Analogue

A great work expands our vision of what’s possible, in ambition and beauty.

This is episode 7 of Confessions on Modern Philanthropy.

@nathanielkoloc spent years in venture studios and on a presidential campaign before landing at Pardon, a family office built on the belief that art and entrepreneurship are twin engines of creativity. We ask him what distinguishes a great work from any other piece in a portfolio.

“It’s that unique signature of one person caring enough to be able to produce this. To me, that is probably the most notable quality.”

Some highlights:
09:37 “100% degrees of freedom” wealth
12:53 Wealth as temporarily stored kinetic energy
13:17 “Is it something that stirs the hearts of men?”
18:28 Money alone buys less political power than people think
30:43 Adventure as a practice in uncertainty
35:01 “You can’t take it with you anyway”: why collectively we can afford some failures
42:54 Rigor in qualitative reasoning: watering the garden of inquiry

Full show notes: analogue.press/p/confessions-…

To a topologist, a coffee cup and a donut are the same thing.

That picture has come to define the field.

In a new essay, Aiden Sagerman (a Revival Fund grantee) asks what such diagrams did for 20th-century mathematics, and what they reveal about how theory gets built.

analogue.press/p/mathematicia…

Pedigree is a measure of who got backed in the past. How do we bet on the future instead?

This is episode 6 of Confessions on Modern Philanthropy with Michael Dempsey (@mhdempsey).

Michael helped build the data and research team at CB Insights, invested in public and private markets, and now runs Compound, a research-centric firm that writes some of the first institutional checks in frontier technology. We asked him what led him to start funding people through small, no-equity grants.

Michael on pedigree: "We've done such a good job of backing people with pedigree being able to accumulate capital that actually you should intentionally rotate away from pedigree in certain times."

Some highlights:
05:12 Professional and creative soulmates: Matisse & Picasso
07:19 Belief as a form of patronage: being seen before you can see yourself
11:11 What tech underrates about lack of constraint
15:37 Why micro-grants?
19:50 The one question that filters 90% of grant applicants
24:47 The Thiel Fellowship, Goodhart's Law, and getting into YC and not going
25:55 Sacrifice as the signal
31:05 East Coast versus West Coast framings of giving
34:43 Effective altruism lacks romanticism

Full show notes: analogue.press/p/confessions-…

We are hosting an intimate salon on the 17th of Oct in NYC with @ulkar_aghayeva – she will be talking about Music and Social Order followed by a small living room concert

Register your interest here: ulkar.analoguegroup.org

.@chandhana travelled to Greece this summer to investigate the Antikythera in person – thinking about the knowledge behind it, and what may have been lost along the way.

She writes about it in a new essay for Press: analogue.press/p/an-antikythe…