2023/07/03
Summary
It’s been stressful, but Climate is going to launch with good, vetted content thanks to hardwork from many volunteers and all staff members. Byron and Konstantine have launched a self-hosted video conferencing service for classrooms called Big Blue Button. We will replace Zoom with this for all classes in the long term, but a subset of classes currently.
We continue to sell matching events in small amounts. Confirmed two purchases this month.
Open Publishing received $150,000 from the Amplitude Trust and has paid out Curvenote for their continued UX and design work.
We secured our first NMDA contract and have begun the contracted work for it.
We have $748,000 in the bank (not counting a small amount of Stripe holding), $240,000 in past due accounts receivable, and an additional $1,350,000 in long term accounts receivable.
Progress Updates
Data Analytics
We have secured our first contract and begun invoicing and work (thanks Chris Rozell for kicking it off).
Open Publishing
Curvenote continues to develop UX work and clickable, useful prototypes. We are planning to and already using some of these in fundraising outreach.
Community
We have secured several matching event partnership via outreach. These are bringing in a small amount of income. Mostly this is demonstrating proof of concept that the message and need generally works. 10% response rate on cold emails is working well.
Academy
While still less than originally modeled, our finances on academy look better than last month. It seems our methods of allowing new types of payment and offering clearer payment instructions were helpful. Adjustments for inflation were less elastic than predicted. Based on current signups and total TAs, we are at about a -10% margin in looking at TA vs student fees.
Iran and China have some significant technical issues and differences. Specifically, Zoom is difficult to access in Iran, but available in China. Google meet is good for Iran, but bad for China. Together, it makes serving these two groups difficult. In effort to self host more systems and maintain better control of this tech stack, we have implemented a Big Blue Button server (self hosted online classroom video conferencing).
Financial Report
Treasury Review
Bank of America Account: $224,347 USD
Lending Club Account: $374,615 USD
Mercury Account: $150,000 USD
Stripe: $
TOTAL: $748,962 USD
Note: The Lending Club Account currently has student fees in it. In the future, I’ll try to hold these in Stripe until we resolve all refunds and Stripe fees to make treasury easier.
Note: I show Mercury account here for a financial picture overview, but it is not considered in our runway and budget calculations. It is budgeted and managed separately.
Fundraising Status
Received Donor Funds and Commitments
Facebook has renewed their commitment at $25,000.
In Discussion Donor Funds
We submitted a large number of LOIs and open call grants this month. Several were already denied, but others are under consideration (Invest in Open Infrastructure, Andrew Mellon, etc).
We got rejections from Michelson MM, Burroughs, Aranshire this month for these small grants.
Sloan let us know they are still interested in funding a coding skills course and mentor matching routine. This would break the ice with Sloan, which would be nice.
The World Climate Research Organization has expressed interest in further supporting teaching assistants next year.
Facebook is interested in financially contributing to a Neuroethics module to encourage Dana center to also support Neuromatch leading/hosting such an activity. This is likely to be $100,000 or more funding this fall.
Fundraising Plans
Neuromatch is pursuing, with support from our contracted grant writer (Optimize Science), two federal grants from the National Science Foundation:
- Innovations in Graduate Education: ~$350,000
- INCLUDES: $10,000,000 (!)
Additionally, we are going to try to hit an August grant for innovations in education using AI and online learning approaches. I have been seeking collaborators and found several interested parties.
Program Officers at NIH have expressed interest in hosting postdocs at Neuromatch that are completing education research, or including Neuromatch as a leadership opportunity alongside a normal postdoctoral fellowship.
Earned Income
Total earned income from Academy was approximately $400,000 (pending some refunds, fees). Earned income from matching events was $1,500.
Financial Projections
Earned Income
There is no additional planned earned income this next month. Perhaps a matching event or two.
Donations
Our total long term Accounts Receivable is $1.55 Million USD.
Major Costs
Grant writing will present about $30,000 in charges over the next several months. We are doing an $8k retainer up front. We will pay about $30,000 in curriculum developer fees for Climatematch and about $4k in video editor fees.
Runway
This predicted runway includes spent on Curriculum developers for Neuro/AI course, but does not include marketing person. It does not assume any other income.
Hiring, Team Changes, and People Updates
Next Hires
I plan to hire in marketing/comms/graphic design in August or so.
Market Trends and World Event Impact on Neuromatch
Twitter
Twitter algorithm is significantly changing, and may punish our largest and most effective form of outreach. While our LinkedIn following has strengthened significantly since I joined, it doesn’t reach many of our audience members we are looking for.
Other Notifications
I will likely start traveling a bit more often to help shore up some relationships that depend on in person conversations.