“Austin & Oli on funding and incubating projects” by Austin Chen, habryka

@habryka and I recently spoke about his plans to improve the AI safety funding ecosystem with a better S-Process platform, and my new incubator for EA/AIS software projects, Surplus (since launched; apply now!)

We also cover: hot takes on different funders; what kinds of founders might succeed in the age of vibecoding; whether to do direct work or go meta; and what we respect and criticize in each other. Watch along here:

I've transcribed the full conversation at https://peruse.sh/ep/austin-chen-and-oliver-habryka-on-funding-incubating-project. (Beware: the AI makes notable edits for readability, sometimes distorting what the speaker meant. If specific phrasing is cruxy, listen to the audio.)

Selected quotes

The cursed game of philanthropy

Oli: "Philanthropy is one of the most cursed games in existence... The default outcome of what happens when rich people try to do philanthropy is that they think about starting a foundation, they imagine hiring someone on the market and ask themselves: who am I going to show up and feel comfortable trusting most of my net worth to? That doesn't make any sense.

And so what they often end up doing is making a family office. The only way to solve this principal-agent problem is to choose [...]

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Outline:

(00:55) Selected quotes

(06:54) Chapters

(08:32) Referenced links

(09:02) Full transcript

(09:07) Critiques of SFF's grant process \[0:00\]

(11:26) The SFF application process \[2:26\]

(12:50) The speculation grant freeze for advocacy orgs \[3:40\]

(14:29) A lower-trust, more transparent funding process \[5:04\]

(16:26) How the S-process works \[6:53\]

(20:18) Naming and communicating the value to funders \[10:54\]

(25:42) EA philanthropy and the principal-agent problem: Open Philanthropy, Longview \[15:51\]

(31:11) How much funding is coming \[21:28\]

(32:32) Surplus: the incubator \[22:33\]

(34:46) Why for-profits over nonprofits \[24:37\]

(37:33) The ideal founder profile \[27:11\]

(40:52) Whether writers can found startups in the vibe-coding era \[30:26\]

(42:19) Monetizing public communications projects \[31:45\]

(53:00) Oliver's case for the incubator \[42:09\]

(54:34) On professional grantmakers \[44:04\]

(57:53) Whether infrastructure work is more direct than safety research \[47:36\]

(01:01:41) The case for a better AI safety journal \[51:08\]

(01:04:03) Mutual feedback \[53:17\]

(01:10:04) How to help: LessWrong, Surplus, and the S-process \[1:01:01\]

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First published:
June 27th, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Jh2xsoySxacQDJMwz/austin-and-oli-on-funding-and-incubating-projects

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.