Ineffective entrepreneurship: post-mortem of Hippo, the happiness app that never quite was

Abstract

It’s often said EAs should be trying new things that probably won’t work but will pay off dramatically if they do. If we’re not failing, then we’re not trying enough new stuff. One thing that’s been mentioned quite a few times, although less so recently, is altruistic entrepreneurship: starting companies as a high-risk, high-reward strategy: you might build something that solves an important problem and acquire oodles of cash you can give away afterwards. I tried this and it didn’t really work out for me, so I thought I’d share the story. I’ve been meaning to write this up for a while – I called time on Hippo back in October 2017 – and seeing Joey Savoie’s rather optimistic post on the value of starting charities has prompted me to finally add my own less optimistic data point about starting companies.