What to work on
I'm tired of not solving root causes
If you're motivated to work at an impact company – it is so hard to filter out those that actually solve a root cause for an important problem.
I will do this for you – this website will be a massive filter. Apply to those jobs, that solve the most essential problems!
Because shitcoins, NFTs or gaming don't seem to move the needle, I also have a look at which crypto companies could do some good for these essential problems.
Main problem: The large majority of the world is not contributing to fight climate change in impactful ways - but we need this majority
work in progress :)
Subproblem: 40h/work week and life generally are so exhausting that most people just don't have the energy to do something besides work for the general good
Solution 1: Spend your 40h/week in good companies to build systems that multiplies your effect on reducing emissions
Solution 2: At least don't work at bad companies, so they get forward
Solution 3: Or work for bad companies to actually improve them
What to work on
Subproblem: 1/3 of food is never eaten and wasted; this creates the most gigatons of CO2 according to Project Drawdown
Solution 1: Buy abnormal food that would be wasted via TooGoodToGo (aka cheap way to eat restaurant food verrry often)
Solution 2: Gorillas, Getir, Flink cdeliver can list SirPlus (saving odd vegetables etc.) to their product palette? And deliver it in 10 minutes
Subproblem: Any new human born has the second biggest impact on emissions behind food waste
Solution 1: Women in Tech Africa enables girls in emerging countries to get remote jobs, so that they're independent from a husband and having kids is not their main or only option
Subproblem: Eating meat and dairy creates a lot of emissions
Solution 1: No really good idea yet, besides get cooked veggie food in front of your face. Or get only veggie ingredients delivered to your home. At HelloFresh for example, you can order only veggie-boxes.
Subproblem: People keep heating their house year after year, although technology can remove the need for heating altogether. Passive houses save energy and your bills
Solution 1: Ecoworks creates scalable systems to renovate buildings and make them net-zero
Subproblem: Buying new things because consumerism and most are not used to repair or buy second-hand
Solution 1: Grow eBay Kleinanziegen and similar second-hand platforms
Subproblem: People who want to make money from money, can make returns investing in bad companies.
Solution 1: Switch to a sustainable bank (all the fees and money in the account help good companies grow aka build new systems). Tomorrow Bank if you're German; otherwise compare "ethical banks" on Google
Solution 2: Inyova leads you to do socially responsible and impact investing
Subproblem: It's so easy to take a plane to Lisbon but massive amounts of CO2 are emmited
Solution 1: Create a simple landing page where all these Portugal fans can register interest in reviving the Sud Express Train from Paris to Portugal
Main problem: It's so difficult to eat healthy
work in progress :)
Subproblem: Shop food in supermarkets with 90% unhealthy food
Who doesn’t need willpower in resisting food shopping?
Those that don’t go to supermarketsThose that get food cooked (way more convenient than shopping themselves)
Solution 1: Gorillas, Getir, Flink deliver groceries within 10 minutes; way more convenient to order with them than going to the supermarket. What if they adjust their filter? What if they only offer gluten-, milk- and sugar-free stuff?
Subproblem: Don’t feel like cooking
Who does feel like cooking?
Those that feel responsible that others get food
Solutions
Tinder-like apps, Meetup -> Match people, so they don’t live aloneBumble and other friends match-making apps -> match people to cook together
Subproblem: After healthy food, still have the craving for unhealthy ones
Who doesn’t have these cravings?
Those that have spent a longer time without the bad foodThose who accept the pain/craving and let it go
Dreamer mindset to triple the impact of existing companies
The Portuguese government, subsidizing meals that restaurants cook and only have healthy ingredients
Win-win: Attract talent to the country spending money
Flink, delivering selected healthy, relatively cheap food
Win-win: Positioning - only one app that does that
Schlecker, offering only selected healthy, relatively cheap food
Win-win: Polishing image
Aldi, offering only selected healthy, relatively cheap food
Win-win: Major PR
Nucao low-sugar chocolate replacing any contract with companies who gift chocolate
Win-win: Expanding market, by introducing the product to people who don’t actively try it out by themselves (getting to these unhealthy ones)
TooGoodToGo, government subsidizing healthy food that is put to waste otherwise
Win-win: Major PR
Main problem: It's so exhausting to move just because I should
work in progress :)
Subproblem: There is no real purpose to move (get food etc.)
Solution:
-> Get a financial purpose/reward for each step you do. With each step you do you grow your digital pet, This is a unique NFT, which you can sell to other players after a while. They already have 142.4K Twitter followers!
Crypto company Genopets converts your real-life movement into XP to progress in-game. Move-to-Play + Play-to-Earn = Move-to-Earn Gaming
Subproblem: My brain is not used to move regularly
Subproblem: There's a car in front of my door - it's much more convenient to use
Steps towards my ideal life:
1. Enable more people to work remotely
2. Get the right people in certain locations to form new tribes
3. Create best examples of locations
4. Actually forming strong connections (meaningful, repeated,random encounters)
5. Make eating healthy the most convenient choice
6. Moving more in everyday life without conscious effort
7. Stop being a slave (employee) asap
Elon Musk has also a nice framework to solve his most pressing problem, aka 'we can only ask the right questions if we know more about the universe, i.e., humans need to become multiplanetery (will talk about that soon).
1. Get the right people in certain locations to form new tribes
Nomadlist matching on Airbnbs
Remoteok.io incl. matching
old people .. kids
hungry-foreign people
2. Create best examples of locations
Madeira
Tulsa Remote
Re:people Gran Canaria
3. Actually forming strong connections (meaningful, repeated, random encounters)
Meetup
Library of things
ecoworks - retrofitting houses together/teaching locals
5. Moving more without conscious effort
E-Bikes for hilly terrain
Async work
Walking meetings
I wondered if it could be useful to be a bit irrational about “the biggest sustainable effect”. The most sustainable world may not be achieved by working directly on the official sustainability goals. But by creating a world that makes people happier. And a sustainable world is created as a side effect. That's my reasoning where I am at the moment.
7. Stop being a slave (employee) asap
Robinhood
Tomorrow Banking - invest every dollar people earn into sustainability
Upwork
7. Enable more people to work remotely
Gitlab
One-line impact: Convince more companies to be remote-first and operate async
What: Connect similarly but yet far apart interest groups
How exactly: Promote via social media content about async, diversify, low-cost contractors to more conservative HR teams
Compounding impact: First only for top talent and after a while for whole team
Side-effects: Less sitting still in meetings equaling better (MSK) health, more equal opportunities in the world
What exactly to do
1. Understanding the root cause of a problem
2. Imagine ideal steps to change this root cause
3. See if these steps are already implemented by a "functional system " aka a company
The easiest thing to do is to just have a look at the companies, that I filtered out, and apply to one of their current job postings.
The second thing you could do is cold pitching someone in your preferred department, with 1-3 ideas on what you could do for them.
I see a third option, which would be best to actually solve problems:
Improve/boost/grow a specific action step at the company
I find this method much more compelling than e.g. giving money to a charity that calls itself "World food programme", but you don't know what they're actually doing.
Mainly one reason
I started sorting through impactful companies (well, based on my opinion), but at least not based on some agency rating shit that nobody understands.
This website is an attempt to get my thinking clear. Proper work-in-progress. There are other projects like 80,000 hours which have sorted through the most pressing problems (based on evidence) for more than 10 years.
They're great. I just wonder if it is more effective to get more people into impactful jobs by not being purely rational about impact. Like in the end rationally generating more impact by being on first sight irrational about impact, you know?
How irrational? Most people in our generation probably would feel the most pressing problem is fighting climate change (80,000 disagrees). I started out by thinking about which obvious companies do the most for climate change and which non-obvious (unsexy) ones also contribute.
Over the time, I realized that there is suuuch a big difference in how much useful companies are. Like there's a massive difference if you work for an electric car company vs. for a company that tries to replace a plastic product vs. working on making sustainable investment mainstream.
There is one main reason why I've created this site: because I would regret it over the next years if I wouldn't have tried to talk as much as possible about what to work on.
Maybe you fly less and eat less meat, but 90% of the time you're sitting in front of the computer doing rather dumb shit. Dumb shit that is making the world worse or in a good case doesn't do much.
Why are you spending 40 hours per week at work doing dumb shit? One reason could be because it's so easy to rush into the next best job. It's so hard to filter out jobs that pay the bills and that actually do something good.
And anyway, the main opinion is that you should get a safe job because you want to provide for your children (soon), right? Everyone can only do their small bit - so save a bit more plastic, please.
I just absolutely can't stand that feeling any more to spend 90% of my work time doing bullshit. BTW, that’s quite a different motivation to saving the world.
With the rise of remote work, I had the feeling I could work for any company, anywhere. So why not find the most impactful company? Get that one decision right because it can increase or decrease impact so much. Just this one decision.
Solving root causes to eat healthier
Solving root causes of overworked doctors
Pawp:
Hypothesis: Because the platform unites 1000's of vets, they can have more standard working times, because there's always someone who can replace them.
Win-Win: Tele-vet doctor 24/7 $19/month, $3000 per year covered
X no surprise messaging on weekends
Plain lines of important stuff
There are few things that I hate more than useless e-mails. Maybe I'll drop you a line or two occasionally.