing about what they're doing like you know these kid someone was working on Rocket propellent Fuel which is a little bit Greener and more climate friendly and they could have made the whole thing up and I would not have known the difference because I don't even know some of those words and how to them so you know so fair I I try to do my research before I speak with them and that helps me get the follow-up questions I think my main mechanism and this is going to sound a little glip but I don't mean it that way at all I use the same device that I used in the classroom for many years as an economics professor you know this is like the basic detector like you know you know any student you ask them four questions and you know whether they understood the concepts you just explained or they didn't understand understand the concepts and the four questions in test I think has held me in good stad with e you know the bullshitters reveal themselves very quickly usually in under four questions so I always try to separate the the bullshitters from the rest and it's not that if you pass that test now you're an EV winner you know it still needs to fit they need to actually you know be working on something that's you know moonshot or moonshot adjacent or they need to be a particular kind of talent that I think even if they're not working on a moonshot it's worth investing in uh and so on uh or just that that type of thing should exist in the world so you know those are the sorts of things I I look for I have I think a natural advantage in that I mean un unlike many of you who are sort of targeting the whole world mine is very specific to India I grew up there I speak multiple languages my day job is studying Indian political economy where you know as an economist I look at everything from Innovation to you know the tech sector to AI to you know Healthcare so it's just a little bit easier I think in some sense mine is a much more narrow group of people that I'm targeting so that 30 40 minute phone call does 90% of the work for me I very rarely do a mi like just completely shrouded in doubt after that phone call usually that sols it on the technical review we've kind of faced like similar issues as well well we'll have people who are working one person who's going to sequence a salamander species the entire Genome of those species and we like okay we don't know much about it we'll have to so we s to just reaching out within our Network to find the people who can just help us evaluate these kind of applications you mentioned about like on the the first call right has there been any point where do you use like the same questions every time just so that just to compare against people or is it generally catered to every person individually I try to cater to every person but you know the other thing I think I'm repeating myself I may have said this at you know one of the intellect salons before uh the ones who are really gr and obsessed with their idea like they can't they don't shut up like you know no prompting required it's like you just hit the button and press play and and they explode so I just kind of try to ask a very open-ended question of you know a little bit more about themselves sort of about the project their big ambition you know how does this project fit in that big ambition you know if they think there's a moonshot element to this what that might be and I say just answer it in any order so I just kind of like offload a set of prompts and ask them to answer in any order and the good ones usually just go for it and and will not stop talking so I I have very little work to do I feel that can be useful I know would you like to go the selection process um I suppose uh same same as Rudy that you know again Polaris is like meant to be very narrow and I think that that actually made a lot of things much easier once um that was just like an accepted fact right like we're not trying to find absolutely everyone or um the the the absolute best person in the world we just really focused in these geographical areas and these very narrow um populations um it it reduces the pressure a little bit I think um on selection the way we do things is because we're trying to obviously create this this P group we do have a little bit of a coordination problem that that we need to solve so um uh we do do a little bit more of like look applications are open you can now apply um and selection also happens over a relatively short amount of time usually like a month or two at the end of the year um and um the application form is is uh very straightforward most people hear about players either through their friends or we put flyers and posters absolutely everywhere um on University campuses and various um uh like company lobbies and and various things um just to um uh Twitter is also just a great source of of people for us um again not trying to get everyone um and um I guess compared to maybe the the fellowship we're not trying to find people who have who are already on the way with uh with a project um so we don't try to rely on uh like give us proof that you have this this kind of um uh you know big repository of of work uh that you can point to uh the very first question on the application forum is um like a prompt to tell us about um like why you have this confidence that you can take on challenging problems challenging ideas challenging projects um and uh a little bit of prompt engineering and actually pushing people to to kind of tell us about um where their internal confidence comes from right not not kind of externally legible um achievements and um I have found that very fruitful um so the the actual application process is there's an application a 30- minute interview and then we do a selection dinner um to get to to see how the the the group interacts with one another um and uh the the actual um interview the 30-minute interview uh is very customized uh like shy said the the the people who who have like a like a relatively specific idea of of who they are who they want to be what they want to do what polar could do for them very hard to shut up um which is great those those S to be very fun conversations um but um because Polaris is also maybe trying to find a few people who U maybe like joining this Speer group is is this um this this this point of of like change Ina trajectory um I think the 30 minute also serves the the purpose of if there's someone who whose application maybe hasn't really been that amazing but it feels like because of um uh there's some indication of exceptionalism right in in their background or uh in just one part of of their um of the application form 30 minutes is usually enough to kind of dig into that and and figure out if they'll fit within the group if um if there's if there's something worth taking a bet on there um that's maybe just a a another part that uh separates um the SE selection process of pliers versus other Grant programs it's not just the individual right it's will this person fit into this emerging group that takes shapes during the selection process uh do they seem to have the the right approach do they value substance over status do they have um this sense of um uh they will uh respect the people in the room and be respected by the people in the room uh to some extent um are they kind of appropriately disagreeable right um you don't you don't want people who reject absolutely everything but you also don't want people who are just like the average of the group um and um yeah I think uh it seems It's probably again probably a little bit too soon to tell for for something like pois let's check in again in a um in a few years but um it seems relatively easy to make these selection decisions there's very few that are actually like very murky um both at um uh application review I I interview maybe half of the people who apply it's it's between 400 and 500 people that apply per Fellowship um uh just because I I like to set the bar um uh uh quite low for that first step um and uh after the interview again very very easy to to make very large cuts um to to to that number um so yeah it feels like not over complicating not over structuring uh the selection process uh especially if you can afford to right if you're not getting hundreds of thousands of applicants uh per year um that will remain my preference I think for for a long time I the part that you yeah go on I would just add one thing here which is you know for anyone who's thinking of starting their own grants program or getting involved with a grants program uh just do something that you think is really important without worry about is there someone else doing the same thing or is it going to be you know is it going to serve every kind of person is it going to be inclusive is it going to Target the whole world I think you know those sorts of things just flatten out the application process and the selection process and it's actually more of a problem than it is a blessing uh so I think not to be super open to have like quite a clear fixed idea of I like this kind of person or this kind of talent out there in the world that's the thing I want to back I think that's okay uh somehow the the bureaucratic mindset of ground pring is totally against that they think you know every kind of talent every kind of person every kind of idea should should you know have equal Merit but I actually think those are the worst kind of programs so if there's a way to be accessible and inclusive which is you know what I mean by that is without prejudice uh that's I think slightly different than just being like wide open and you know carpet bombing uh with limited resources excellent point there that the more focused you are like it just makes it easier to kind of make the entire selection process easy as well I think for us our view initially like it's been where okay we want to be the main thesis was that Talent is distributed globally opportunity is not and we're bringing the opportunity to everyone and in that way we were looking for like three main kinds of people right and the way we describe them is the first group is researchers these are people who are operating at the frontier at the edge of knowledge they're trying to find uncover completely new things they're running experiments that will teach us new things the second kind is the builders people who are Engineers programmers um Architects creators of any kind these are the people who are actually building things in the real world they're taking whatever we learn from the researchers and actually implementing in the real world and the Third Kind is the people who are sharing the message across the world these are writers musicians filmmakers who are actually creating something unique and sharing the message with everyone for example one person we have is actually making a documentary about his father's swim in the 1970s a 10-hour swim from Hong Kong uh from mainland China to Hong Kong and one of the reasons he's doing it is because he just wants to get closer to his father along with the backdrop of how things were so again those three main kinds of people that we're looking to back and for us like the process has been kind of similar to kind of some of the things that you mentioned one of the things we're relying on this year is we've internally created a scorecard where we're looking at three main things one is the mission which is if we select these people are is this someone who we believe that over a long period of time has the ability to raise the bar for everyone else in the field or in the domain that they're working on do we see the potential there yes maybe that's definitely a great sign the second thing that we're looking for is outcomes and obviously once we select them the outcomes will be more solidified on what they should accomplish but is this that is this someone who can achieve some form of meaningful output at the end of the year once they're selected once they go through the program and the third one is as Al mentioned similar where we're looking for certain traits one is on the execution side that okay do they have some of these states High agency they have L of proof of work is this someone who has great attention to detail they don't have to check take all the boxes it's just a list where okay we're looking for these things and we found that the best candidates do have it but along with that we also have cultural traits which is do they fit in well with osv is this the kind of people that we want to work with as well and that's kind of one of the core pieces apart from that similar structure like multiple people will review your application we'll have this year we're doing group discussions as well where we'll be having um discussions with the group so it allows people just to meet some of the other applicants as well and we can understand how well they working in just a group setting and then there are the individual interviews last year there were one hour interviews which we had with the rest of the team this year we're kind of seeing whether we still want the one hour ones or probably whether shorter ones suffice um yeah how many applicants do you get uh per year so so last year was around 1,00 this year we're expecting it'll probably be a couple of multiple times higher we've also done Outreach this year specifically in certain areas so universities is one area where we've reached out to because we're trying to be Global so obviously in the US we get a lot of applicants but in the rest of the world we found there are certain channels which will serve better so we aren't necessarily advertising broadly but there are specific institutions who have like just dense Talent we are looking to reach out to and do do you feel like you get a lot from the group debriefs or do you feel like the decisions would be like similar quality or better if like you you individual decision makers we're going to actually find out this year specifically because last year we just had the interviews this year we wanted to add in the discussion part because we're working with certain advisers as well who like we found that it works as well and this year we'll be trying it out so I'll probably report back with the results on that uh fair so that's kind of on the selection process I see we have a couple of hands up um line us you were up first please go ahead um yeah thanks um I wanted to go back to whatman had said a while ago about like why aren't more um applications to the as City fellowship and as someone who literally has the application up but I think is well have a pretty low probability in which I I'll actually complete the application this year I thought I might as well chime in as to kind of why that is um and I think this is also goes back to a conversation I had with Aro a few months ago we CH one-onone in terms of what are the conditions in which you know actually going for a grant would make sense for someone like me someone who knows kind of what they want to work on long term um but probably but doesn't have quite have a clear idea about what what exactly that project would would kind of take the form of and I think the the big thing was one I think it just in terms of Life circumstances this year I there are a number of occasions especially for a year-long fellowship in which it's just like suboptimal like becoming a parent it's just like there's a lot of things that would make it like a suboptimal time um to to make the most out of a fellowship such as that but I think also just in terms of um like what the grand actually be the actually add that type of marginal value um and be that key Unblocker versus actually at this point it's like just having for example emergent Ventures out there having the the fellowship out there as like a model for and a permissioning tool to be like just be weird just be creative that you know I can start doing my things and once I'm ready there are these there are these opportunities out there to actually know really go for but know because at this time it's the the it's not the network itself or the money itself that would be the key unblock exactly just me having that idea that this is possible um and for me to work on things on my own terms why I can on my own that that's actually the actually highest marginal value that these programs have at this current time for me and I think that's probably true for a lot of folks um as as well and and so just not to just have this be a a comment but actually also a question is that something that you guys thinking about in terms of the kind of the second order effects of um one just being a bar raiser for even even people that only apply and never get the grant or just know people who have worked on it like kind of these Ripple effects of this permissioning for people to be weird to be more ambitious um like how much does that register in your guys's Consciousness and and motivations um and gosh that front like we have thought about it like a lot where so we aren't restricted to any particular domain we have people who are working on Quantum like making Quantum Computing accessible to everyone we have people writing books on progress we also have people creating documentaries and we also have people creating an app for which basically uses a camera to basically determine your Vital sign so I think go having like just in all specific domains and the different kind of projects that we're backing I think the ripple effect that it should ideally we'll probably see it in a couple of um years down the line which is once you see someone just like you getting a grant like this it makes it possible in your head that if this person can do it maybe I can as well I've seen this personally at least um in India like there are when people are applying for MBA colleges Etc where they'll be like the top colleges people will think they'll never get in and then they see someone else just their friend who applied in gon and it kind of just breaks that mental barrier which is oh it is possible obviously you do need to keep trying keep working at it but I think the Ripple effects definitely we'll start seeing them um in a couple of years down the line I don't think I would be serious in my U I believe fundamentally that the expression of talent is fundamentally social if I didn't have some like hopes and dreams for like the second and third and fourth order effects of of doing these kinds of things right um I think uh yeah I I do think that there's a lot of contexts um in Europe in the UK um that are very again very attractive to very talented people um that are just like insufficiently Risk taking right that are insufficiently um uh like prompting people to step outside uh Finance or medicine or all all these kinds of um uh all these kinds of things um and even if you get rejected from pliers hopefully you've applied because it means that you have two or three people um uh within your network um that are like either fellows or or involved or what have you um and even if there's like a marginal shift of your uh aspirations towards the aspirations that um feel to me like valuable for for very talented people to have um then that seems like a win yeah I'd follow up similar that um I definitely thought that at the margin you know more people can give away money and that's actually okay to uh impactful things um just and that was definitely to encourage that as a little bit of nudge in the system how how hard can it be that was one thinking um second is to do with that the bureaucracy Point uh and particularly within Arts funding but I think funding overall um you know there these complicated forms particularly in arts funding you have to the certain lingo that you use which is really low value ad and it also provides more or less and it's a little bit varant but more or less it's a tick boox way of doing things uh in which case you don't get I think as interesting things particularly at the riskier end or or or weird end or or more marginal end um so one kind of very adjacent uh analogy I've used it's a little bit like we kind of all know how good food can be or things like that or even art um but this sort of funding is really all about taste so if you want really extraordinary food or really something different then an individual's taste uh is going to produce that rather than just saying well this is a meat and two veg and has the certain amount of calories which we know have a balance and and I think that's what maybe some of us are a little bit hinting about about this thing about an individual pasted on and how you how you decide it so I've I sometimes said you know one of the one of the weaknesses is that I kind of have no governance but actually for small amounts of money that's its complete strength yes if you're going to give a billion dollars away of government money then you know public government money you need these checks and balances and blah blah blah we do a lot of that but actually for the interesting things where you really want quick decisions made by an individual which relies on the individual essentially taste which is another form of judgment but this is a judgment where you're not necessarily even measuring something that you can even even measure so in that sense it's not a judgment it's why I've said it's a kind of taste and actually for that kind of thing which I think this group is is in then the lower amounts of bureaucracy and the higher amounts of well do I just think this is something which would be tasteful or however is important and and you know I wanted to nudge to that so that yes people can actually use their own taste and judgment and and add to that when it didn't have to be through a big organization it didn't have to be through the government it didn't so for everyone all of my peers who were complaining about either bureaucracy or they didn't like big charitable projects they didn't like Government funding when I said well just give money away yourself to things that you think are really valuable that's very possible and the answer is it is and actually you know you can find maybe these 10x 100x a THX social other returns um and you've done it and there's no reason that you can't then use your own agency within giving to to do that so that was definitely a a thought in terms of it coming about um yeah so back to you or shti had maybe some comments on that uh question yeah you know I don't think so much about the second third and fourth order effects I think I just sort of I think that's styler's problem and above my pay grade you know uh I just I I I thought very much about the E India project as proof of concept right this could be done it can be done long distance you can have a group of people or a single person matching donors from different parts of the world that tend to be richer to recipients who are in a different part of the world who lack the infrastructure or lack the funding and and you can do it pretty fast you can do it without too much diligence you can do it with zero fraud I mean and you can do it with you know I mean some percentage of error is built into this but we've never been defrauded we've never been scammed so you know at a very bare basic level even that as proof of concept was pretty amazing and I know that Tyler has inspired lots of people to either you know not exactly mimic EV exactly as it is but take different parts of e either the short application form or the selection process or the minimal bureaucracy we've I don't know I've done so many calls with so many different people who are even thinking about starting you know something like a grze program so I I guess just you know writing off of his coat Tales has absolved me of thinking about the second and and third order effects in some sense uh the one nice thing uh that I think that is unique to EV India is just the way the Indian education system and the talent system is structured it is very much about credentialing right and the fact that we managed to find a group of people who are not very well credentialed always or who are not very well networked most of them come from small towns though they tend to move to big cities relatively quickly the moment they get the ground um you know they're not all very fluent native English speakers you know all the typical markers that the England Elite use for what good talent looks like and sounds like so I think that's the other nice thing about EV India that that the talent is there but it breaks all of these stereotypes and the first eveve India Meetup we had Ty and I were kind of shocked that it felt so much like the one we do in our L it has sort of the same Vibe like different accent different food same Vibe and we were like how is that even possible these these groups have never met they're totally different but I think Anna can confirm this you know just feel their weirdness and craziness kind of feels similar in in some Wayans SM well I don't know about that but you know it it so I guess what I'm getting at is for me the big thing was really to live out or demonstrate the fact that Talent really does exist everywhere in the world even if opportunities not equal and it sounds different but it sort of feels the same it's got like a core or talented people have a core or a soul that feels very similar so I'm very narrowly obsessed about that and I guess I just feel like you know the second and third order things almost like it's almost at a belief level that that you know if you pick these people and we get it right and we support them then that will just follow I don't have to worry about it I don't have to obsess about it it's just going to happen some will take more time some will take less time but it'll work out yeah that's quite quite a good point that even the people who are selected how it kind of plays out and the impact it has on their communities um that's definitely going to be quite big of a change one example we have is one of our fellows William he's based in Jos Nigeria he's using banana fiber to manufacture sanitary pads um in like in Nigeria itself now the impact of that long-term no one can know but hopefully it has like quite a positive impact in the long term I also just one last point on this which is that and again this kind of the main idea came from Helen and K and who are who are actually joining us in the audience today they R the shuttleworth fellowship for over a decade which is that the application process itself depending on how well it's crafted even for people who aren't selected for them as well they can come up with it with the fact that oh okay this is useful to me for example if you just spend the time thinking about the problem actually working and writing down the answers that act itself I think is very helpful for the applicants regardless of whether they progress further or not um Anna you have your hand up thank you so much I was so happy B that you brought up the the the ever elusive question of taste um and how bureaucracies sometimes act after a certain scale has been red in a system to replace taste right taste needs individual evaluation and a lot of investment from both applicant and the curator um and when you have more it becomes a kind of industrial Endeavor and the bureaucracy will replace through standard testings or other you know methods what used to be taste but something that I keep thinking about you know we we we talked a little bit about stamina we talked a little bit about weirdos you know people who would you like scrip the the the bottom of the barrel um I was in San Francisco cou years ago and shy were moderating a discussion between Tyler and Danielle gross on their book Talent um and of course they were talking about Pioneer which is Daniel gross's um grant program and and Eevee uh represented by yourself and Tyler on the stage and one of the things that Tyler said that really really struck me and and I keep thinking about when it comes to interact host when it comes to myself you know what I would put my energy into is this this question of the the the the size of somebody's belief system I think you were probing the question whether seminar is important achievement whether you want results how much risk you will be taking and Tyler said something that um you know was basically that an individual's resilience and how committed they will be to their idea um to and to just generally realizing their talent and their life mission if they believe that they have one is the size of their belief system if somebody's belief system is small and dependent on only one variable they only want one goal only want to work with one person they only want one award one achievement you know any setback will break their resolution if somebody has a gigantic belief system and this is why probably you know idealists religious people tend to be happier they have a wider system of belief a wider more external uh source of res resilience and and I just really wonder how in these four grants that you guys are representing here so beautifully today how do you approach belief system individually and how may that come across in a 30 minute interview are there trick questions to uh smoke out somebody's smallness in thinking um or is it just something that you pick up as a Vibe on because you just spoken to so many people as part of your job very interesting point um ra there I can go on that I haven't specifically thought about it in that specific context but one of the things we try and do is the interviews they did tend to be one hour long and in that as you keep digging deeper deeper deeper in some cases it's been where people has have told us that oh I'm doing this because of XYZ reason and it doesn't it it doesn't sound to be the actual reason so you keep digging no no that okay so why is that and then you keep going why why why why until eventually the person you get the actual reasoning which has generally tended to be useful a couple of other things which might also be useful is just reference checks or even just telling people that know what's the exact the people you worked with in the past whatever if whatever you're saying is it true or not and just telling them okay how do we who do we speak to just telling them you you may or may not even just go through with it but just letting people know that there'll be reference checks on this that I think eventually leads to probably a bit more truthful answers with which you can just cover and understand um the level of at least the accuracy of their answers um for me those type of things correlate kind of with the open-mindedness and curiosity aspect so understanding what you might or might not believe you op this it might not even be a belief it's just kind of your um know what you you know or don't know um it's a little bit hard to test for in a short interview but that's where I think if you read talent I think that's where those sort of meta questions sometimes comes through about the Judgment or or things like that and I I have one in my form which is pretty short the one question I have that alludes to that um which is adjacent to sometimes the Eevee P the W is my one is what is something that you think you understand about the world that you think other people don't understand about the world um and that's this this element particularly within this about how much do you think you know but also what you think other people people are are thinking and how that shifts in time um that to me that tends to have some correlation with this you know whether you call it belief system but just the acceptance of how much is out there your place in it but but also where you might want to make that place because these type of people or the things we're funding is you also trying to leave a mark on something so you're often trying to say well this is how I think the world is but this is how I think the world should be but in order to do that you need a view on how the world is but you also need a view on how the world should be um and but also knowing that there's all those types of things that's that's quite a hard and and tricky thing but the there are elements of that and um you you see it when people do make big things or even in social movements and the like but there is this element of you can't be so far stretched to not know how the world kind of is or seems to be but if you're just uh satisfied with that then these type of things don't help you because you are trying to move it to something else whether that's really weird something else or maybe that's something which isn't necessarily so super weird but seems that you have to have a a fundamental I would go so say as further is probably not at this level of the Innovation System what will grant uh but slightly further up you actually have a mechanism or an idea um for for why it's going to move to your version of the things uh in biology we call this a mechanism of action you kind of have an idea of how it works I guess in social sciences you tend to call it this theory of change or something but you have some I guess Tyler would call it a model but you have some which you kind of have a reason to believe why it might go in your way even if that thing is kind of quite weird or however it is you you've got something that you want to test um that to me sometimes sometimes comes a little bit later than it was but the type of people I speak to tend to be there or on the cusp of there or have some elements of it and that's where they are eventually pointing out to even if the thing that they want to test ends up which it often does is not being right or their mechanism hasn't proven to be the one or the one that they're pursuing but they have something around that 19 I I had not I'd not thought of this um this question of of like belief systems or or not not explicitly but um I think there there's maybe three questions that I come back two in the application form and one that I tend to um ask during the interview that fit um fit this general idea the the first one in the application forum is um uh I have as the third question what is something that you find beautiful and why um which is surprisingly High signal um uh I think that there's especially given people usually say what was like the most surprising it varies a lot and I think it tells you something about how applicants engage with the world right I think I've been surprised in both directions of of people that um you would think have like quite High sensibilities um to to to the world just have what felt to me like very very shallow answers and that that to me has been a negative signal and um also people who you would assume because of their background you know very very um uh kind of maybe it's a very narrow background in a lot of ways um just pull something completely out of left field and describe um this very intricate um uh little idea in the world that they find particularly compelling um and yeah I I found that um like I said quite High signal um and the the second uh question in the um uh in the interview that I I think is quite useful um I tend to ask people what their map of the territory looks like and specifically this is usually a difficult question to get out but I've not had a lot of um success in in kind of like shortening it um but to some extent I want to know what individuals or organizations or or or things people like whose output people pay attention to um and that seems to kind of there there's some people that that seem to engage with the world in which in a way that um they've developed taste they've developed an awareness of their own taste they've developed like an interest in in um in in various topics again not necessarily always uh particularly easy to derive from from their legible background um and they know how to relate them to each other um and uh I tend to follow it up with you know put yourself in the shoes of one of these individuals um like what would you do differently like what what do you disagree with them on um and um yeah again I not thought about these things in in the context of of a belief system but I do think that's maybe um there's there's definitely an aspect to these questions that are about um trying to to derive like traits and like how um how curious are they how how much do they want to see patterns these kinds of things but um I I think underlying is is probably an attempt to to understand their belief system all the belief system for sort of like if they have a big belief system as much as if they're open-minded and curious so I'll tell you the balance I'm trying to strive I think people need not have like this huge strong belief but if they're open-minded and curious I feel like they'll get there and at the same time I if someone is too skeptical about everything I think that's a negative sign you know that kind of skepticism is is almost counterproductive they sort of get in their own way they get in everyone else's way so this can happen sometimes people who are too curious end up going on the other side of skeptical and sometimes they stay on the right side so that's what I'm trying to figure out and I don't ask any trick questions but you know while everyone was talking I was trying to think about what how is it that I figure this out but I think just simple questions like what are the challenges you're facing now or expect to face you know if we solve the financial problem and you receive the grant how would you overcome some of these you know challenges that you're already anticipating so I think that just gives you a sense I don't think there's a right or wrong WR answer but it just gives me a very good sense of what this person is like are they optimistic are they skeptical are they curious uh you know are they open-minded are they going to solve this like no matter what and dig their own grave or are they going to be openminded enough to Pivot you know when things aren't quite going well I I think they tend to provide that information have I always got it right I I can't say but that's usually I think that's how I figur it out but this I've literally been thinking about this the last six minutes so so I could be a little bit uh off but I do think that that core belief system is important and I think you know more than like a belief system about the world almost like a belief in themselves right again I'm going to date myself and sound this going to be like a boomer thing to say but I feel like a lot of the younger people are just mired in self-doubt and I'm not sure that's productive for the world I think you know I mean you don't want to be this crazy narcissistic person who thinks they're the center of the universe but you do want to think that you are essential that that you have something positive to contribute to the world that you can change the world even if it's not like you know even if you're not building the next Tesla or something that you're you're basically essential for Humanity and other people um so I just try and figure that part out and and I think that belief I think I would place even more importance than like the belief system of the world right my dogs agree yeah yeah and on the self-confidence thing I think it's also helpful that depending on where people come from it can take people a while just to get that self-confidence over time but it's great I think people do need to have it if you're going to do something like you need to do that uh unless if you want to achieve something big there we have a couple of questions hands raised and we have around 10 minutes so we'll quickly go through two questions and then we'll wrap up with one question where I just like to get everyone's thoughts on how do you guys think about just the future of Grants and how does the landscape evolve over the next decade so we have Mattias am I pronouncing it correct okay mat you're up yeah that's right uh so I have a couple of question 14 in my mind which ones do I pick well I'll pick the most unusual one I hope it's not similar to the last one I'm sort of curious um what are the main motivations that either individuals or organizations have for starting Grant programs and um if you try to uh persuade an organization to start one or an individual to start one what would what would you sort of tell them um so yeah that would be a question I would certainly never try to persuade someone to to start one I I think that goes the the the wrong way around um I I I I think like hey if you if you feel um like you have this um like Polaris came from a gradual accumulation of strong opinions about um like spaces and and talent and these kinds of things um and eventually wanted to confront that to the world and I think that's probably um that seems like a like a pretty good way to go I could probably jump in like I I guess yeah if you're liking this you can actually give money to Eevee and give money to AR so there are other gr programs if you don't want to um you know start them up uh exactly uh yourself um the one thing I did mention that I do think you can say is I think um you know people in Rich Nations essentially can afford to give more money than they do to lots of things and I'm much more pluralist so obviously there's one fashion which you know is is very much looking about that um and so you know a lot of my my Progressive friends talk about this redistribution and they want governments to redist redistribute things and I say well you can just redistribute yourself um so that is that is something that I do uh talk to people a little bit but it doesn't have to be as as radical as doing your own grants program uh but you you can support other grants programs or your your friends and family for when they have an idea and it's it's just this idea that you are catalyzing sometimes it's that stamp of approval type of thing that we we talked about and so I I do think um some of these things are a little bit like that chemistry thing where you've got this energy hump and if you for whatever the things and maybe it's a piece of money but maybe it's a piece of like no just go out there and do it and you get someone over that energy hump and then you have this chemical reaction and they're off and um that can come and cost a small piece of money it can be these other other things particularly with a high higher agency people where they're just looking for that spark or that piece of catalyst um and I would say then it goes on to then have lots of great effects first second or third order and it's also very fulfilling so that's the thing that actually uh for whatever reasons you could say um I generally uh friends of mine or peers who have ended up giving away some money um have found it much more satisfying than they thought like these are levels where they don't miss the money that's that's the other thing I mean these are you know we are basically talking about the fact that we are particularly in a world context pretty wealthy and then they're actually getting a lot of these other intangible returns from doing that much more than if they bought another object it's kind of buying like an experience um and this sort of thing about then being with that experience which I guess is why you know very wealthy people do go into philanthropy in general but actually you can do it at this smaller scale you know 500 pound1 pound and it doesn't have to be to Oxfam or whatever where it just disappears in this morass and you feel you didn't get anything from it and 50% went into bureaucracy which is needed but there's other things doing that it might go into these um other other things I guess that's what I talk about um you know a little bit if you're sort of saying why why could people be interested um in this I would add to what Ben is saying I think you know he and you know through his substack has shown that giving money away is not necessarily like a one-way Street where all of us sitting in more privileged positions enrich people who are less fortunate than ourselves I think it can be a two-way street like you can gain so much by starting a small grants program and keep it really small manageable limited but you know to give away 20 grants you'll have 200 conversations and you will come away like a completely different person at least that has been my experience I think I am the one on the gaining end even though I'm the one who ends up you know writing the checks so I I would actually I mean as much as I would love anyone of you to give money to EV and I promise to do my best with it I think of this very much as you know may a thousand flowers bloom and what you bring to the table in terms of spotting the talent will be different from what any of us who's running these programs brings to the table so and and you know there isn't such a thing as an eye for talent that eye is developing you know you it becomes sharper it becomes cleener it's like going to the opthalmologist you know they keep changing the lens and the world comes in sharp Focus it's a little bit like that kind of an experience so I would say if you're on the fence do it on your own and and see what's there and I mean I'm happy to have a chat with anyone Ben has such great insights on his substack Tyler has such great insights on the blog so you know uh I I really would you know uh highlight that nice um we're almost out of time sorry Isabella we won't be able to take your question um I just want to end with one big question so the world is changing rapidly and it's changing at a far faster Pace than any of us have imagined or any of a previous time in history with AI there saying there might be broad societal change up to 40% 50% more of jobs might be changing any thoughts on whether grants can play a role in helping people change teams taking more risk do you think whether they will play any small or bigger role in helping people navigate the future you know the kind of tech shocks you're talking about they're like so big in a sense they flatten out all the other small changes right and now if you throw in like the potential for war which is already there there are lots of mini crises breaking out across the world or you know like big Democratic failure or something like that I feel like you know relative to that grants feel very tiny you know in in their ability to contribute to the world but I don't think of productivity shocks or innovation as like oh and then one day someone flipped a switch right even the AI Revolution we're calling it a revolution but it's sort of like a slow crawl it's been brewing for about 70 years and suddenly certain things have aligned exactly so if you think about Innovation and that kind of like a very long pight line where then I think grants play a huge role right I mean we are drisking ideas at the earliest stage of the ideas we are incubating Talent at the earliest stage when they have not yet received any other support right we are profiling talent for the next you know bigger Venture capitalists or angel kind of put their money and put their might behind it so it depends on the kind of worldview you have is it going to suddenly help us cope with the 40% change AI bring there you know but can it make the next AI kind of productivity shock possible 40 years from today I think all of us are very much hoping for that and very much like participating in that if I can if I can say so my my best uh sense about this is that um uh these kinds of Grant programs and they're they're probably going to be a temporary thing right it feels like there is going to be quite a lot of benefit of at some point there become they're existing new institutions um that uh are like more visible more legible maybe to some extent better adapted to um uh to to the world that that is being born um it feels to me like grants are a little bit the um yeah it feels like um universities are not necessarily this like great environment for um a lot of things a lot of ideas that that deserve to to exist that deserve to be funded um Government funding seems to be pretty pretty bad at it um it seems like Grant a lot of Grants are trying to figure out what does it mean to try and fund people at the very early stages um uh I do think at some point we'll kind of figure it out right we we will figure out okay well like we want to fund this these kinds of people in in this kind of environment and um gradually that that will professionalize and also these these Grant programs I I suspects that like all uh Grant programs um uh that have showed up today right are are pretty transient Affairs um in part because most of them are reliant on the taste of very specific individuals um and uh well maybe a few of them will professionalize and will become bureaucracies and institutions that fund a very particular kind of person or very particular kind of project um but like mostly will die right um so yeah I I do think grants maybe have as is saying like in in the abstract in kind of zoomed out view um these kinds of experiments have have a a role to play um but I don't see grants and like small Grant making organizations like this uh being this uh just like fundamental uh pillar on which the the rest of civilization eventually is is founded upon um I think it's a it's like a temp realignments thing yeah useful point and with some of the grounds we've also seen like the teal Fellowship for example vitalic came from it and we got ethereum um Dylan field was part of it and he founded figma open a itself originally was founded as a nonprofit organization so definitely I think the trickle down effects as things go across the next couple of decades that would definitely be something to watch out for but yes Dan in general programs might be a lot more transient um in nature Anna would you like to add anything to it still your event I don't want to awesome I don't I don't know one of those attendees who tries to host but I just yeah I'm just so am I mean I of course we knew um uh when we put together the lineup that this is going to be something exceptional um but I learned so much I took like 700 pages of notes and I don't know we will put this on YouTube and guys share it with your friends send it to the smart people you know the ambitious people the people who need a little bit of encouragement a little bit of raising of their aspirations because I feel like of course yeah finding out about Eevee is part of the challenge I get that I get that there are the uh you know there's the draw bridge um on the castle but but maybe those people have already done the work by being your friends and now they can see this video um so I really recommend spreading the word um and trusting the curators here that they will not just throw around grants to anybody they the applicants will still need to um Dazzle uh so just a huge thank you I mean and wonderfully uh hosted as well yeah and I just want to add you know a thank you so much for putting this together I love the O Fellowship I love foris then extra love because I also follow the the substack it's uh uh sort of it's amazing to meet all I'm not very good at just writing to people and telling them oh this is such a great new idea so I guess this is the moment when I actually say I follow these grants and I think it's it's amazing what you guys are doing and and I'm very excited about it and it's lovely to meet all of you same here shti thank you we actually have like some of our fellows came from emergent Ventures as well and we did I think Tyler shared it and we got like a bunch of applications as well last year so thank you um but shuy Ben AR know thank you so much for taking the time today and just discussing this idea and giving people a sneak peek behind what goes on with the programs um I hope you guys had fun as well and everyone on the audience thank you so much for joining in as well we'll put this on YouTube um so please feel free to share it with anyone who you think might be interested in any of these programs thank you so much than see you take care bye