Simon Newstead

Impact Investor, Founder @ Better Bite Ventures, GoalsWon
317 karmaJoined Working (15+ years)1251 High St, Malvern VIC 3144, Australia
goalswon.com

Bio

Participation
4

Tech founder turned impact investor:

BetterBite.vc - Alt protein / climate VC in Asia
GoalsWon.com - accountability coaching app

How others can help me

Help with advice, support on any of the EA projects I'm working on

How I can help others

Any advice on entrepreneurship, seeking investment, building startups. Also free accountability coaching.

Comments
44

Thanks Vasco for writing this post and being open minded to evolve viewpoints - much appreciated.

Do you have thoughts on whether long term it would be preferable for net suffering to have more cropland with higher amount of nematodes per sq/m etc supporting a given population size with current per capita animal consumption levels, vs relatively more consumption of land efficient alternatives to animal products, enabling higher human population and greater amount of urban/suburban land ie - with less nematodes per sq/m.

Thanks for sharing.

Reminds me a bit of the work Innovate Animal Ag are doing, not sure if the consulting part also covers the R&D / engineering or just go to market/commercialization.

It makes sense though, we've seen in other fields mission driven folks being the ones to develop all new technologies / try out their own ideas eg- climate tech, alt protein

I don't think it's so important to have someone who fully aligns with the values. There are many great marketing execs in industry who don't use their companies products, or maybe only partially identify with things personally. My suggestion - hire an executive recruiting firm focused on this sector, and ask them to target some of the most successful brands in the broader charity / social enterprise / commercial+impact space or in ad agencies who did the work. Or consider bringing in hired guns on a contract/project basis (or outsource it to an experienced agency). This is a critical brand turnaround project. Let's not try to DIY

This role seems like more of a digital/marketing generalist and who will "translate our EA brand strategy into concrete marketing plans" - my question is more on who is leading the branding strategy effort if this role isn't. Is it someone with deep experience in branding specifically? The reason I ask is because to turn around a tarnished brand is a very challenging endeavor, and without doing that, it will limit EA's potential (see GMO, nuclear etc)

"Act now, rather than wait until it’s too late" -> well put.

Glad to see the good work of CaML and others highlighted. Positively influencing the models as much as possible right now seems vital.

A random one - is AI for inter-species communication emerging as a thing? Is it viable in the short term, are there promising projects working on it with a view to bringing it to the masses via mobile apps etc? 

Thanks for sharing the direction, appreciated.

For the rebrand, do you have experienced marketing folks on board or planned to be?

ie- with real industry experience, beyond EA circles?  

It seems like a very tough challenge to undo the damage and change perceptions, and would benefit from a battle-tested team/professional.

I appreciate you sharing this and for making the effort to donate to help out in this world. Sometimes we can get numb to giving (or not giving) and it's helpful to get a reminder of the impact of our donations in human terms.

From a practical point of view, if all the traffic and search/other reputation is to 80k website, and the timelines are perceived to be short, I could imagine it makes sense to the team to directly adjust the focus of the website rather than take the years to build up a separate, additional brand.

If this is a critical time with probability of short timelines increasing, money invested via donations should be of higher value now vs historically.

But potential for AGI in the short term might lead folks to worry more about the potential risk to their career plus there's also the desire to invest more now to capture AGI gains, leading to donations not increasing to match their potential value in this moment.

Questions-

Any sense of if this might be the case? I have only anecdotal observations.
If it is, how can we tackle this?

App product guy and mobile game designer (in a past life) here. 

Suggestion would be to test and much as you possibly can quickly and cheaply with a bare bones MVP / prototype before you commit lots of time/money on charity setup, full app development, graphics/branding.

Most app concepts and UX's just don't resonate with users, find out if it does first before going further, and iterate as needed.

There's lots of good advice out there on how to do customer development, testing. I'd go both qualitative (blind play test, focus groups etc) and quantitative (embed analytics, see where people drop etc)

All the best with it!

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