(highlight:: Successful founders are typically obsessed with their idea, and find it hard to imagine working on anything else. This level of motivation is often necessary to see an idea through, and stick with it for the 5–10 years required to get something off the ground.
That said, great startup ideas often emerge out of fun projects that weren’t expected to turn into organisations, but become obsessions over time. If you tend to have slightly intense side projects, that’s a good sign for your fit for this path.)
- View Highlight
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Many founders who seem formidable today did not seem impressive when they first started. So you shouldn’t give up if you don’t feel like a CEO today. But you can look for small-scale signs of potential, such as whether you can convince one or two people to support the idea, and whether you often have lots of ideas for ways to make things better.
- View Highlight
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Founders tend to be generalists — running a startup requires juggling more duties than one can really learn how to do ‘the right way.’ It crucially relies on the ability and willingness to handle many things ‘just well enough’ (usually with very little training or guidance), and focus one’s energy on the few things that are worth doing ‘reasonably well.’
- View Highlight
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Nonprofit ideas often lack good feedback mechanisms (such as revenue), which means that the leader’s judgement about what the biggest priorities are is much more important. It’s easy to focus on the wrong thing and lose most of what matters.
- View Highlight
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- [note::Great point. This underscores the importance of MEL.]

Pick one very small and simple version of your idea as the test. A common mistake among founders is to try to do way too much at once. Most great startups have an idea that can be simply explained even at scale, and when you’re just getting started, it’s even more important to start small. People underestimate how hard it is just to do one thing well — but doing something well on a small scale is the best way to build trust with funders, and unlock more resources to expand your idea to the next stage.
- View Highlight
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try to design a test that can resolve one of your key uncertainties about the project. Ask yourself, “What’s the minimum amount of validation I need to justify the next level of funding?” Then do that. If it works out, go to the next level of scale.
- View Highlight
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(highlight:: There are also many other organisations that can help you outside of the effective altruism ecosystem. For example:
• 80,000 Hours got a lot out of Y Combinator’s nonprofit programme.
• Fast Forward is an incubator for tech nonprofits.
• Skoll helps social entrepreneurs.
• And there are other nonprofit accelerators worth exploring)
- View Highlight
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There’s also a lot of scepticism about whether someone can be ‘handed’ an idea from someone else — the thought is that if you don’t come up with the idea yourself, you’re unlikely to be obsessed with it enough to make it work. This, however, seems to be somewhat less true in the nonprofit world. We think it can be worth entertaining other people’s ideas, and seeing if they catch your motivation. If you have the flexibility, you could consider taking 3–12 months off from your normal work to learn about and test ideas.
- View Highlight
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(highlight:: To give you a flavour of what exists, here are some of the best public lists we’re aware of:
• Big biosecurity projects by Andrew Snyder-Beattie and Ethan Alley on the EA Forum
• Charity Entrepreneurship’s top meta charity ideas and ideas in global health, animal welfare, and mental health
• Alternative protein project ideas by the Good Food Institute (and you may also want to listen to our podcast with the founder, Bruce Friedrich))
- View Highlight
-

(highlight:: Successful founders are typically obsessed with their idea, and find it hard to imagine working on anything else. This level of motivation is often necessary to see an idea through, and stick with it for the 5–10 years required to get something off the ground.
That said, great startup ideas often emerge out of fun projects that weren’t expected to turn into organisations, but become obsessions over time. If you tend to have slightly intense side projects, that’s a good sign for your fit for this path.)
- View Highlight
-

Many founders who seem formidable today did not seem impressive when they first started. So you shouldn’t give up if you don’t feel like a CEO today. But you can look for small-scale signs of potential, such as whether you can convince one or two people to support the idea, and whether you often have lots of ideas for ways to make things better.
- View Highlight
-

Founders tend to be generalists — running a startup requires juggling more duties than one can really learn how to do ‘the right way.’ It crucially relies on the ability and willingness to handle many things ‘just well enough’ (usually with very little training or guidance), and focus one’s energy on the few things that are worth doing ‘reasonably well.’
- View Highlight
-

Nonprofit ideas often lack good feedback mechanisms (such as revenue), which means that the leader’s judgement about what the biggest priorities are is much more important. It’s easy to focus on the wrong thing and lose most of what matters.
- View Highlight
-
- [note::Great point. This underscores the importance of MEL.]

Pick one very small and simple version of your idea as the test. A common mistake among founders is to try to do way too much at once. Most great startups have an idea that can be simply explained even at scale, and when you’re just getting started, it’s even more important to start small. People underestimate how hard it is just to do one thing well — but doing something well on a small scale is the best way to build trust with funders, and unlock more resources to expand your idea to the next stage.
- View Highlight
-

try to design a test that can resolve one of your key uncertainties about the project. Ask yourself, “What’s the minimum amount of validation I need to justify the next level of funding?” Then do that. If it works out, go to the next level of scale.
- View Highlight
-

(highlight:: There are also many other organisations that can help you outside of the effective altruism ecosystem. For example:
• 80,000 Hours got a lot out of Y Combinator’s nonprofit programme.
• Fast Forward is an incubator for tech nonprofits.
• Skoll helps social entrepreneurs.
• And there are other nonprofit accelerators worth exploring)
- View Highlight
-

There’s also a lot of scepticism about whether someone can be ‘handed’ an idea from someone else — the thought is that if you don’t come up with the idea yourself, you’re unlikely to be obsessed with it enough to make it work. This, however, seems to be somewhat less true in the nonprofit world. We think it can be worth entertaining other people’s ideas, and seeing if they catch your motivation. If you have the flexibility, you could consider taking 3–12 months off from your normal work to learn about and test ideas.
- View Highlight
-

(highlight:: To give you a flavour of what exists, here are some of the best public lists we’re aware of:
• Big biosecurity projects by Andrew Snyder-Beattie and Ethan Alley on the EA Forum
• Charity Entrepreneurship’s top meta charity ideas and ideas in global health, animal welfare, and mental health
• Alternative protein project ideas by the Good Food Institute (and you may also want to listen to our podcast with the founder, Bruce Friedrich))
- View Highlight
-