2023/01/08
Summary
We will hire a developer in the next two weeks. A lot of attention is on NMDA and Community Matching Events for sustainability purposes, with an additional focus on Federal Grants as an untapped resource. We received Facebook funds and have $45,000 in accounts receivable.
Progress Updates
Data Analytics
Good progress at Data Analytics generally. I reached out to approximately 25 labs that were looking for computational help or software work in their lab to see if they were still looking for help and to talk to them about NMDA.
The website itself was tweaked to cater towards academic labs, including a FAQ section that talks about how we can bill, be on grants together, etc.
The top three problems we are working on at NMDA (besides getting our first partner) are:
- No example work or previous clients for legitimacy and proof
- Minimal social proof due to no social presence and no tie to NM website
- Building a better system for finding people that could use help from NMA
Our focus here is effectively on outreach and networking to find our first partners.
Recruiting
A neuroscience specialized recruiter that I know named Lindsay Hartland has agreed to be an advisor for NM Recruiting, help us think through pricing model, and potentially work on finding clients. This will start out as a free arrangement and potentially move to a paid arrangement if it works well, where he would become our first recruiter employee and could start on on a sliding scale working part time.
His advice is being supplemented by a friend of mine that works in the tech space generally doing earlier, more junior level recruiting more similar to what we will specialize in.
Despite the focus for sustainability to be on recruiting for industry positions, we can still help the academic job market by looking at new ways of collecting positions and applicants and matching people for jobs. This also provides a good engine for engaging others with our other programs that can be helpful.
Our focus here is on learning and constructing better models and predictors and setting up what kind of info we need to gather to build a useful recruiter database.
Open Publishing
Little progress has been made in Open Publishing since the last board meeting. Between end of semester, end of year/holidays, etc, very few people were around in meetings or for generating documentation.
That said, pillar separation is already helping people think through requirements more specifically and we are working on a set of user and problem statements for each pillar. This is really the only thing we should be working on alongside fundraising.
I am concerned our pillar pitch is going to get too hairy for fundraising, so the plan is to just pitch the much more emotional and less questionable foundation, mentioning that we will build two example services for the ecosystem that will be maintained by Neuromatch.
Our focus here is following a good design process that will be easily jumped into by the team members we start hiring.
Conference
The conference board and volunteer team has generally agreed to expand the scope of conference to call it ‘Community’ and focus on all of Neuromatch non-academy events. This includes career and prof dev panels, the conference, dealing with community interaction things like SfN and conferences we attend (instead of hosting or supplementing), as well as community oriented activities like Mastodon.
Community Events
Courtney has helped provide some structure and instilled some confidence in volunteers to own this community events project more. Deepak is continuing the planning, but it is too late for a January event. Probably February.
Matching Events
Continuing to see interest in hosting matching events at other conferences. This is a great way for us to meet people and get our name out there. This can be a minor contributor to sustainability, but a big one to making connections that could be interested in our other programs.
We have no website to show off these matching events, no place to inquire, and no way to create a profile to track ones participation or history, so this is a focus area.
Mastodon
There are 754 active users of Mastodon.
Summary
We are using this team as the pilot/test bed for innovations in how we project manage and work together.
Our primary focus is on securing more matching event partnerships and building the website that captures these community events so that people can sign up and see what is coming up next.
Academy
Simons will fund development of our new course. We just need to decide what it is within the next week. I do not think Carsen’s survey work is going to be active enough to get feedback before this deadline, so we might just have to shoot for it on our notice of intent and then change it if we feel like we missed the mark.
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 (estimated)
Bank of America Account 2: $121,856 USD
Lending Club Account: $248,306 USD
TOTAL: $382,112 USD
Fundraising Status
Received Donor Funds and Commitments
The Neuro Irv and Helga Cooper Science prize was delayed due to the holidays. We should receive it in January.
In Discussion Donor Funds
The NASA TOPST funds, we found, were confusingly described and didn’t actually apply to us (this was grants for NASA internals to teach NASA open core). That said, we developed a much better relationship with the NASA people through this submission and this facilitated Abigail visiting them during AGU and getting good precommitment on our next grant application. NASA just released the actual call we should have applied to, which is due in May.
While NASA hasn’t denied our application yet, it is unlikely to be funded due to the topic mismatch.
We are in discussion with Schmidt Futures technically, but Parth has become unresponsive. I gave Parth one last message and will then reach out to Kumar Garg. We are in touch with them through a second route via Ila Fiete and the Open Publishing project.
Fundraising Plans
The Sloan Foundation project has not been submitted yet. It is slow because it is not ours and Jon is busy with other things.
We will submit for NASA training programs in May (but actually earlier than that).
I have combed through all grants.gov FOAs open now and upcoming and have established a list of ~15 different federal grants we may qualify for. I will frame out a confirmation plan for which one of these we should pursue over the next few weeks so that we have a clear view of which ones we are going for. Some of them are direct hits (Summer School and Conference Funds for NIH interest areas) and some are questionable (building BRAIN Initiative data infrastructure).
Financial Projections
Earned Income
We do not have any planned earned income in the next month.
Donations
We have a pending ~$45,000 for receipt in our accounts.
Major Costs
We are hiring a web developer for a salary of approximately $100,000. We spent $2,500 on a Trademark lawyer.
Runway
The delay in the web developer hire combined with additional grant funding has been kind to our runway projections and our six month safety net entry point has been extended to 2024.
Hiring, Team Changes, and People Updates
Web Developer
We have found four great candidates for the web developer role and will hire one in the next two weeks.
Exec Team
Academy is recruiting for exec team members right now.
Market Trends and World Event Impact on Neuromatch
Recession and Tech Layoffs
A lot of money is moving out of highly liquid environments and into things like bonds. VCs have the highest cash availability they have ever had, though. More consolidation in companies. Later stage companies will acquire earlier ones, and lots of innovate tech entrepreneurs and early stage risk takers will be looking for ways to continue that work.
Predicting that the academic job market will pick back up with fewer competitive option, the trends of post doc positions paying more, and uncertainty about the security of the tech startup world.
Now is not the time for donations from individual donors, but it doesn’t hurt to build up the system yet.
Other Notifications
Trademark Dispute
No response from LVIS after a sharp response from our lawyer. Our lawyer assumes they will not respond (there will not be a clear end, just inaction).
Operations Stuff
Neuromatch has a phone number through Google Voice now, so nobody has to show their personal number: +1 503-512-9165
Empowering People with Spend
Neuromatch is signed up for Ramp. This gives us the ability to give virtual or real debit cards to as many people as we want. Each one can be customized, on the fly (after issuing or before) with spend limits, vendor restrictions, country restrictions, and more.