Money, taste, dealflow, hustle, trust

Austin Chen, writing on LessWrong, identifies five components of effective grant programs: money, taste, dealflow, hustle, and trust. Most philanthropic funders underrate dealflow—the inflow of good funding opportunities—and the operational legwork required, Chen argues, in contrast to how venture capitalists operate. As AI safety philanthropy scales with new Anthropic and OpenAI dollars, trust emerges as the critical bottleneck: whether money trusts the grantmakers, and whether they trust each other. Different recent programs experiment with solutions—some combining money and taste in one person, others building reputation and transparency.

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