Designing who comes event, gathering, website, grants program, company

The most important component of an event, party, company is “who is there”?

• How is gatekeeping done?

  • Clusters around a particular topic
    • Prediction markets for Manifold; rationality for ACX
  • Be careful where you advertise! E.g. animal advocacy
    • Public grant programs on the internet get some chaff
  • Reviewing applications
    • Standard, but also kind of unfun for everyone involved
  • Reverse: reach out to people who you actively want
    • How we did Manifest

• Open meetups:

  • Taco Tuesday
    • Nice to be truly open & inclusive, serves some purposes well (really helps people on the margins)
  • Scott Alexander on “come even if you’re not the typical ACX reader” <3

Events

• Should a conference like EAG be open?
• Scale of events from small to large: hangout to party to wedding
• Art of Gathering famously tells you to exclude people…
• Adverse selection

Websites

• Websites are default open?
  • Interesting exception: Alignment forum, can read but can’t write

Funding, grants

• YC is open for anyone to apply to, vs VC which is very network-based. Why do accelerators take applications while VCs do not?

Companies

• Manifold hiring
• Traditionally: hire slowly fire quickly. Companies are very exclusive.
  • What would a radically inclusive company look like?
    • Anyone can pitch in as a volunteer, rise up as their contributions get better, eventually start getting paid? cf Gavriel at 1DaySooner
    • Open source ecosystem? Crypto ecosystem?