I just had an initial call with Matt Clifford, who is running def/acc, an accelerator (heh) for people building defensive/differential technology. It's a program that runs for something like 4-24 weeks in London, bringing together a cohort of folks to incubate a new company. Will I end up participating?

Why yes

• Matt himself is very cool, started the UK AISI and AI Safety Summit; I feel like I could learn a lot from him personally

• I liked the concept of d/acc a bunch when I first saw Vitalik's post on it

• I like the idea of being heads down, in an environment focused on delivering, with a peer group of technical folks excited by the same concepts as me

  • And the idea of resetting, or being on retreat for a bit

Why no/hesitations

• Ada is 1 month old; spending a lot of time away might be hard on her or Rachel

  • Though Matt says we could winnow down to a trial period to like 4 weeks, which is much more palatable than 12.

• 8% seems like a lot of equity to give up?

  • Manifold never went through an accelerator (though we would definitely have done YC at 7%, if we'd been accepted)

• Some kind of weird pride/mentality around "oh accelerators are for less experienced folks" or "I can do it all myself", which I don't think I actually endorse

Before the call today, I'd put myself at like a 20-25% chance of going through; after speaking to Matt and learning a bit more about def/acc's structure and goals, I'm up to 40-50%, as of this writing. Would love to hear y'alls thoughts (esp if you have any experience with Entrepreneur First, Matt himself or his initiatives).

PS What would I work on? Could be...

• A for-profit extension of the Manifund platform/mission

• Something around making LLM-based coding ubiquitous/accessible to non-programmers

• Something around the financial/contractual ecosystem for agents