0:00

This is Epicenter episode 534 with

0:03

guest David Goldberg. Welcome

0:19

to Epicenter, the show which talks about

0:21

the technologies, projects and people driving decentralization

0:23

and the blockchain revolution. I'm Brian Crane

0:25

and today I'm speaking with David Goldberg. He's

0:28

the co-founder and CEO of Founderspledge. You're going

0:30

to learn a lot about Founderspledge. And

0:32

you know me, I've been sort of

0:34

part of that organization for quite a while.

0:36

Actually Frederic is also part of that. And

0:38

I think Sebastien joined as well at some

0:40

point. So a

0:43

few of our hosts are involved here. And

0:45

this is going to be a little bit of a different episode,

0:47

less crypto, but hopefully still interesting,

0:49

especially for all of the

0:52

people listening who are founders and who might

0:54

want to get involved because it's a great

0:56

thing to be involved. So thanks

0:58

so much for coming on, David. Well,

1:01

thanks for having me, Brian. I appreciate it. And

1:05

yeah, before we get into our chat with

1:07

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3:09

So yeah David thanks so much for coming

3:11

on I'm excited to speak with you. Maybe

3:13

just to get started tell us a

3:15

little bit like what's your story and how did you

3:18

end up starting Founders Glitch? Yeah

3:20

sure it's actually,

3:22

Founders Glitch is really about my

3:25

journey as it were. So

3:27

I'll maybe start at the beginning and

3:29

sort of quickly whiz through some of

3:31

the sort of pivotal moments that led

3:33

to where I am now. I'm from

3:35

California originally, boarded, raised, working

3:38

with us family. I

3:40

remember thinking as a young person everything

3:43

would be better if only my parents had more

3:46

money and that was sort of a really driving

3:48

idea for me as a young person. So

3:51

I dropped out of high school when I was

3:53

17, ended up trying

3:56

to find a job and getting one soon after I turned 18 at a

3:58

bank. And

4:01

I sort of got pretty lucky and

4:04

You know from 18 to 20 almost 22 works at a private bank essentially

4:10

selling mortgage-backed securities And

4:13

I certainly sort of hit my income

4:15

goals as a young person pretty quickly

4:18

But along the way got really unhappy as

4:21

most people do when they work in finance And

4:24

and spent you know three and a half years

4:27

Slogging away to make money only to

4:29

realize that you know Working,

4:32

you know 60 70 hours a week means that

4:34

you don't really have much capacity to spend that

4:36

money on anything at all I

4:39

ended up quitting that job as

4:42

I approached 22 moving to Europe for the first

4:44

time and Ended

4:47

up in Berlin where I started a business It

4:49

wasn't a sexy technology business or anything.

4:52

It was just a thing

4:54

that made money straightaway like a good

4:56

old-fashioned brick-and-mortar business business and I

5:00

ran it for two and a half years and sold it to a larger

5:03

company and found myself, you know 25

5:07

Sort of with a lot more

5:09

than I needed. I felt very very lucky like

5:11

I'd almost won the life lottery a couple of times

5:14

Yeah, I was born Despite

5:17

being born into like a relatively poor

5:19

family I was born a white man in

5:21

California in the 80s and And

5:24

it meant that by nature of sort of time

5:26

place That I was amongst the

5:28

wealthiest people ever to have existed even

5:30

though I didn't realize it or feel it as a young person

5:32

and I got really lucky in finance and

5:34

I got really lucky starting a business and it

5:37

just felt like if I didn't do

5:39

something to rebalance the karma scales that I'd I'd

5:43

be due a catastrophe or something and And

5:46

So I figured I'd spend a

5:48

couple of months giving away some money being a philanthropist.

5:51

I feel really good about it, you know And

5:54

then I'd move on to the next project and

5:56

I think this was a pretty naive perspective

5:59

to have had like that it would just

6:01

be like a snap of your fingers and

6:03

you give away a bunch of money

6:05

well and feel good. In

6:07

fact, my experience was like pretty

6:10

frustrating. I wanted to give

6:12

away money and I started to look into nonprofits

6:14

and what I found was like this ecosystem of

6:16

inefficiency and waste of ill-considered

6:20

choices and misincentives, donor

6:23

preferences, trumping sort of

6:25

charitable objectives and just like, you

6:28

know, like a fundamentally broken space

6:32

that, you know, if I were to put money into it,

6:34

it would just be like lighting it on fire. And

6:36

so I sort of

6:38

decided that I should probably do something about it

6:40

or at least figure out how to do something

6:42

about it. And that's sort of what started the

6:45

founder's pledge journey from

6:47

this, oh man,

6:49

how broken this is to

6:51

like, I should do something about it.

6:54

So yeah, I

6:56

didn't really know what to do or how to do it. So

6:59

I figured I'd figure out how to think about things better.

7:02

So I moved back to the US and finished high

7:04

school and then

7:07

went to university and did a double

7:10

and then came to UK to do a PhD. Okay,

7:14

so you went to college really late

7:16

then and sort of the mature one

7:19

surrounded by the young college

7:22

students. That's

7:24

right. It was a little awkward

7:26

at first, to be honest. I mean, I was

7:28

25 amongst, you know, teenagers really.

7:32

But it did provide me with a

7:34

bit more purpose and direction and sort

7:37

of like, yeah, focus, really.

7:40

I didn't really need to go out and party and do

7:42

the college thing in the way that lots of young people

7:44

do. I was there to learn, like I

7:46

had a really specific set of goals,

7:48

which was like figure out how the world

7:50

works and where the levers

7:54

for power exist and

7:56

figure out how to move them in the right ways. And

8:00

then how did you end up starting Founders College?

8:03

Yeah, so I ended up in the

8:05

UK working on a PhD. I dropped out

8:07

of that. Didn't really feel

8:09

like the right use of time. And

8:11

I joined an organization

8:14

that had this really interesting mission that really

8:17

appealed to me. It

8:19

was called Founders Forum for Good. And it

8:21

was an initiative of the Founders Forum group

8:23

here in the UK, which

8:26

is this annual gathering of

8:28

the good and the great of tech. So

8:31

it's like a really high-density,

8:33

high-quality group of tech

8:35

founders that came together for

8:38

one day every June in London for

8:41

a conference. And they'd been running

8:43

for ten years by the time I

8:45

joined to work on this nonprofit

8:47

initiative. And

8:49

my task was to help social

8:53

entrepreneurs that existed in the world

8:55

somewhere be more commercially

8:57

viable by leveraging the community

9:01

of the Founders Forum and bringing these sort

9:03

of exceptionally talented

9:05

tech founders who

9:09

had great commercial success into the sort

9:11

of realm of the social entrepreneur who

9:13

was using technology to scale their impact, sort

9:16

of in some way create a

9:18

bit of a matchmaking and sort of accelerator

9:20

for these businesses. And it was a

9:22

really cool idea that just didn't work,

9:26

mostly because the entrepreneurs that

9:28

we were trying to support with this

9:30

initiative weren't particularly good entrepreneurs, well-intentioned

9:33

as they were. They just didn't really have

9:35

the stuff that makes

9:37

a good executor. And

9:40

so Founders Pledge was the

9:42

result of this sort of failure,

9:45

I guess. I was trying to help

9:47

these socially-minded people be better commercially. And

9:50

the idea was sort of just, what

9:52

if we help great commercial entrepreneurs be more

9:55

social? And

9:58

then I was like, I should maybe build the

10:00

thing. that I wanted when I sold my business.

10:02

How does one figure out how to

10:04

allocate capital for maximum social impact

10:07

when that capital is scarce and data

10:09

is limited? That

10:11

sort of became the idea for Founders' Pledge and started

10:15

as this initiative to

10:17

get people to commit, to give a percentage of what

10:19

they make if they ever sell their business to

10:21

charity and expanded from that

10:24

basic commitment to a much

10:26

bigger ecosystem of social

10:29

impact. I can get into

10:31

the details if that's helpful as well. Yeah, let's

10:33

get into the details totally. So

10:38

the basic premise is everyone

10:40

who becomes a member of Founders' Pledge makes

10:43

a pledge, as the name suggests. And it's

10:45

not just for Founders, although most

10:48

people assume it is. It's Founders,

10:50

Investors, VCs, and meaningful shareholders or

10:52

wealth holders. And everyone

10:54

makes some form of pledge. Typically

10:56

it's a percentage of their personal

10:58

proceeds on exit. So if they ever have liquidity

11:00

in that business, they donate 5%, 10%, 25%

11:02

of what they make personally

11:05

to nonprofits of their choice. So

11:08

each person who pledges can decide the amount that they

11:10

want to pledge. And it really

11:12

does range from the low end, which is 5%, all

11:14

the way up to 99% in the high

11:17

end. And

11:19

when someone has pledged, they become a member. We have about

11:21

1,900 members now from 40 countries. And

11:25

it's our job as a nonprofit, once someone

11:27

has joined, to really take them on a

11:29

journey and help them skill up, often from

11:31

naive but well-intentioned philanthropists when they join, to

11:34

really empower Changemaker by the time they have

11:36

liquidity to deploy. And what

11:38

that means in practice is, in a normal year, we'll

11:40

host 30 to 40 events all over the

11:42

world. These are typically small dinners

11:45

in our members' homes or in

11:48

restaurants where we'll bring 10

11:50

to 20 people together, put

11:52

them around a table, have a thought leader or expert

11:55

guided discussion on some topic of relevance. Or

11:58

we really dig into the meat and substance of it. an

12:00

issue like how do we deal

12:02

with the mental health crisis in America

12:05

or how do we deal with the mental health crisis

12:07

in Sub-Saharan Africa where it's just as extreme or how

12:10

do we empower women and girls or

12:12

how do we educate the bottom billion when they're

12:15

often not well enough to even go to school.

12:18

We try to provide context and frame

12:20

to some of the bigger and more relevant issues

12:23

of our time in the process, educate

12:26

our members, help them connect with each other

12:28

around shared interests and

12:31

really level up in terms of

12:33

their knowledge and what

12:36

can be done to affect these

12:38

issues in a positive way. This

12:42

program lasts for as long as it need last. We've

12:45

been around for about 10 years now

12:47

and so some people joined in year

12:49

one and still haven't had an exit. Some

12:52

people joined in year one and had an exit in year two. So

12:55

the whole idea of this community and this

12:57

program is that we

12:59

are here to constantly support

13:02

knowledge and action

13:07

for social impact. So

13:11

we do these events, we publish

13:13

a fair bit of research

13:15

on our website and do programming

13:18

both on and offline. And then

13:21

we have some infrastructure that we've

13:23

built to enable impact at real scale. So

13:25

there are two forms here.

13:27

The first is the actual financial infrastructure. It's

13:30

not just enough that people commit to give, it's that they

13:33

actually have to give. And so

13:35

sometimes it's really

13:37

challenging to donate money across the world, especially

13:39

if you live in America

13:41

or the UK or

13:44

Germany. The

13:48

government doesn't really like you to move

13:51

hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars from

13:53

the UK to Kenya or South

13:56

Africa or India.

13:58

And so we've built essentially a... Foundation as a

14:00

service that all of

14:03

our members are able to use that

14:05

enables them to donate to a single

14:07

nonprofit entity, Founders Pledge, get

14:09

a tax receipt for that donation wherever they're a

14:11

tax resident, and then Founders

14:13

Pledge deploys that money on

14:15

their behalf, does all of their grant making end-to-end

14:18

to enable impact to

14:20

happen wherever it's most necessary. So

14:22

we aren't constrained by the same

14:24

types of rules and regulations

14:26

that an individual might be subject to. And

14:29

so our donor advised fund, which is this

14:32

foundation as a service, is zero cost, it's

14:34

global first, and the majority of

14:36

our members who actually end up giving

14:39

to charity use it. And

14:42

then the final piece here is we have a big

14:44

research team, sort of like a think tank, that does

14:46

all of the heavy lifting to

14:48

figure out where best to give if you care

14:50

about women

14:53

and girls, or helping children more broadly,

14:55

or education, or poverty, or climate

14:58

change, or fighting

15:00

inequality, or racial justice. So

15:03

our team focuses on identifying

15:05

the most pressing issue areas, finding

15:07

the best interventions within them, and

15:09

then identifying charities, implementing those interventions that are the

15:12

absolute best in the world, that's the thing that

15:14

they do, and can productively absorb

15:16

more capital, such that someone

15:18

can arrive to us, you know,

15:21

without any real background in charity, just a

15:24

knowledge that they want to give back if

15:26

they have success, learn about

15:28

how to do that over the course of time, have

15:30

that exit event, donate to charity, and

15:33

then deploy that capital to the very best things in the

15:35

world, all for free using

15:37

Founders Pledge. Yeah,

15:40

very cool. Yeah, I mean, personally,

15:42

someone introduced me to you

15:45

guys, I guess I was like, just around

15:48

when I started course one, and then I

15:51

took that pledge, I think 2018, it was,

15:53

you know, right at the beginning. And so

15:55

it's sort of been part of that organization

15:57

as well. And taking that

16:00

pledge and and and

16:02

participated in some of

16:05

the things that we've been doing for a long

16:07

time. And I think that's really, really great, both in terms

16:09

of you

16:11

know, content, people, like learning and and yeah,

16:13

I can sort of attest to the support

16:15

you guys have provided also in in

16:19

terms of getting a little bit right, I

16:21

think for the most part, still, but we

16:23

haven't sold course one and no plans for that,

16:26

but you know, a little bit already

16:28

been able to sort of leverage you

16:30

guys's support in that regard. And

16:33

the funny thing is not everyone who pledges

16:35

ever, you know, not everyone has an

16:37

exit and some people are just going to build really

16:40

great revenue positive dividend businesses

16:43

that never end up going to sell. And

16:46

some people are going to close down their businesses

16:48

without ever having a liquidation event or a liquidity

16:50

event because it's just not viable and others are

16:53

going to have IPOs. The point is in pledging,

16:55

everyone makes a similar

16:58

form of a commitment and that commitment is, you

17:01

know, one that we

17:04

expect our members to abide by, it's

17:06

legally framed, even though we don't legally

17:08

enforce it. And so this act of signing a

17:10

contract, signing a pledge that says

17:13

I'm going to do this as and when I

17:15

have wealth to do so, I think is the

17:17

thing that really matters and creates the sort of

17:19

common thread of unity between the 1900 people

17:22

who are part of Founders

17:24

Pledge. But it also means that

17:26

once you are a member, you can

17:28

use all of the support that we provide

17:31

for your benefit. So some

17:34

people give as

17:36

part of their, out of their anything every

17:38

year from their salary. And it's certainly

17:40

not in the millions of dollars, but that

17:43

doesn't make it any less relevant or important.

17:45

And we're happy to provide the same support

17:47

that we would if there was a liquidity

17:50

event as if you're giving to charity from

17:52

your salary. So we're a resource

17:54

the moment someone joins. And

17:56

then, I mean, we have lots of people

17:59

living in the listening to this podcast, right, who've

18:01

been in crypto for a long time and including

18:03

lots of founders. Is

18:05

there like, can anyone, you

18:08

know, who's a founder, or you

18:11

mentioned, we see as well, can anyone join or

18:13

is there some sort of selection

18:17

you guys have? Or like, how does that work? Yeah,

18:20

it's a good question. So we

18:23

are an invite only community. But practically

18:25

speaking, if someone reaches out to us and

18:27

says, Hey, I'd like to join Founders Pledge,

18:29

and I'm really early on in my business,

18:31

and I'm 10 years away from having any

18:33

real money, but I'd still like to join,

18:35

we're gonna have them join, of course,

18:37

we talked to everyone who we invite to join, though,

18:40

so you can just sort of go to our website

18:42

and sign up. So if

18:44

you're interested, you're listening, founders

18:46

pledge.com has a ton more information, you can reach out

18:48

and have a conversation with one of our team. You

18:51

know, we have a pretty strict no

18:53

assholes policy. And, and

18:56

what that means practically is we just want to talk

18:58

to everyone and make sure there's value alignment. You

19:01

can imagine that there's people in the world

19:03

who would like to be a part of

19:05

this just for the image boost or signaling

19:07

benefit that it could create for them. And

19:09

those people, they're pretty

19:11

easy to spot, they sort of stick out

19:13

like a, like a sore thumb. So

19:17

having a conversation is just an easy way to sort of

19:20

get a sense of why people are

19:22

joining and, and

19:25

who they are and what they're working on. So typically,

19:27

we look for

19:29

people who are growing venture backed technology

19:31

companies, although we work with a number

19:33

of individuals and families now that, you

19:35

know, come from multi generational wealth, and

19:38

you know, their investors and

19:41

in front of all funds and

19:43

companies, but really their

19:45

commitment to philanthropy is longer rooted, and they want

19:48

some support there as well. And so we

19:50

help people in all sorts of capacities. The

19:53

basic condition is that

19:55

they have the desire to do good.

19:59

And I think Ideally doing as

20:02

much good as possible using data. So

20:04

there's like everything, a spectrum.

20:09

And on one hand you have someone who just wants to give

20:11

because the act of giving makes them feel

20:13

nice. And on the other hand you have someone who wants to

20:15

give because the act of giving affects

20:18

beneficiaries as

20:21

much as possible. So like we're more interested

20:23

in the, we wanna have

20:25

as much impact as possible. So if someone comes to us

20:27

and says, I'm an

20:29

early employee at Crypto Company

20:31

X and I've done

20:34

well by putting my money

20:36

into the right protocols early on.

20:40

And I wanna give a bunch of money away. We're

20:42

really happy to work with people like that as well. And

20:45

then I guess a lot of

20:48

the founders

20:50

joining, they have some business,

20:52

they pledge equity. But then of course in

20:54

crypto often, people

20:57

create some protocol and

20:59

tokens and that fits just

21:02

as well in that framework. But yeah. You

21:06

can pledge coins, tokens, any

21:10

number of types of instruments,

21:13

whatever they are. The

21:15

thing for us and ultimately we're like a bit

21:17

of consequentialist. We just care that the thing actually

21:20

happens. Like if there's people who want to use

21:22

their resources to give back and affect the world

21:24

positively, then we're happy to help them do that.

21:28

For you like building Founders Pledge, what have

21:31

been your biggest, your biggest

21:33

learning center things that surprised you the

21:35

most? Yeah, that's a good question.

21:38

I guess one of the things that I decided

21:40

really early on about Founders Pledge is that it

21:42

needed to be set up with the right incentives. So

21:45

there's lots of good

21:47

intentions out in the world. And

21:49

I think a lot of sort of

21:51

poorly designed businesses and

21:54

nonprofits, poorly designed in

21:56

the sense that they don't take

21:58

into account how your incentive is. devising good

22:01

behavior or bad behavior. So one of

22:03

the things that was important to me was that Founders Pledge

22:06

never have to sell the survive

22:09

or compromise its integrity for funding.

22:12

So everything we do

22:14

for our members, we do for free. This was a

22:17

choice that we made. And what it means practically

22:19

is that someone can show

22:21

up at Founders Pledge, make a pledge, come

22:23

to 20 dinners over the course of

22:25

five years, have an exit,

22:28

donate money into our donor-advised fund, work

22:31

with our advisors and use our

22:34

research, and then deploy all of their

22:36

capital and never spend

22:38

a single penny on

22:41

Founders Pledge. Like it's free free. And

22:44

this is important because it enables

22:47

us to focus on the

22:49

main thing, which is impact. You

22:51

can imagine a world in which, you know, we charge

22:53

for each piece of what we do where it creates

22:56

barriers for entry on one hand for the

22:58

people to join. And on another hand, for

23:00

us to actually try to

23:02

sort of scrape cash off the top so that

23:04

we can fund ourselves by

23:06

focusing on just impact and only

23:09

impact and enabling our

23:11

members to work with

23:13

us in a way that there's never any question

23:15

about what we care about. It

23:18

means that our sort of integrity is

23:21

above reproach and

23:25

the main thing is impact. The

23:28

flip side of that coin is I have

23:30

to go out every year and fundraise to keep the lights on and

23:32

my team paid. And, you

23:34

know, as a team of 65, it's not

23:36

inexpensive. And so Founders Pledge is

23:39

funded through donations as a nonprofit ourselves that

23:43

come to us through existing

23:45

philanthropists, foundations, nonprofits, a couple of

23:47

corporates give us money because

23:50

they like who we are and what we do. And

23:53

only if someone has derived value

23:55

from working with Founders Pledge, having

23:58

used our support and our. services, they

24:01

can choose to support us if they want. So by

24:04

providing this for free and focusing

24:06

on impact above all else, our

24:09

members who have got this free service still

24:11

choose to support us as a nonprofit of

24:13

their own accord. And so this this

24:15

means that only when we provide value do

24:19

people end up funding us. So it

24:21

does keep this nice alignment in in

24:25

both donor interests,

24:28

impact and our own focus.

24:31

So I guess the

24:33

learning is like do the right thing even if it's the

24:35

hard one. And it certainly

24:37

has been hard, right? Like I

24:40

have a little bit of an

24:42

existential crisis every year about sort

24:44

of September, October when I look

24:47

at our fundraising numbers for the year and I see you know

24:50

we are off by some number of

24:52

millions of dollars and there's like three months left in

24:54

the year and if we

24:56

don't raise enough money then I

24:58

have to reduce the head cap next year

25:00

or reduce cost in some other way. So

25:04

it makes it really

25:06

challenging but it also

25:09

makes it impact first. I guess

25:12

that's one of my big

25:14

learnings. The other is focusing

25:17

on people like so Founders

25:19

Plunge is its team, we are

25:22

employees and it's

25:26

really hard managing a team of 65

25:29

people well. I

25:31

figured that because we were an

25:33

impact company nonprofit that

25:36

it would be somehow easier to maintain

25:38

company culture but it turns out it's

25:40

actually not. It's maybe

25:43

even more challenging because not

25:45

only do you have a social purpose like

25:47

people join because of

25:49

the mission but also you have the same

25:52

sort of human condition issues that

25:55

you know every business faces and

25:57

so you have people who really

25:59

care and have joined Founders Pledge instead

26:02

of Google or wherever else,

26:05

any number of interesting places that would have paid them

26:07

more money because of the

26:09

social purpose and the

26:11

impact that we create. And

26:13

that just heightens the stakes. And

26:16

it means that focus on culture for

26:18

us has become increasingly,

26:20

increasingly important. And

26:23

ensuring that we are being

26:26

the best we can as a

26:29

company and as leaders of that

26:31

company is. What

26:33

have you learned about building a great company

26:35

culture? That

26:38

your values are everything. You live

26:40

or die by your values. And

26:44

that like a great head of people is like

26:46

a crucial part of maintaining

26:48

company culture and embedding that in all that we do.

26:52

One of the great things that I learned from a

26:55

coach a couple of years ago was like if you

26:57

aren't hiring, firing, promoting, and

26:59

rewarding based on your values, then

27:01

you don't really have values. Our

27:04

values should enable us to make decisions that

27:09

we otherwise wouldn't be able to make absent a set of

27:11

values. Like ours are maximize

27:13

impact, take action, energize

27:16

others, and follow the data. And

27:18

we do that in all that we do. So whenever there's

27:20

a question about what's the right course of action, we look

27:22

to our values to say what should we

27:24

be doing? What does the data say? Is

27:26

this going to maximize impact or minimize

27:28

impact? Like is doing this

27:31

going to be good in the short term but

27:33

actually really kill

27:35

the momentum of this team or this project?

27:40

And yeah, and so I think

27:42

company culture is the product of good

27:45

leaders, like

27:47

strong values that you live and breathe and

27:51

like a clear purpose. Are

27:55

there some mistakes that you made in

27:58

this sort of with

28:01

regards to building company culture that

28:03

you feel like really shaped you

28:05

and ended up being

28:07

something like, okay, we have to do this

28:09

different layer or some things that you

28:12

only realize later. I

28:14

mean, hiring well is really important

28:17

and also really hard. We've

28:20

made a ton of mistakes with hiring, assuming

28:24

that what

28:27

seems to be surface level value alignments but

28:29

isn't really tested well, coupled

28:31

with just smarts,

28:34

cleverness, brute IQ will

28:36

lead to good results. So to

28:38

be more specific, we had a much less

28:40

rigorous hiring process in the early days of Founders' Pledge.

28:43

It was like, oh, cool, you

28:45

have a pulse. You say you like what we

28:47

do. You're happy to work hard. Great,

28:50

you've got a job. We need people. Compared

28:53

to now where I think we have seven

28:55

or eight different interviews, which seems like a

28:57

bit over the top. But

29:00

when you think about what's

29:02

required to hire

29:05

an employee, we

29:07

spend a huge amount of time when someone

29:10

has been offered a job, scaling them up,

29:12

getting them fed into our systems. It

29:15

takes two months before they're really net

29:17

positive on the system. So

29:20

if you hire poorly, then you're

29:22

basically wasting two months of valuable

29:24

time, not just of that employee but of

29:26

the people that train that employee. So

29:30

we have a much more intentional

29:32

and substantive hiring process with lots of

29:34

different interviews, values interviews. And

29:37

now at the end of every stage, when

29:39

someone is sort of past every other hurdle, they

29:42

have an interview with two people of our team

29:45

and it's selected at random who do sort

29:47

of culture fit interviews. So they

29:49

can actually understand what it's like to work with us. Because

29:52

if we hire someone poorly, then

29:54

it takes us months

29:57

to undo the damage and real cost.

30:00

So that's one piece of it. So

30:04

just asking, I'm curious about this,

30:06

I think that's an interesting topic,

30:08

like how you

30:10

go from, you know, sort

30:13

of, you know,

30:15

hearing someone say, okay, you know,

30:17

I share those values to like

30:19

understanding if they actually do and

30:21

sort of digging deeper there or

30:23

like, what are

30:26

the methods that you use for that?

30:29

Yeah, I mean, we have a set of questions that

30:31

we ask about sort of like, how would you make

30:33

a decision about X? Like talk to

30:35

us about how you think about this process. Like what

30:37

are the steps that you'd go through in order to

30:39

go from A to Z?

30:44

And we sort of like how

30:47

I've heard consulting firms

30:49

like Interview, like big five consulting firms

30:51

interview, like how many tubes of toothpaste

30:53

are sold in the UK each year?

30:56

Like obviously, you know, your average person, even

30:58

your average clever person isn't going to be

31:00

able to come up with the correct answer,

31:02

even with wide error bars.

31:04

But how they think about it is the more important bit, like

31:07

what's the process that you go through to determine how many tubes

31:09

of toothpaste are sold in the UK? So

31:11

we do a similar sort of thing, but like, you

31:14

have a member, you know, create a

31:16

fictional scenario. How

31:19

would you how would you address their concern or their

31:21

issue? How would you deal with a

31:23

time sensitive request on a

31:25

Friday night that was needed

31:27

to go out by Monday morning? And

31:30

so we ask people to walk through it and there

31:32

aren't right or wrong answers. There's just how people think

31:34

about it and how what

31:38

the path they suggest says

31:41

about their value set and their alignment

31:43

with ours. And it doesn't

31:45

necessarily need to be the case that like

31:47

people arrive with, you know, fully

31:49

formed values that are our values. It's

31:51

just they need to also demonstrate a

31:53

willingness to absorb them and sort of

31:55

operate with them. I

31:57

think part I think part of it is having a great. sort

32:00

of head of people or

32:02

HR team that design this process

32:04

for each company. Like what our processes is

32:06

going to be different than what another company's

32:10

process is that has a different culture.

32:13

Not better or worse, just different. Let's

32:16

talk a little bit about like impact.

32:18

So maybe first of

32:20

all, what do you

32:22

think in your personal view, like what

32:24

are the biggest areas where, you

32:27

know, if impact can be had or, you

32:29

know, the most urgent things that you

32:32

feel need to be addressed? There's

32:35

a lot, right? So it's

32:37

first worth saying that the world has

32:40

been getting increasingly better year on year

32:42

since the eighties. Like

32:44

there's less poverty, there's less suffering, there's

32:47

less death, there's less disease overall,

32:50

we're getting better. Even

32:52

though day to day it

32:54

can often feel like things have never

32:56

been worse. There's war, there's conflict, there's

33:00

famine, there's pandemics,

33:02

there's just like a spate

33:04

of bad news that sort of pours at

33:07

us nonstop.

33:10

So it's first worth saying that things are getting better.

33:12

They have been getting better. And this has been the

33:14

result of like really dedicated

33:16

and direct

33:18

and hard work at addressing some

33:21

of our biggest problems like extreme

33:23

poverty and malnutrition

33:27

and economic impoverishment.

33:31

But the areas that I'm most

33:33

interested in today are a combination

33:36

of sort of what you might

33:38

expect and some interesting

33:40

news stuff. So despite

33:43

our gains in global health and well-being,

33:45

there is still like a lot of

33:47

work left to do around poverty,

33:50

especially in low and middle income countries. So I think

33:52

this is an area that continues to be like

33:56

exceptionally valuable and high impact.

34:00

And I'm speaking about the bottom

34:02

billion living on less than $3 a day. I'm

34:06

speaking about empowering

34:10

women and girls. I'm speaking about education in

34:13

low-income contexts, about

34:15

malnutrition, about displaced people. I think these are

34:18

all big areas where thoughtful

34:20

philanthropists can have outsized impact alongside

34:24

more top-able

34:27

things like the climate crisis, which

34:30

in the

34:32

last couple of years has seen the

34:34

amount of money flowing into climate philanthropy

34:37

just skyrocket. So it's a very well-funded

34:40

space now. And

34:42

despite that, there is still a huge

34:44

amount of work left to do

34:46

and really interesting areas for more

34:49

or more funding is needed that are just being ignored

34:52

by many of the larger funders out

34:54

there. And this is typically

34:56

around preventing carbon

34:58

lock-in in low-income economies and

35:01

changing the innovation environment

35:03

in high-income countries to

35:05

enable technologies

35:08

to progress at

35:10

a much faster pace such that we

35:12

can transition out of

35:15

dirty power into cleaner power and

35:17

in the process deal with a

35:19

huge amount of necessary carbon sequestration.

35:23

And then the other big issue I'd say

35:25

is while

35:27

things have been getting better generally and

35:30

for the majority of people out

35:32

there, we are still sort

35:36

of playing roulette with

35:38

a bunch of other big issues

35:41

like global catastrophic risks. So

35:43

I think it's not

35:45

an exaggeration to say that this pandemic that

35:47

we had in 2020, which seems

35:50

to be mostly behind us, was predictable and

35:53

predicted and expected, and we

35:56

will have more of this. This is not

35:58

the last pandemic that we will experience that

36:00

our generation will experience, for

36:02

sure. And we

36:04

were caught unawares last time, mostly,

36:08

and the result was lots of people died. And

36:12

we should expect pandemics

36:14

to continue and

36:18

maybe won't be as lucky as last time because

36:20

we had this sort of naturally occurring

36:23

zootropic pandemic that didn't

36:26

kill anywhere near the number of people that could

36:30

have, like smallpox, killed a

36:33

vastly large number of people. Vastly

36:35

larger number of people. So there

36:37

is these global catastrophic risks like pandemics

36:41

and other biosecurity threats, as

36:43

well as potential for

36:46

nuclear war and autonomous

36:48

weapons systems and military AI. There's

36:50

a whole bunch of scary things

36:52

happening that philanthropists can

36:56

be focusing their energy on to make

36:58

better. One

37:01

thing that comes to mind here that

37:03

just seems to be sort of an

37:05

inherent challenge with nonprofits

37:08

and philanthropy is if

37:10

you start a for-profit

37:12

company, then there's the sort

37:15

of obvious way that you can measure

37:18

success, which is, OK, do you generate

37:20

profits? Like how much revenues do you

37:23

have? What do you cost? Like how

37:25

is that developing? And

37:27

you have this real like feedback system

37:30

where if you do a crappy job, like, well,

37:32

you're probably going to go out of business and

37:34

it's going to be over. And

37:38

so you have that kind of regulatory

37:40

mechanism that the market provides.

37:43

Of course, with

37:46

nonprofits, you're getting money

37:48

from some donors and then

37:50

you do something and

37:53

whether that something works or not, I

37:57

imagine is a lot harder to assess. Absolutely.

38:01

It's one of the big conundrums and one of

38:03

the reasons that the nonprofit ecosystem is so inefficient

38:05

is because there is no feedback loop. Because

38:08

the donor isn't the person who receives the good

38:10

or the service and the person who does the

38:12

beneficiary has no mechanism to feedback to that donor

38:15

that the thing was good or bad or that

38:17

they are better off as a result of it.

38:20

Which is why much

38:23

of the work that we do is really

38:25

important because it provides the transparency, the feedback

38:27

loop, the check on

38:29

input to say that the outcome

38:31

was worth the actual cost. So

38:35

like most of the work

38:37

that our research team does is

38:39

around understanding the interaction between inputs

38:41

and outcomes and

38:43

building cost effectiveness models to

38:45

assess whether an input

38:47

into charity X or charity Y or charity Z

38:51

is the most effective on a dollar per dollar basis.

38:53

And it's like is

38:56

the outcome in terms of a unified

38:58

metric around quality of life or

39:00

reduction of disability burden or income

39:03

doubling better at one of these three charities

39:05

and if so which one and by how

39:07

much. And then also it's sort

39:09

of helping donors

39:13

so we can analogize them to investors

39:15

to understand like where am I

39:17

going to get the most return to what point.

39:20

So there's another interesting sort of quirk

39:23

to the nonprofit sector which is

39:25

there's a room

39:27

for funding that most charities have almost

39:29

nonprofits have which is to say that

39:31

like in

39:33

a given year they can use

39:35

X amount of dollars to do their

39:38

work after which more

39:40

dollars actually don't change

39:42

anything. It goes into sort of their

39:45

reserve budget and they can't spend it because they don't

39:47

have the capacity to. So assessing

39:49

how much a charity can productively use

39:52

in a specific period of time is also

39:54

like a crucial point because you

39:56

know ostensibly we don't want to

39:58

over fund a nonprofit. profit, to have

40:00

our money that has value

40:03

in the time that we're giving

40:05

it, to just go and sit in someone's

40:07

bank account to not actually be used, not

40:09

be implemented. So understanding your

40:12

additionality is really

40:15

crucial. So like funding charities at the right amount.

40:18

So when we do an analysis,

40:20

we understand the cost effectiveness of

40:22

dollars, pounds, euros, or

40:24

hundreds of thousands or millions. And

40:26

then we provide funding

40:28

recommendations to the

40:31

world and our members to say, we think this

40:33

charity can productively absorb four

40:35

million more dollars this year after which their

40:39

funding, their efficiency just falls

40:41

off a cliff because they are going to have

40:43

to hire up a new

40:45

team, scale into a new

40:48

region, and we

40:50

have much less clarity about whether they can do that

40:52

well. And so we often are

40:54

making recommendations that say, but four

40:57

million dollars here, two million dollars there, half a

40:59

million there, because that's the

41:01

actual amounts that nonprofits can productively use.

41:04

And in a sense, we have this feedback loop

41:06

through the Founders' Pledge modeling

41:09

and analysis that we do to say that it's

41:11

the best use of that next dollar. And

41:15

that's where

41:18

some of the secret sauce comes in, I guess. Yeah,

41:21

I mean, I guess there's sort of

41:23

another maybe slightly

41:26

perverse incentive, right, where the

41:29

nonprofit itself maybe doesn't

41:31

have really the incentive.

41:34

I mean, of course, they

41:36

have the incentive to sort

41:38

of showcase what they're doing as

41:41

highly effective and probably not incentivized

41:43

to be like, oh, actually. To

41:47

do that kind of data analysis and that

41:49

kind of reflection on the effectiveness of what

41:52

they're doing in like an

41:54

unbiased way, do you think it's

41:56

necessary to have? Or like, to what

41:58

extent do you see? nonprofits

42:00

themselves do that kind of analysis effectively or

42:02

do you think it's crucial to have a

42:05

sort of neutral

42:07

third party like you guys do this?

42:10

I think it's really important to have someone

42:13

to come in and do the analysis. You

42:15

can rely on a

42:18

nonprofit's own internal analysis to a

42:20

point, but it's like having

42:22

a student check their own homework. They're

42:28

almost always going to give themselves top marks if

42:30

left to their own devices. One

42:33

of the things that we look for is real

42:36

data transparency and transparency in operations. If

42:38

a charity never talks

42:40

about the mistakes that

42:42

they've made, then they're hiding something from you.

42:46

Like, universally, this is the case. Founders

42:48

Bunch makes mistakes and we write about them on a

42:50

blog. Our

42:54

mistakes are as important as our

42:56

successes. I think that

42:59

it's probably pretty important to have someone

43:03

aside from the implementing organization itself

43:07

or the donor's family

43:09

office do some analysis. It's the reason

43:11

why most wealthy, successful

43:13

people work with external

43:17

wealth advisors. There's

43:19

a couple of reasons why they do. The first is obviously

43:21

like there's the opportunity cost of

43:23

doing it yourself, the lack of brain

43:25

share, just the number of things that

43:27

any successful wealthy person has to

43:29

do is often more

43:32

than they have the capacity to do. And

43:35

then there's the expertise that comes with that

43:38

specialization. I

43:42

certainly couldn't tell you the first thing about

43:45

where to invest your money in

43:47

public markets, but I could talk for

43:50

days about how to deploy philanthropic capital

43:52

to fix poverty

43:54

in Sub-Saharan Africa. And

43:57

that specialization, a couple of

44:00

things. with the sort of remove

44:02

from the self, like bringing

44:05

someone in to help you think about it, I think it's like

44:07

a really crucial part of

44:10

success. And I don't know many

44:12

philanthropists who do it all themselves. One

44:15

thing I'm curious about, so

44:17

I mean I guess the

44:20

you know there's this maybe

44:23

sort of philosophy or brand

44:26

of you know effective altruism,

44:28

which you know I guess it sort of falls

44:30

under and that at

44:32

least with you know of course the

44:35

most famous effective altruist or

44:38

you know at least on the surface look like

44:40

it you know Sam Bankman-Free that's sort of maybe

44:43

gotten a bit of bad

44:46

reputation. I'm curious has

44:48

that affected you? Do you feel like there

44:50

are some lessons to draw from from that?

44:55

Yeah I mean I think it's a good question. I think

44:58

there's a lot of good

45:00

thinking that has happened within

45:02

the effective altruist community and

45:05

I think that there

45:10

have also been a lot of bad

45:12

apples in the EA community that have

45:15

almost certainly for worse tarnished

45:18

the what

45:21

is you know good thinking through

45:23

their bad behavior. So I'd

45:26

say that we are sort of

45:28

influenced by EA in some way.

45:30

We've sort of learned

45:32

a lot from how effective altruists think

45:34

about the world but

45:36

have developed our own thesis, our own

45:38

viewpoint. That is I would

45:41

say maybe a bit more

45:44

humanistic than your you know

45:47

strongly utilitarian EA person

45:52

and yeah we care about

45:54

data, we care about measurements, we try

45:56

to take sort of rational approaches to

45:58

things, we try to maximize impact

46:00

where we can and

46:02

where different methodologies can

46:05

help us. We learn from those methodologies

46:07

and incorporate that into our own. But

46:11

to paint everyone who's a part of

46:13

EA with the same

46:16

brush that SPF has used,

46:18

I think is like intellectually

46:20

sloppy and ridiculous. So

46:22

you said you're a bit more

46:24

humanistic in your approach. What

46:27

does that mean? So

46:29

it means that we take like,

46:33

we are not working in an artificial construct in

46:35

the sense that like these are the only things

46:37

that you should focus on because this is the

46:40

truth and its objective truth and anyone else who

46:42

thinks differently is wrong. Like that's a sort of

46:45

an approach that discounts the human experience.

46:47

So our perspective is that like people

46:50

have lived experiences and those lived experiences

46:52

shape who we are and what we

46:54

care about. And rather

46:56

than saying, you must ignore them

46:58

to focus on impact. Like

47:00

we lean into how does

47:03

one's personal story constrain

47:06

them or expand their capacity to do good

47:08

or bad. Like as an example, my

47:11

father died of cancer five years ago. My aunt

47:13

died of cancer a couple of years after that.

47:16

Cancer has affected me in a really profound way. And

47:19

to pretend that it hasn't would be sort

47:21

of doing a disservice to my

47:23

family and my

47:25

own perspective about the world. But

47:29

rather than saying I focus my energy on

47:31

cancer because I've experienced it in my personal

47:33

life, I

47:35

focus on how can we use

47:37

data to best affect things

47:40

related to cancer. Maybe not as a first order

47:42

impact, but as a second order impact. So one

47:44

of the things that I've funded myself is

47:48

micro and macronutrient fortification, which tends

47:51

to result in a couple

47:53

of countries across sub-Saharan Africa, a much

47:55

higher incidence than stomach cancer. So

47:57

by following data and trying to understand like where we can

48:00

affect cancer. I've uncovered that

48:02

micron macronutrient fortification, which leads to

48:04

the healthy development of the gut,

48:08

is a thing that needs

48:10

support in sub-Saharan Africa. And

48:14

because this is so prevalent, stomach cancer is

48:16

higher in the areas where these micron

48:20

macronutrients are less available. So

48:22

I fund that now. And the first order

48:24

impact is people live healthier, happier

48:26

lives. And the second order impact is that they have

48:29

less incidence of stomach cancer. Now, it's not

48:31

lung cancer that killed my father or, well,

48:34

to myeloma that killed my aunt, but

48:36

it's still focusing on the things that

48:38

have shaped my journey and

48:41

guide me into giving in areas that

48:43

might be unexpected. You

48:46

find it sometimes challenging that people

48:48

come in and they have sort

48:50

of their personal

48:53

preferences with regards

48:55

to some, I don't know,

48:57

I really like dogs and my

48:59

favorite thing is the dog. And so I

49:01

want to put my money there even though

49:04

maybe it's sort of questionable. Well, I

49:06

guess it depends what you care about,

49:08

right? So we ask

49:10

the question, why do you like dogs? So we

49:13

try to get to the so what of what

49:15

people say, what they

49:17

care about. And do I find it

49:19

challenging? Sometimes, of course. But it's

49:21

part of what we do is help people

49:23

to find their sort

49:26

of intrinsic and core values,

49:29

uncover them. Like they're there somewhere, but

49:32

often people care about animals, but without

49:34

a real sense of necessarily why. Like

49:37

what is it about animals that you care about? And

49:40

maybe it's

49:42

that they just like love the companionship

49:44

of dogs and don't like to see dogs

49:46

suffer. And so

49:48

we can then sort of try to understand animal

49:50

suffering and what does that actually mean? So if

49:52

you don't want to see dogs suffer, but do

49:54

you care about pigs as well? Do you

49:57

care about cows? Do you care about chickens? And so like

49:59

we can sort of... of go from this

50:02

narrow space of I care about dogs

50:04

specifically and dogs in my neighborhood to

50:06

like how do animals experience suffering

50:08

and can we do anything to affect that. And

50:12

so we try to on one hand

50:15

understand where someone starts

50:18

and what they care about and on the other

50:20

sort of expand their moral circle from

50:22

the thing that they've said very specifically to

50:26

what else could be included in that. During

50:30

the time you've been interested in philanthropy, what

50:33

are the biggest things I've changed? That's

50:37

a good question. I think there's

50:39

been a real

50:41

proliferation of organizations

50:43

focused on data. I

50:46

mean, when I had my exit back

50:48

in 2008, there was just like nothing.

50:55

There was no real data that I could find

50:57

and the internet was still in

51:00

its infancy and innocence, right? Or

51:02

at least there was certainly much less

51:05

available information about philanthropy,

51:07

about impact, about RCTs

51:09

and sort of the types of studies that

51:12

often our work relies upon. But

51:15

there's been like a real proliferation of organizations

51:17

doing analysis of sort

51:19

of philanthropic groups. Donor

51:21

advised funds have become a far

51:23

more common

51:26

structure alongside

51:29

lots of other types of group

51:32

related giving like giving circles and affinity

51:34

groups and evaluators

51:37

like us and GiveWell and others.

51:42

You guys recently launched a venture capital fund

51:44

as well. Can you talk a little bit

51:46

about that and the role of that?

51:48

Sure. So,

51:51

Founders Pledge launched

51:54

and then spun out a venture fund.

51:57

So we're technically no longer connected. But

52:00

the basic premise was, because

52:03

Founders Pledge is a non-profit and we don't charge

52:05

for what we do, I spend

52:08

most of my time fundraising to keep the lights on

52:10

every year. And in

52:13

2021, as I was crossing the

52:15

street in London, I nearly got hit by a

52:17

bus. I looked the wrong direction,

52:20

as I sometimes do when I'm in here. And

52:23

I had this very near miss. And

52:26

I sort of stepped back

52:28

from the curb thinking,

52:30

like, what would have happened if that had been

52:32

it? Like, if I had been hit by this

52:34

bus and I'm

52:37

not here anymore, like, would Founders Pledge have

52:39

survived? Would it have thrived? And

52:42

I sort of came to the pretty clear conclusion

52:45

that there would be a real

52:47

problem, not because Founders

52:49

Pledge isn't well run. I mean, I

52:51

don't run it. Like I have a great COO who does

52:53

most of the work, very thankfully. But

52:57

because I keep the nonprofit funded.

52:59

And so I started to think to myself, like, how

53:02

could Founders Pledge fund itself if

53:05

not with donations? Like, what are the

53:07

other mechanisms for income

53:09

that we could create without changing incentives

53:12

and without sort of compromising

53:16

on impact? And I sort of

53:18

came to this idea that instead of relying

53:20

on our members to eventually give to us

53:23

having received value, what if we could participate

53:25

in their success alongside them on the cap

53:27

table as investors? And it was just

53:29

like a sort of small jump

53:31

from that to we

53:33

should start up a venture fund and

53:35

invest in Founders Pledge members companies at

53:38

really consequential moments in time and

53:40

see the success of those investments benefit

53:42

primarily Founders Pledge. And so we've built

53:46

a venture fund called Pledge Ventures. That's

53:48

pretty unique in the world as far as I can

53:50

tell. That's a

53:52

commercial venture fund for its investors, the

53:54

people who put money into it as

53:56

LPs. But the GP, the

54:00

entity that actually makes the investment decisions and is

54:02

entitled to 20% of the returns, the

54:05

GP donates back the vast majority of

54:07

its return, 85% of that 20% back to Founders'

54:11

Butch, such that the

54:13

primary beneficiary of the success of

54:16

this venture fund would be

54:18

Founders' Butch, the nonprofit. And

54:21

so that was the basic idea. I'm

54:23

not an investor. Unlike most founders, I've never really

54:26

wanted to be an investor. It doesn't

54:28

really excite me, but I found myself

54:30

as one, as it were. And

54:35

rather than trying to pick the best companies

54:39

with my finger in the air, sometimes

54:41

I've led to

54:44

believe that VCs do, we

54:46

are making investments based on

54:48

a set of rules that we've

54:50

built that the data suggests are

54:54

the right rules to focus on. And so, Pledge

54:56

Ventures invests in

54:59

every company that passes our three criteria. And

55:02

those criteria are one, one of

55:04

the founders of the company is a member of

55:06

Founders' Pledge in that they pledged. The second

55:08

is that the company is raising $20 million or more in

55:11

a series a year later. And

55:13

the third is that one

55:15

of their investors is

55:17

a top tier investor. So they are one

55:19

of the VCs that's participating in

55:21

the top quartile of investment performance in

55:24

VC. And so these three

55:27

criteria mean that we invest really

55:29

only in the very, very best companies in growth

55:31

stage rounds alongside the

55:33

most storied investors of all time. And

55:36

we can do this because we've built 10

55:39

years of goodwill amongst our members. We've

55:41

never asked for anything in return. And we

55:43

say, hey, you're raising a $40 million

55:46

Series C and Sequoia is

55:48

leading the round. We'd love for you

55:50

to make a small allocation of that investment

55:52

available for us by and

55:54

large people say yes. And

55:57

so we have this venture fund we've raised about 45.

56:00

five million dollars for now. We've made

56:02

seven investments and

56:05

if we're successful

56:07

over the course of the next couple of years, then

56:10

Founders' Pledge will be sustainable from the

56:12

returns of the center front. It's

56:14

not certainly not sustainable yet. It's

56:17

gonna take years until we know if this will

56:19

work or not, but

56:23

it's looking good so far. Cool,

56:26

yeah and then I guess in the future if

56:28

it works, you can create more funds with the

56:30

same structure and yeah. Yeah, so

56:33

I mean we're gonna close

56:37

fundraising on our first fund in April.

56:40

If fund one is successful, we'll certainly raise

56:42

fund two, probably similar

56:44

sort of thesis, but who knows.

56:48

It's exciting and

56:51

different and you know, ultimately

56:55

no one really gets rich from this,

56:58

but Founders' Pledge benefits.

57:02

For you, what are the biggest challenges that

57:04

you feel like Founders' Pledge needs to tackle

57:06

sort of in the next decade of its

57:08

life? I think

57:11

part of it is funding, right, like since

57:13

Pledge Ventures. It needs to be able to survive

57:19

and thrive, absence the

57:21

constraints of my

57:23

ability to fundraise. So I think funding is one

57:25

of the big challenges. The second is figuring

57:29

out how to scale what is a

57:31

very human-centric business to

57:34

a larger number of people. So

57:36

like what we do is very person-to-person.

57:40

It's high touch and

57:43

as we continue to grow and we add about

57:45

120 members per year, we

57:47

can't just throw more people at it. So

57:49

we need to figure out how

57:51

to build some efficiencies with technology.

57:53

I think staying ahead of the curve in

57:55

terms of where funding is

57:58

necessary is going to be really crucial. We've

58:03

built a pretty amazing climate team that

58:06

do really great work

58:08

around climate philanthropy and

58:11

staying great is hard.

58:16

Ensuring that the quality of our thought remains

58:19

high is, I think, crucial. I

58:21

think it's basically it's just about

58:23

continuing to execute. Our model

58:25

works. We just need to continue to

58:27

deliver it. Probably

58:30

shouldn't have asked this earlier, but can you talk a little bit

58:32

about sort of the numbers in

58:34

terms of the impact that has found us,

58:36

but I just had so far? Yeah.

58:39

So we have 1900 signatories

58:41

from 40 countries. They pledged

58:43

10.5 billion dollars or so

58:46

to charity philanthropy. And

58:48

our members have donated now a bit more than a billion. Of

58:52

that, about

58:55

more than half has actually gone to end-user charities.

58:59

And the rest is

59:01

in various foundations and

59:03

sort of nonprofits, endowments

59:05

awaiting end-user deployment. Cool.

59:09

So if one were to apply

59:11

your method to

59:13

look at founder's pledge as a charity

59:15

itself and like effectiveness of founder's pledge,

59:18

like how would you sort of assess

59:20

or rate that? Yeah,

59:23

we're really effective, it turns out.

59:25

We actually did this assessment internally.

59:28

And then the person who did the

59:30

assessment left founder's pledge, enjoyed another nonprofit

59:33

and has just redone it. And

59:35

yeah, we're quite effective as

59:37

it turns out. So I

59:40

believe last year for

59:44

every dollar of OpEx we spent, we

59:49

moved $9 or $10 counterfactually to

59:52

a high-back funding opportunity. And what that means

59:54

is that this

59:56

wouldn't have happened otherwise and

59:59

it is as a direct result of our work. So,

1:00:02

like a 9x multiplier on in-year

1:00:04

spend to high-impact funding opportunities is

1:00:06

very, very good. The

1:00:09

year before, I think it was 7. And

1:00:12

our multiplier against all money moved in-year,

1:00:15

I think it's 20 some odd

1:00:17

times our spend per year. So

1:00:20

it puts us pretty nicely in

1:00:22

high-impact range. Cool.

1:00:25

Anything else you want to share

1:00:27

with people listening? Basically,

1:00:30

I think it's

1:00:32

really easy to punt giving

1:00:35

back to the future when you have more

1:00:37

or when there's more security or things

1:00:40

feel less hectic or crazy. But

1:00:43

I think now is the best

1:00:45

time to do anything, right? So

1:00:49

later is always easier, now is always

1:00:51

harder. The world certainly does need

1:00:53

our support. So we should probably be giving

1:00:55

it even if it's not very large sums.

1:00:58

I assume that the people who listen

1:01:00

to your podcast are people who've done

1:01:02

well in crypto and beyond.

1:01:04

And the people who do

1:01:06

well should give back. Cool.

1:01:11

Well, thanks so much for coming on,

1:01:13

David. I think really great to

1:01:15

talk a bit about FinalSplash and

1:01:17

learn more about it. And

1:01:20

yeah, I hope some of the people who

1:01:22

have listened feel inspired and feel like maybe

1:01:25

this is something for them. And if

1:01:27

so, yeah, go to finalsplash.com and check

1:01:29

it out and maybe get in touch

1:01:31

with David and the organization.

1:01:35

And yeah, you can get involved. Thanks,

1:01:37

Brian. I appreciate it. Cool.

1:01:39

And thanks so much for our listeners. I appreciate you

1:01:41

tuning in and we look forward to being back next

1:01:43

week. Thank

1:01:46

you for joining us on this week's episode. We

1:01:49

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