On Medici and Thiel

Until recently, idea capital in tech was constrained, and mostly only accessible by startup founders. If you had an idea for improving public society that required money and talent to execute, and you didn’t do it as a startup, you either had to get the EA community to care about it, or – as the old joke goes – convince Peter Thiel to fund it.

‍I believe that scaling up personal grantmaking as an individual, group, foundation, and company-sponsored practice holds the power to unlock a new sector of the economy — one that would quickly increase the scale and quality of companies and nonprofits we see founded in the future.

-Yearn started just doing grants or gifts for contributors after they did great work. Some studies have shown that financial incentives can inhibit creativity. Coordinape is based on the gift economy where every month there is a budget and the members receive give tokens which they can give to people and people receive compensation based on those g... See more