Ryan Orbuch
5K posts
@orbuch
unlearned helplessness | partner @lowercarbon, previously @stripe
I’m spending the next week driving around Wisconsin and Michigan to get a firsthand view of the data center buildout and backlash am visiting sites, talking to tons of people — tradespeople, activists, planners, residents — then writing up a story lmk what questions I should dig into!
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.
leisure ethic for the leisure class
"There's no company like @UlyssesInc. There's nobody that's doing commercial, nature and defense. There's a $100 billion market waiting for us — and we want it all." @zaitoon on Ulysses's ambition to build the ocean company for Arena 008: At Sea. Read it at the link below and subscribe today to read the feature in print 🦈
Today we're launching Intercept: a $500M philanthropic initiative to make respiratory infections, like the common cold and flu, a thing of the past. We treat respiratory infections as a minor nuisance, but that’s really not the case. Most of us will spend 5% of our lives (!) sick from these viruses, they kill 1M people a year, cost $600B annually in productivity, and periodically threaten civilization through pandemics. So, if they’re such a big problem, why haven’t we dealt with them yet? Last year we convened ~40 leading scientists, pharma R&D leaders, biotech investors, and regulatory experts to better understand that. We heard two main reasons: (1) First, it’s just technically very challenging: respiratory viruses represent hundreds of distinct, mutating strains across several families. Fortunately, recent breakthroughs make this newly possible. (2) Second is a lack of funding: broad-spectrum solutions have historically been underfunded, in part because they’re not a great fit for most philanthropic or commercial funding (and while COVID generated a burst of activity around preventing and understanding respiratory infections through an influx of new funding, that hasn't been sustained). We think that with enough focus and funding, this might be solvable. Intercept is a $500 million philanthropic initiative that will take advantage of new tools to catalyze the development and deployment of two types of products: broad-spectrum preventatives and air cleaning technologies. This problem is undoubtedly difficult. But it’s more tractable now than it’s ever been. We think we should give it our best shot. We’re enormously grateful to our anchor funders: @stripe, @AnthropicAI, @TheFluLab, @FoundationOAI and individuals from Jane Street. And, I’m very excited to be building this with @incredutility and the rest of the team.
