as I understand it, the majority of this money will go towards supporting Lighthaven
I think if you take Habryka’s numbers at face value, a hair under half of the money this year will go to Lighthaven (35% of core staff salaries@1.4M = 0.49M. 1M for a deferred interest payment. And then the claim that otherwise Lighthaven is breaking even). And in future years, well less than half.
I worry that the future of LW will be endangered by the financial burden of Lighthaven
I think this is a reasonable worry, but I again want to note that Habryka is projecting a neutral or positive cashflow from Lighthaven to the org.
That said, I can think of a couple of reasons for financial pessimism[1]. Having Lighthaven is riskier. It involves a bunch of hard-to-avoid costs. So, if Lighthaven has a bad year, that does indeed endanger the project as a whole.
Another reason to be worried: Lightcone might stop trying to make Lighthaven break even. Lightcone is currently fairly focused on using Lighthaven in revenue-producing ways. My guess is that we’ll always try and structure stuff at Lighthaven such that it pays its own way (for example, when we ran LessOnline we sold tickets[2]). But maybe not! Maybe Lightcone will pivot Lighthaven to a loss-making plan, because it foresees greater altruistic benefit (and expects to be able to fundraise to cover it).
So the bundling of the two projects still leaks some risk.
Of course, you might also think Lighthaven makes LessWrong more financially robust, if on the mainline it ends up producing a modest profit that can be used to subsidise LessWrong.
My understanding of the numbers is that we lost money once you take into account staff time, but broke even if you don’t. And it seems the people most involved with running it are hopeful about cutting a bunch of costs in future.
I think if you take Habryka’s numbers at face value, a hair under half of the money this year will go to Lighthaven (35% of core staff salaries@1.4M = 0.49M. 1M for a deferred interest payment. And then the claim that otherwise Lighthaven is breaking even). And in future years, well less than half.
I think this is a reasonable worry, but I again want to note that Habryka is projecting a neutral or positive cashflow from Lighthaven to the org.
That said, I can think of a couple of reasons for financial pessimism[1]. Having Lighthaven is riskier. It involves a bunch of hard-to-avoid costs. So, if Lighthaven has a bad year, that does indeed endanger the project as a whole.
Another reason to be worried: Lightcone might stop trying to make Lighthaven break even. Lightcone is currently fairly focused on using Lighthaven in revenue-producing ways. My guess is that we’ll always try and structure stuff at Lighthaven such that it pays its own way (for example, when we ran LessOnline we sold tickets[2]). But maybe not! Maybe Lightcone will pivot Lighthaven to a loss-making plan, because it foresees greater altruistic benefit (and expects to be able to fundraise to cover it).
So the bundling of the two projects still leaks some risk.
Of course, you might also think Lighthaven makes LessWrong more financially robust, if on the mainline it ends up producing a modest profit that can be used to subsidise LessWrong.
Other than just doubting Habryka’s projections, which also might make sense.
My understanding of the numbers is that we lost money once you take into account staff time, but broke even if you don’t. And it seems the people most involved with running it are hopeful about cutting a bunch of costs in future.