Giving capital to promising people “too early” in their career is a great idea with much further to go, and the power law provides an interesting way to finance it.
YC is a great example. You can imagine taking that further—giving $25k to the smartest and most determined 100,000 people you can find each year to work on whatever they want, in exchange for the right to invest in their next startup. A country could make the economics work.
Giving 10 years of “tenure” to a group of 20 super promising 22 year old researchers finishing up undergrad is not that expensive relative to the value it would likely create, and there seem like a bunch of ways to capture a part of it.
Same thing for high-potential artists in exchange for some percentage of future sales.
Income sharing agreements seem hugely better than charging tuition, for the obvious reason of alignment. Current versions seem one iteration away from a transformative idea.
And lots more. If I were not so busy with AI, I’d be very tempted to explore the craziest-sounding ideas in this direction I could think of.
