The Nonlinear Library EA - HearMeOut - Networking While Funding Charities (Looking for a founder and beta users) by Brad West
Nov 15, 2023
05:20
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: HearMeOut - Networking While Funding Charities (Looking for a founder and beta users), published by Brad West on November 15, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.
Two extremely important things are our time and our connections to others who can help advance shared goals. Significant time is wasted on low value introductions and meetings. But at the same time, projects are delayed, don't succeed, or don't reach their full potential because critical connections are never made. We are looking to build HearMeOut, a solution that will save your valuable time while facilitating valuable connections, by asking people to donate to a charity for your time, and/or enabling you to connect with others by donating to a charity.
HearMeOut is the platform where you can book time with someone by donating to the chosen charity of the person who you want to meet with. For example: you sell software that you're confident company X wants, and you're willing to donate 500 to The Against Malaria Foundation to pitch it to them for one hour. If you want to cut down on cold emails and meetings, you can tell anyone that you only meet with people willing to donate a certain amount to the charity you chose (e.g.
I'm a founder and anyone who wants to sell me something can do that if they donate 100 USD to AMF). You pay for meetings where you're confident you bring something valuable, and you can be assured the meetings scheduled with you are with people who value your time correctly and don't intend to waste your time.
We believe the net result to be meetings with a higher average value- eliminating intros with those who don't value your time, while enabling those who demonstrate that they do to get on your calendar- with charities benefiting from the signals. It's close to zero cost to build and test this platform with some initial users, and it could be very scalable. We are seeking someone to lead this project and initial users who want to get donations before they take a cold meeting.
What HearMeOut Offers
Ability for people ("Seekers") to obtain introductions to people that could be helpful to their projects or goals by donating to a charity.
Ability for people ("Listeners") to help others that can credibly signal that they will benefit from their help because they are gated behind a cost.
Charities can be the beneficiaries of these signaling costs.
Unfortunately, between working my own full time job as a lawyer and running a nonprofit (website will be changed soon- renaming to "Profit for Good Initiative"), I do not currently have the bandwidth to run such a project. Vincent van der Holst, founder of BOAS, also believes in the potential of this project, but is similarly unable to run this project because he is running the business. Both can advise the business and help attract resources. Vin already has connections to a designer and developer who are willing to help build the first version at no/low cost.
How Would HearMeOut Work?
Thanks to Jeff Reasor for developing some mockups of what HearMeOut might look like.
HearMeOut would provide a platform for Listeners: those who want to spend their time potentially helping others by providing advice, funding projects, connecting people together who could be helpful, using their influence to advance a shared goal, purchasing products or services that could be beneficial to the Listener, and/or otherwise helping people.
Listeners would be able to choose the charity(s) that would benefit from the fee to connect with them, the time increments they could make available, as well as the donation associated with various increments.
This donation cost would serve a dual-function: it not only serves as a way to raise money for a charitable cause the listener cares about, but also serves a screening function- the cost associated with the audience will lik...
Two extremely important things are our time and our connections to others who can help advance shared goals. Significant time is wasted on low value introductions and meetings. But at the same time, projects are delayed, don't succeed, or don't reach their full potential because critical connections are never made. We are looking to build HearMeOut, a solution that will save your valuable time while facilitating valuable connections, by asking people to donate to a charity for your time, and/or enabling you to connect with others by donating to a charity.
HearMeOut is the platform where you can book time with someone by donating to the chosen charity of the person who you want to meet with. For example: you sell software that you're confident company X wants, and you're willing to donate 500 to The Against Malaria Foundation to pitch it to them for one hour. If you want to cut down on cold emails and meetings, you can tell anyone that you only meet with people willing to donate a certain amount to the charity you chose (e.g.
I'm a founder and anyone who wants to sell me something can do that if they donate 100 USD to AMF). You pay for meetings where you're confident you bring something valuable, and you can be assured the meetings scheduled with you are with people who value your time correctly and don't intend to waste your time.
We believe the net result to be meetings with a higher average value- eliminating intros with those who don't value your time, while enabling those who demonstrate that they do to get on your calendar- with charities benefiting from the signals. It's close to zero cost to build and test this platform with some initial users, and it could be very scalable. We are seeking someone to lead this project and initial users who want to get donations before they take a cold meeting.
What HearMeOut Offers
Ability for people ("Seekers") to obtain introductions to people that could be helpful to their projects or goals by donating to a charity.
Ability for people ("Listeners") to help others that can credibly signal that they will benefit from their help because they are gated behind a cost.
Charities can be the beneficiaries of these signaling costs.
Unfortunately, between working my own full time job as a lawyer and running a nonprofit (website will be changed soon- renaming to "Profit for Good Initiative"), I do not currently have the bandwidth to run such a project. Vincent van der Holst, founder of BOAS, also believes in the potential of this project, but is similarly unable to run this project because he is running the business. Both can advise the business and help attract resources. Vin already has connections to a designer and developer who are willing to help build the first version at no/low cost.
How Would HearMeOut Work?
Thanks to Jeff Reasor for developing some mockups of what HearMeOut might look like.
HearMeOut would provide a platform for Listeners: those who want to spend their time potentially helping others by providing advice, funding projects, connecting people together who could be helpful, using their influence to advance a shared goal, purchasing products or services that could be beneficial to the Listener, and/or otherwise helping people.
Listeners would be able to choose the charity(s) that would benefit from the fee to connect with them, the time increments they could make available, as well as the donation associated with various increments.
This donation cost would serve a dual-function: it not only serves as a way to raise money for a charitable cause the listener cares about, but also serves a screening function- the cost associated with the audience will lik...