High social mobility in modern society is a full-fledged achievement of Western civilization, which allows us to discover talents and use them in the overall progress of society. But how close are we to the ideal in this direction? Is there room for improvements in social mobility? I claim that it exists and it is so valuable that it is worth to pursue it.
So, there are many subjects and social institutions in the world that provide mobility in society. From personal connections we can distinguish:
- Parents and close relatives;
- Peers, friends;
- Partner (husband/wife).
Social insitutuons can be:
- Schools;
- Universities;
- Various additional education programs such as trainings or various EdTech projects;
- Different kinds of accelerators.
Accelerators are starting to play an increasingly important role in talent mobilization, which strive to create the best place to create companies, scientific discoveries (newscience) or career growth. But I see several problems that are overlooked by most accelerators.
1) Accelerators are too focused on supporting a narrow group of people.
Almost all accelerators give their participants some limited resources (money, time of great advisors, etc.). Therefore, in order to get a good return on the resources spent, accelerators are forced to work with a limited number of already the best people (in order to certainly discourage investments in these limited resources).
Therefore, TF, EF, YC, EV, NS, even Pioneer have a very small number of winners and so a lot of people stay behind. As Noah Smith points out "In America we're so focused on screening for the top talent that we often miss our opportunities to uplift the broad base. As a result, we've been losing middle-skilled jobs, our society is polarizing, and we're losing our industrial base. We need to refocus on uplifting and utilizing the broad middle of our society."
I think that in order to expand this uplifting base, accelerators should try to distribute unlimited resources (for example, knowledge that can be very valuable like Bookface from YC) to a much larger number of people. And in the world of remote work, great opportunities are opening up for uplifting people from rural places and creating impressive careers for them.
2) Accelerators are too focused on startups.
If software startups were an avenue for many ambitious people 10 years ago, it seems that times are changing. Instead of crypto and the next fintech/edtech, DeepTech startups, new institutions, policy researches, new progressive media, inspiring art and many other things that may not be profitable can now give the greatest value to the world. Current accelerators don't capture these things because of their for-profit business model. In this context, the story of Pioneer is indicative - after all, initially it was a place for ambitious doers not only start ("Apply with any type of project you need help with. It could be a company, physics research, journalism, or art"), but gradually Pioneer turned into a "quantative startup accelerator". And this is logical given its business model, because accelerators are trying to be commercially successful, which means they are forced to select startups rather, some of which will die anyway, in order to make money on the growth of these startups.
Genesisfund makes an interesting solution to this problem (for up-to-date information about them, see their Twitter) - they want to allow their participants, roommates to do any thing they are passionate about and hope that even if some of them are startups, it will cover all the expenses of their donors. According to my information, EF does something similar. Despite my preference for the for-profit model of the organization I think there may be other forms of organization like non-profits or tricky forms of a commercial organization that genesisfund is building.
The model I put forward earlier for the distribution of unlimited resources, which could work as a non-profit, will help not only startups, but also a much larger number of potential builders. Of course, not as effective as using limited resources, but what is better than a 75% chance of achieving a big goal for 100 people or 5% for 100,000?...
3) Accelerators are too focused on already ambitious people.
This is the biggest and most difficult problem in my opinion of all accelerators. As again Noah Smith points out "our system is so focused on setting up these tournaments for ambitious people that we fail to go out and nurture the ambition of people who have undiscovered talent". As Krishnan Rohit points out "Maybe they [grantmakers] would be better spent using some of that money to try identify talent who would come up with these world changing ideas." As Sam Altman points out "The most important thing you can get to be a founder is to pick your parents well. That’s a really sad statement about the world. If I weren’t working in OpenAI, that is a problem I would like to work on. I suspect the answer is education, but that’s only part of it."
How can we instill aspiration into people? It seems there are 2 big strategies - with the help of media and with the help of personal connections such as parents, peers, etc. But media without the support of the environment does not have many chances to work, and how to change the environment of someone from India from the rural area? It seems there is a good research opportunity buried here that is worth realizing.
4) Accelerators are too focused on supporting the young.
There are a lot of acceleration offers on the market for teenagers and young adults, but what about adults and the elderly? The economy is changing and in order for older people not to fall out of it, they also need to learn new skills. In addition, as a rule, adults create innovations, especially in "heavy" industries. There is an opinion that the youthful drivr may disappear in adults, but is it possible to restore it? Is it necessary to limit adults in some way, therefore? I don't think so. Perhaps the market itself will solve this problem, as older people are turning into an undeveloped huge market for many tech companies.
5) Accelerators are too institutionalized.
it turns out that a lot of accelerators have approximately the same structure for determining winners (allocating resources) through a special committee that reviews applications. I don't think this is always the optimal approach, because bureaucratization tends to unification, and therefore the loss of ability to recognize the true sign of talent - diversity and craziness. A potential solution to this problem is experimenting with other forms of accelerator resource allocation:
A. Personally through microgranting programs that are gaining popularity now. The most successful example of this kind of program now is Emergent Ventures, run by Tyler Cowen, which really shows extraordinary results.
B. Crowdfunding. Despite the fact that its capabilities are limited, there are more and more of them in a variety of forms, especially given the boom in crypto fundraising. Moreover, unlimited resources can be created and distributed by the crowd, thus creating a community of mutual assistance that does not need any large amount of limited resources to maintain its work.
So, we as a society have really made great progress in meritocracy, but it seems there is space for its further development through bold experiments in all forms! So let's build!