Andy Matuschak: belief

Transcript context

…Yes. If I'm going to be honest, it's because it has worked. The history of the crowdfunding of this project, like many things in my life, is the result of goading from Michael Nielsen. Early on when we were working on this Quantum Country project, he suggested we set this up and I hemmed and hawed and said, “Yeah, it's going to be a distraction. We don't really need this right now. Let's deal with it later when we have something to show.” He's like, “No, no, no, let's just get it started. It's going to take a long time to get enough subscribers.” It turned out he was right. The process of building a subscriber base and crowdfunding a project takes a couple of years, at least in my experience. Starting earlier was better. If that hadn't worked or if we hadn't started early, I probably would have just reached out and asked for individual help and I probably will if it fails on me. I'll say also, when there have been specific projects that I've wanted to do that require, say, hiring people, I have reached out to high net worth friends and they've helped, but in the low five figure, four figure range. And that's great and I'm very grateful. The answer may be a mix. One of the big limitations to crowdfunding is it can't sustain a team or institution. It can barely sustain me. I'm somewhere between a grad student and a junior faculty member. And that's okay. There's a variety of reasons why that's okay for me that are pretty particular to my circumstance, but it certainly wouldn't be okay for everybody. Even for me, it doesn't allow me to support others. Right. It's even more striking because you're pretty well known, especially amongst the audience that would be happy to fund this kind of work. If the LeBron James of independent public research is earning between a grad student and a junior faculty member, it's not a great sign.…

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