I’m a college student with only pretty low-stakes work experience. I listened to the first 5–10 meetings as I would a podcast last week. Some takeaways, emphasizing that I only just watched them last week:
It was interesting to follow the narrative of Holden and Elie getting started on the project. Like, anecdotes about people’s experiences starting a startup are everywhere, but it was interesting hearing them actually talking about the struggles and business decisions they were making.
Holden worked 100h/wk in the first year; that’s a lot of time spent on a project! (Then 60h/wk in the second, afaict.)
Interesting generally how assertive the business meetings were compared to everyday conversation.
I am familiar with GiveWell as a popular charity in the Rat/EA space, but I never really spent the time to understand the research methodology. It was interesting hearing the practical and strategic discussions between the founders and the board on the methodology. It also seemed to change every year in the first three years (I haven’t watched beyond the first three years).
Interesting from a marketing and fundraising perspective to watch as GiveWell, which seems to have found its market now, tested and went about finding one.
Interesting to instantiate generally ‘what are board meetings? who are the people in board meetings? what are their skills?’
Discussions around productivity were interesting. I’ve learn ‘productivity’ skills to improve my time spent studying and working on projects. I was surprised to hear that this is something that was talked about in board meetings, let alone for 10s of minutes.
I would be curious to hear a review from someone with more business experience. If you are to go about watching them, I recommend starting from the beginning. I’ve tried watching a few more recent recordings before this past week and found them less engaging, maybe due to me having less context about the organization.
Review of: Elie Hassenfeld, Holden Karnofsky, Timothy Ogden, Rob Reich, Tom Rutledge, Brigid Slipka, Cari Tuna, Julia Wise: GiveWell’s Public Board Meetings (2007–2020 have audio).
I’m a college student with only pretty low-stakes work experience. I listened to the first 5–10 meetings as I would a podcast last week. Some takeaways, emphasizing that I only just watched them last week:
It was interesting to follow the narrative of Holden and Elie getting started on the project. Like, anecdotes about people’s experiences starting a startup are everywhere, but it was interesting hearing them actually talking about the struggles and business decisions they were making.
Holden worked 100h/wk in the first year; that’s a lot of time spent on a project! (Then 60h/wk in the second, afaict.)
Interesting generally how assertive the business meetings were compared to everyday conversation.
I am familiar with GiveWell as a popular charity in the Rat/EA space, but I never really spent the time to understand the research methodology. It was interesting hearing the practical and strategic discussions between the founders and the board on the methodology. It also seemed to change every year in the first three years (I haven’t watched beyond the first three years).
Interesting from a marketing and fundraising perspective to watch as GiveWell, which seems to have found its market now, tested and went about finding one.
Interesting to instantiate generally ‘what are board meetings? who are the people in board meetings? what are their skills?’
Discussions around productivity were interesting. I’ve learn ‘productivity’ skills to improve my time spent studying and working on projects. I was surprised to hear that this is something that was talked about in board meetings, let alone for 10s of minutes.
I would be curious to hear a review from someone with more business experience. If you are to go about watching them, I recommend starting from the beginning. I’ve tried watching a few more recent recordings before this past week and found them less engaging, maybe due to me having less context about the organization.