2022/05/24
Financial Report
This is an overview of Neuromatch accounts, upcoming and anticipated major expenses, and a recap of our runway.
Treasury Review
Bank of America Account 1: $12,000 USD
Bank of America Account 2: $53,000 USD
Lending Club Account: $105,000 USD
TOTAL: $170,000 USD (Doesn’t count any money from Stripe)
Fundraising Status
Received Donor Funds and Commitments
We received confirmation from the Kavli Foundation that they are approximately doubling their contribution for a total of $45,000 USD that is unrestricted, though generally intended for TAs.
Templeton World Charity Foundation is preparing our award of $100,000, but we have not received it yet.
We have received a commitment from Simon’s Foundation of $50,000, but we have not received it yet.
We received $50,000 from Gatsby (according to Megan; I haven’t seen it as it is in the BoA account. Could this be the Simon’s money, actually?).
We have been awarded $6,000, but not received it yet from Stanford’s DIBEJ committee.
In Discussion Donor Funds
I am meeting with the Dana Foundation again on Tuesday, May 31. A mutual contact has told me that Dana is very excited to give us money.
We (Konrad and Nick) are meeting with Schmidt Futures in late June. We need to formulate our ask.
Facebook Reality Labs (Dan Wetmore) has only a moderate chance of going forth with their $100,000 donation due to their hiring freeze. If this falters, we will pivot to asking for in-kind donations of programming time, as I can make a better economic argument for Facebook/Meta here.
Grants
We are still waiting on the federal government to issue us the new Unique Entity ID. We have provided all required documentation, but they only respond about every two weeks. We haven’t heard from them for 14 days.
We are supporting/collaborating on a grant submission for Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE) using Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) with Franco Delogu and Franco Pestilli. I have low confidence that this grant will be successful, so I am not putting much effort into it, which is further lowering chances of success. That said, the general idea is that Neuromatch would serve as a consultant, teaching this group how to ‘format their teaching’ to comply with our method of delivery, but be delivered via undergraduate educators in-person at University.
Fundraising Plans
We have not had contact with the following organizations, but I am planning outreach for all over the next two weeks:
- Chen Institute
- Chen-Zuckerberg
- Gatsby
- IBRO
- Google AI
- Bernstein
- Janelia
- Lundbeck Foundation
- Wyss Center
I have also gone through and prepared a list of fundraising sources , which includes an additional 70+ foundations that have donated to organizations similar to Neuromatch. I will continue to reach out to these as part of my fundraising efforts over the next year.
Past this, I anticipate a potential major fundraising effort centered around the Neuromatch Journal involving raising money from university libraries and the federal government. We are meeting with several people that have tried similar efforts in the past to learn from their approach.
India is our largest non-US cohort in academy. India requires all companies above a certain revenue threshold to donate a percentage of their income to nonprofits. We may be able to establish better fundraising in India. There is no concrete plan here.
Financial Projections
Earned Income
Due to modifications to the course payment portal by Ella Batty, and our increased price, we are showing projections almost exactly on par based on our modeling. Estimated revenue per student is currently at $123 (expected $125), projecting -$28,000 Net for the academy this year (student payments minus TA payments and course costs such as Zoom and WeVideo).
This is a fantastic outcome that drastically reduced our fundraising needs.
We are not currently modeling into this budget any earned income from new initiatives mentioned below.
Donations
In our financial model, I only project donations that have commitments as mentioned above (for example, Facebook is not included as it is in discussion). This is a very conservative approach to our financial projections.
Major Costs
We are currently budgeting to hire two employees at an average salary of $60,000 each. We may need to adjust this price. Otherwise, we have no major upcoming costs that exist outside of academy.
Runway
Assuming the three mentioned employees, and extrapolating this year’s academy costs out to next year, and assuming no other development costs, our runway currently lasts until Spring 2024. This is too long, and we should be investing more in growth.
Outlook, Trends, and Initiatives
Trends
Economic Downturn
As a charity that serves academics, we are less impacted by economic downturns directly for our products. That said, these can impact fundraising (see Facebook above). Here is my interpretation of the impact:
VC and Investment Slowing will prevent followup funding for many of the startups that arose out of the pandemic. This will kill many of these companies in their second financing round and we will see a return of many startup experienced personnel to the workforce over the next two years, creating a great hiring market over this period.
Fed increasing interest rates, while China opens up economic engine (not trying to suppress inflation) means that we may see more economic activity in China in general. Can we engage better in China and throughout Asia?
American giving correlates with stock market performance (S&P 500 accounts for 40% of variance in US philanthropy, S&P is down 20% YTD). I think this down effect will be balanced out by the 15% of American philanthropy that was ‘diverted’ to health and medical research at the start of the pandemic and is now returning towards the typical balance.
Academia Salary Squeeze
Inflation is pushing graduate student salaries into unsustainable low levels. A recent report shows that 25% of grad students broke contracts to work a second job. We are also seeing a surplus of postdocs with postdoc numbers growing 50% faster than available professor track positions. This competition is holding post-doc salaries down and driving more graduate degrees into industry where they are increasingly valued in the biotech industry.
We can try to take advantage of this trend through a consulting service for these graduate students and postdocs to interact with industry and academia through a more flexible platform.
Initiatives
Neuromatch Journal
The Neuromatch Journal project is gaining momentum. We have a weekly meeting, a product development document, and are bringing on multiple additional volunteers to drive development.
We are meeting with other parties on journal funding and development, including a number of other open science initiatives.
Neuromatch Services Business
This is a brand new initiative, but we have a couple of volunteers working on defining this a little bit. I could use input on how to structure this legally and do some pricing and pitch design.
Other Notifications
HR System Onboarded
We have signed a contract with Rippling (a ‘full stack’ Human Resources application). It will enable us to pay foreign/domestic contractors and domestic W2 employees payroll more efficiently than paying an accountant to do it. It interacts with our accountants and quickbooks in an easy integration. We will pay approximately $40 per month per employee for this. Nick will start as a W2 employee in June per his onboarding plan.
Year End Review Completed
Megan and Nick worked with Jitasa to complete all pending items for year end review, meaning that our taxes can be filed for the 2021 year (though delayed to the fall date by choice of the accountant).