Dialectic with Jackson Dahl

Dialectic 51: Nan Ransohoff! @nanransohoff thinks more of the world's most impressive people should work in philanthropy. And that they needn't sacrifice ambition or upside to do so. Nan leads public goods at @stripe. That includes Frontier (carbon removal) and Intercept (respiratory illness). She's also written about how we need more "general managers" (read: more 'Nan's) and how philanthropy is about to undergo explosive growth thanks to AI money. I talked to Nan about: - GMs and identifying orphaned problems to own end-to-end - coordinating the market to spend billions to suck carbon from the sky and end the common cold - how vision is in short supply - what philanthropy can learn from startups and VCs - the third wave of American philanthropy (driven by billions in OAI/Anthropic philanthropic dollars that will need to be spent) - how many things we may want (good, beauty, meaning) may be harder to quantify and thus require a different philanthropic approach - getting off the "gold star" established path and choosing a life and ambition of her own making Timestamps: 0:00 - Opening Highlights 1:15 - Intro to Nan 4:53 - Start: What is a Nan? Nerd-Sniped by Orphaned Problems 12:39 - GMs, Seeing the Chessboard, and Working Backwards from Outcomes 18:55 - Good Taste in Problems, Vision, and Good Finish Lines 35:43 - Advance Market Commitments Tactically Solving Carbon Removal 41:35 - Focus and Sketching Out or Slicing Up Messy Problems 49:39 - Legibility, Public Rallying, and Ambition in Philanthropy 54:38 - Third Wave Philanthropy and Hard to Quantify Problems 1:06:50 - Risk Tolerance in Philanthropy and Scarcity of Funders and Allocators 1:15:22 - The $40B Tidal Wave of New AI-Money and Why Start Now 1:19:53 - Amount of Capital, Government Philanthropy, and Making Philanthropic Founders Rich 1:31:44 - Nan's Mid-Career Inflection Point and Getting Off the Obvious Path 1:39:47 - Grab-bag: Why Stripe Funds Public Goods, Making Things with Friends, Creative Partnership, Iceland Drone, and Scone Heads 1:49:39 - Syllabi for the Squishy Topics & Study vs. Experience 1:57:01 - Inputs & Outputs and GLPs for Attention 2:04:38 - Closing: Interviewing Parents and Imagining an Obituary @DialecticPod 51: Nan Ransohoff - Power Laws for Philanthropy - is out now below and on all platforms.

Dialectic 51: Nan Ransohoff! @nanransohoff thinks more of the world's most impressive people should work in philanthropy. And that they needn't sacrifice ambition or upside to do so. Nan leads public goods at @stripe. That includes Frontier (carbon removal) and Intercept (respiratory illness). She's also written about how we need more "general managers" (read: more 'Nan's) and how philanthropy is about to undergo explosive growth thanks to AI money. I talked to Nan about: - GMs and identifying orphaned problems to own end-to-end - coordinating the market to spend billions to suck carbon from the sky and end the common cold - how vision is in short supply - what philanthropy can learn from startups and VCs - the third wave of American philanthropy (driven by billions in OAI/Anthropic philanthropic dollars that will need to be spent) - how many things we may want (good, beauty, meaning) may be harder to quantify and thus require a different philanthropic approach - getting off the "gold star" established path and choosing a life and ambition of her own making Timestamps: 0:00 - Opening Highlights 1:15 - Intro to Nan 4:53 - Start: What is a Nan? Nerd-Sniped by Orphaned Problems 12:39 - GMs, Seeing the Chessboard, and Working Backwards from Outcomes 18:55 - Good Taste in Problems, Vision, and Good Finish Lines 35:43 - Advance Market Commitments Tactically Solving Carbon Removal 41:35 - Focus and Sketching Out or Slicing Up Messy Problems 49:39 - Legibility, Public Rallying, and Ambition in Philanthropy 54:38 - Third Wave Philanthropy and Hard to Quantify Problems 1:06:50 - Risk Tolerance in Philanthropy and Scarcity of Funders and Allocators 1:15:22 - The $40B Tidal Wave of New AI-Money and Why Start Now 1:19:53 - Amount of Capital, Government Philanthropy, and Making Philanthropic Founders Rich 1:31:44 - Nan's Mid-Career Inflection Point and Getting Off the Obvious Path 1:39:47 - Grab-bag: Why Stripe Funds Public Goods, Making Things with Friends, Creative Partnership, Iceland Drone, and Scone Heads 1:49:39 - Syllabi for the Squishy Topics & Study vs. Experience 1:57:01 - Inputs & Outputs and GLPs for Attention 2:04:38 - Closing: Interviewing Parents and Imagining an Obituary @DialecticPod 51: Nan Ransohoff - Power Laws for Philanthropy - is out now below and on all platforms.

Jeremy's ideas are always original My favorite from this one is "peak guy" and why the poaster is our new priestly class "I think the billionaire class has become subservient to the poasting class. It doesn't make sense that we spend so much time caring about what billionaires think about theology or health or topics unrelated to accruing a billion dollars. The reason we do is because these are the people that have ascended to the highest realm of piety in our value system. We've looked to them to provide us these answers and it has not been satisfying. Peak guy is I think we've had enough of the billionaire. The logical question is what is the next class, our next set of priests? I think it's the poaster. You can always look which class is subservient to the next to see who's next. I was at this thing with a bunch of billionaire investors and they were all fighting over who could sit next to @tylercowen because he's the most interesting person there."

Tyler Cowen reveals how he interviews Emergent Venture Applicants. @tylercowen: "I deliberately change it over time, but I'm obsessed with getting them off script." "I like to get people talking about where they came from, or what trips they've done or want to do." Then: "I do have specific questions like, 'What's your plan for follow-up funding?' And many people, especially younger people, do very poorly on that, and that's a big discriminator for me."

46: Nicole Seah (Nix) - Loving What is Real @startingfromnix