By Austin ([email protected]). Primarily written for Mox staff, secondarily for advisors, funders, members. Please comment; here’s a gdoc mirror if you prefer!
I’ll likely post a copy of this doc widely after a bit more polish, around Aug 19.
Top asks for external folks
- Hiring: refer candidates for “Director of Mox”, or otherwise great ppl for Mox/Manifund
- Funding: Mox could easily + productively spend $2m in the next 12mo
- Members: Send us great people, and orgs who might like an office
Numbers & metrics
Off the top of my head. TODO confirm all figures in [brackets]
- [240] total paying members + officeholders + volunteers
- [10k pp-hours] work/mo from [80 ppl/weekday * 25 “weekdays” * 5h]
- (we should get Airtable & https://moxsf.com/people up-to-date)
- [$30k/mo] individual members
- [$40k/mo] offices across [10] offices
- [40] events per month
- [2,400 pp-hours] total event traffic per month, from [20 ppl * 3h * 40 events]
- (kinda want to see an accurate + full distribution rather than botec; good exercise for Claude)
- (kinda want quality-adjusted, but maybe that’s intractable)
- [$10k] revenue from events per month
- [3-6mo] runway
-
~$400k in bank + committed, -$200k loan from Manifund ops
-
-$200k/q net burn (+$200k/q revenue; -$400k/q expenses)
-
(bit fake in both directions. costs will rise soon b/c expanding to 4 floors, but Manifund or Austin can bridge a bit more if need be. Mox has been at “3-6mo runway” for like 12mo now)
- Staff
- 3 Mox core FTE (Carolina Oliveira, Robin Goins, Jake Gotts), 1 work trial (Jen Baik), ~2 contractor (Whit, Claudio from ServiceLeader)
- Austin as 0.25 FTE director
- Akshyae fulltime organizing Frame Fellowship
- 1.25 other Manifund FTE
Vibesy directions to push Mox towards
- “Be the best grayspace”, or transition zone or onramp
- Often, Mox is the place that amazing people drift to when they’re in between roles and “figuring it out”. Early ideas and startups are fragile and we want to help them. People getting into AI safety need handles, affordances.
- Incubating founders before orgs
- Supporting and connecting people, finding jobs and cofounders and friends
- 1:1 coaching, peer 1:1 suggestions
- Career fairs, hackathons, AIS events open to the ~public
- Providing value, even if you’re not a member
- Better events mailing list, custom weekly matches
- “Mox Media” below
- Pluralism; broad-tent EA; “make EA cool again”
- This could be Mox’s niche! Constellation is AIS-exclusive; CEA is in London (and, maybe dying?). We’re already housing SF’s animal welfare and a bit of GHD.
- So, cover a bit of everything (all EA cause areas)
- AIS, AW, GHD ofc, but also maybe progress studies, forecasting, voting reform
- everything cG and OAIF and Macroscopic funds; everything “cool”
- Also, effective giving!
- Mox partly stands “Mixture Of eXperts”; cross-pollination is very important
- Host diverse orgs & individuals; segment out floors; run big events
- Make inroads into new underrated fields
- eg repro tech; digital minds & AI rights; far uv
- Participatory, communal, Tocqueville’s “spirit of volunteerism”
- The professionalization of EA & AI safety has been good in many ways, but also, something feels missing. Too much top-down control. Not enough art, fun, joy.
- So: frictionless member-led small events
- Regular volunteer support, comms, gatherings
- See Clubs below for more permanent containers
- More talks and events centered around the orgs based here
- eg have Tabula, Stardrift, Tampersec each do a talk or demo
- Enable the best of do-ocracy & pluralism; avoid the worst
- Operational excellence
- Mox staff should know what’s going on with each other
- Coordinate on systems (eg Notion, Airtable, website, Discord)
- 1x week all hands, 2x other standup, 1x week lunch
- Staff 1:1s
- Automate all the things; AI all the things
- We should be unusually AI-uplifted & software-pilled
- Automation can also just be good/efficient ops systems
- Space experience should be ship-shape
- Fiscal solvency
Where we’ve been doing well