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.

There should be Retroactive Public Goods Funding for those founders crazy enough to try something truly new that failed as a business but succeeded in creating useful mutations, maybe even ticker tape parades, and certainly not derision.

Venture capital actually does a pretty great job here (the beauty of the model is a subject for a future piece, ... See more

Philanthropic foundations bias heavily towards granting large $ amounts exclusively to organizations (not individuals), meaning there are few existing avenues to fund promising people.

First, cultivate pools of talent that are very high in quality, even if very low in quantity. Recognize that people have already self-selected on media channels like Twitter, blogs, and podcasts, on discord/slack, or even in group houses. Design incentives to attract the applicants seeking the right things, for example by using an evaluation strate... See more

With a more decentralized structure, modern idea machines can “arm the rebels” right where they are, instead of hiring them into a foundation. The popularity of so-called regrantor programs (i.e. scout programs) reflects this trend, where talented individuals are given funding to make grants on behalf of the grantmaking organization.

Thiel can identify heterodox thinkers who aren’t blinded by Mimetic dogmas or intellectual fashions. He insists that there are still secrets left to uncover. Some are small and incremental. But the most valuable secrets are big enough to shake the world.