This is an overview of Neuromatch accounts, upcoming and anticipated major expenses, and a recap of our runway.
Bank of America Account 1: $12,000 USD (estimated)
Bank of America Account 2: $53,000 USD (estimated)
Lending Club Account: $607,500 USD
We have entered new info to correctly receive $50,000 from the Simons Foundation, probably early August.
We have been awarded $6,000, from Stanford DIBEJ, but the Stanford supplier process is hell. Probably early September.
Meeting with Yan Li at Chen went fantastically. We got along really well, and she was super supportive of our sustainability plan. This will be more drawn out because she is on vacation for July and is very busy, but Chen will continue to contribute and fund these growth initiatives, I can nearly guarantee it.
Schmidt Futures call went great. We had to adjust our thinking to dream a little bigger, but they called our ballpark ask of $500,000 so I sent them a formal proposal outlining $850,000 in donation and they called it ‘Amazing’. They want to pay us through Konrad Kording as an innovation fellow. We will push back against this lightly and get more context.
Facebook has agreed to a $25,000 donation. This is lower than last year due to the economic situation we discussed last time, but I have been talking to them about providing in-kind software development support. I sent them a one pager outlining the development goals. Dan is bringing it around the office and trying to get this in-kind method supported. I will check in with him in a couple weeks.
Had a fantastic call with Dana Foundation. They are interested in implementing Neuromatch as a well used service for Dana goals, including Neuroethics courses. They are introducing us to Alba Network which is looking for someone that can help with algorithmic matchmaking from students to mentors.
I contacted Stephanie Winkler to discuss a DeepMind donation.
We made a mistake and didn’t provide a list of Columbia University TA’s to Allison Ong. We are assembling that info now and will provide this week or early next week.
We have early stage discussions with the following groups:
- Milken Institute
- Allen Institute
- Chan-Zuckerberg Institute
- Burroughs Wellcome Fund
We are establishing relationships with Gates Foundation through Ashley Farley (she met with us on the Journal project) and with Brainmind (this was introduced by Khara Ramos at Dana).
Stephanie Albin is providing intros to the Lundbeck Foundation.
We submitted to the Clearer Thinking award (they choose an award amount based on proposal). Typically pays $10,000, but can be up to $150,000.
The IUSE grant was submitted by the Francos. Kate Bonnen made this possible on our side and is listed as the contributor from Neuromatch. This would imply that Kate would have to become a part time employee or contractor of Neuromatch, but I think this is a bridge to cross later.
Our fundraising system is working really well. Very happy with it and I think it has helped encourage outreach to a number of new institutes.
We have no expected additional income in the short term. We will see some from Neuromatch Conference in September.
No upcoming immediate donations besides the ones described above.
From our bank account number above, we anticipate paying approximately $280,000 in TA payments this year towards the end of July and early August. We have an audit budgeted at $12,000 and have received quotes.
We will hire a Volunteer Coordinator at $65,000 or less in August, pay an additional several thousand dollars for our admin support from Manisha. All other expenses are waiting on budget approval.
No change in 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 2025. This is too long, and we should be investing more in growth.
Google and Meta have frozen hiring. Many other tech companies are laying off employees. Now is a great time to hire a developer.
This was presented to the board. It is still under review.
We have an annual board meeting in October planned right now. In the future I would like to shift this towards September. This will allow board decisions by end of Q3 on big strategy and budget approvals and then a quarter for repeating that throughout the org and getting team plans put together in time for Q1 of the next year. This provides a nice candance for prepping for summer schools and falls on the back of NMC, which is a good time for us to meet and get together in general. This cadence should hold for other diverse science initiatives within Sciencematch as well.
That said, my plan is to become more active on changes to academy workflow and management in more concrete SOP terms in August and September this year with the additional admin support we have agreed to pay for.
NMC has been reinvigorated. We are on for the end of September and we have a bunch of new volunteers who are helping out. Brad Wyble has been instrumental in coordinating this and drumming up support.
Academy is running. From my impressions, it is smoother than ever. Probably the most major last minute fire stuff has been professional development due to a nearly complete loss of support from Brad V and Maryleen. Otherwise, several Ombuds issues have cropped up, including a ‘Level 3’ offense that resulted in the removal of a student.
Abigail Bodner has assembled an initial team of 5 people that are meeting to discuss course design and layout. They are asking for input from members of our org on doing some of the initial learning objectives and planning documentation. I am attempting to raise ~$200,000 as startup funds for the course and group to help pay early developers that will put in significant time.
Our booth purchase has been approved and assigned. Some volunteers are helping to design the booth and layout.
We are evaluating a service to provide a virtual business address and online physical mailbox. This will change Neuromatch’s primary listed address on most legal docs.
Neuromatch was permanently banned from RedBubble probably for violating a terms of service policy (multiple users in different parts of the world signing in to one account).