Talk for West Coast EA retreat, Apr 2026
- what are projects?
- a project is a labor of love
- projects vs schoolwork
- projects vs employment
- projects vs “orgs” or “startups”
- paul graham observes that trying to think of a “startup” leads you to plausible but bad ideas (?)
- why start projects?
- a lot of impact comes from creating the thing, ability to shape
- you learn a lot
- things that you don’t learn from joining an org
- learn a lot faster when you’re directly responsible
- it’s fun!
- “good for resume”
- motivations that help with starting projects
- surely I could do better than that
- huh this feels really easy and obvious
- “focus on the places where it feels like everyone else is dropping the ball”
- working with these colleagues/cofounders is great
- serving these people is great
- wow this is hard, but I think I can rise to the challenge
- riches, glory, “impact”
- lean into your advantages
- advantages of being young
- free time
- energy
- fluid intelligence, speed, rate of learning
- earnestness (naivety?)
- “we do these things not because they are easy, but because we thought they’d be easy”
- people want to help you, bet on you
- fewer obligations
- then all kinds of personal advantages
- eg me: coding, I find software fun, it’s also very leveraged
- I also read and type pretty fast, so decent at lots of info-processing things
- advantages of being old
- money
- connections
- reputation, track record
- taste (?)
- experience (?)
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- object level vs meta project
- my guess is people in this room are much more exposed to meta-level stuff
- meta can be kinda fake, disconnected from reality
- easier to think of meta projects when brainstorming, but startup costs are much higher, require a lot of getting people on board, overcoming cold start problem
- hot takes
- work on things for fun, rather than “impact” or “good on resume” or “i can get funding”
- making money >> getting funding
- when users give you money, you know that the thing you’re getting is positive sum; better feedback loops
- EA & AIS do not have a monopoly on effectiveness, altruism, truth, importance
- places I draw these from: startups, Catholicism
- should you do an incubator?
- … probably?
Who to read
- Paul Graham
