(1) At least 3 months part time and no more than 6 months part time. Some of this time is spent looking for short-term funding sources, which would otherwise be spent on core operations and securing funding sustainably.
(2) Funding of $20k would enable us to work an additional 3 months full-time, and invest resources in incorporating as a nonprofit.
(3) In my original post and in a comment to Luke I wrote about why we think that funding ourselves primarily through advising fees isn’t promising. We do intend to charge if we have more potential advisees than we have time for advising.
(5) We’re still in an experimental phase, so to some extent we’re continuously iterating. Our advising feeds into our public content. We sent out an advisee satisfaction survey, and we learned that (i) the benefits to a few advisees were major (ii) the benefits to the median advisee were small (iii) few of our advisees would have been willing to pay (even those who reported major benefits) (iv) people like our web content a lot, and we’ve updated accordingly. We’re keeping track of our advisees over time and following up on whether they found our long-term recommendations useful. We’ve been experimenting with different fora to use to disseminate content. Do these things answer your question, or are you wondering about something else?
It seems like it would be really great for you to get some sort of EA seed funding so you can continue to develop this idea. I don’t have $20K myself, though, unfortunately. Maybe I could help out some? Maybe you could put together a Kickstarter / Indiegogo campaign?
How would you know if a self-reported “major benefit” is actually a major benefit to the EA bottom line?
Do you have any plans to track advisees more deeply?
Thanks for putting this together.
A couple more questions come to mind to flesh out your funding case:
1.) How much longer can you run on self-funding?
2.) How much are you looking to fundraise? How much salary do you intend to draw from Cognito Mentoring?
3.) Do you have any near-term or long-term plans to ask those being mentored to pay for the service?
4.) Do you have any case studies available for people you’ve mentored?
5.) What plans, if any, do you have to learn / iterate / improve based on continuing with your model?
If you want to answer these questions but don’t want to do so publicly, feel free to answer by email.
Hi Peter:
(1) At least 3 months part time and no more than 6 months part time. Some of this time is spent looking for short-term funding sources, which would otherwise be spent on core operations and securing funding sustainably.
(2) Funding of $20k would enable us to work an additional 3 months full-time, and invest resources in incorporating as a nonprofit.
(3) In my original post and in a comment to Luke I wrote about why we think that funding ourselves primarily through advising fees isn’t promising. We do intend to charge if we have more potential advisees than we have time for advising.
(4) You can read some reviews here.
(5) We’re still in an experimental phase, so to some extent we’re continuously iterating. Our advising feeds into our public content. We sent out an advisee satisfaction survey, and we learned that (i) the benefits to a few advisees were major (ii) the benefits to the median advisee were small (iii) few of our advisees would have been willing to pay (even those who reported major benefits) (iv) people like our web content a lot, and we’ve updated accordingly. We’re keeping track of our advisees over time and following up on whether they found our long-term recommendations useful. We’ve been experimenting with different fora to use to disseminate content. Do these things answer your question, or are you wondering about something else?
It seems like it would be really great for you to get some sort of EA seed funding so you can continue to develop this idea. I don’t have $20K myself, though, unfortunately. Maybe I could help out some? Maybe you could put together a Kickstarter / Indiegogo campaign?
How would you know if a self-reported “major benefit” is actually a major benefit to the EA bottom line?
Do you have any plans to track advisees more deeply?