Lessons from Week Three

Hey Friends!

Making videos is hard. Not in a bad way. It’s something I definitely signed up for, but the past three weeks have been a challenge. The good news? The Field Guide to Particle Physics is moving right along. The bad news? I’ve been late on almost everything. We’re catching up though. We’ve progressed from “days late” to “hours late”, so we’re almost at capacity.

I really love this work!

Part of the delays have been some structural work. Behind the scenes, the funding model for the Pasayten Institute has shifted a lot. Tinkering with the incentives, I realized that the choice of financial model will directly impact what I get to spend my time on in the months and years to come.

The trouble with the nonprofit model is inertia, the model I pick will be the model I choose to solicit donations, which means I immediately have stakeholders. Investors. People with leverage. Giving that kind of leverage away at the very beginning of the organization just doesn’t feel right, for me or the organization.

I now see the full wisdom of fiscal sponsorship: I wouldn’t have to make those choices upfront. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find a suitable, willing partner organization.

So instead I’ve set my sights on the B Corp model. I still want to provide the same, open access physics education, but now I can work to fund that content through whatever channel works. I’ve got a few ideas I’m building out - hence all the lateness - and I’m excited to start testing them.

Some of these projects might involve physics or mathematics, but the spirit wouldn’t be pure education. I want to make sure the best material stays free and open access. But I do think there is room for funding through personal access: coaching and material support.

In the end, making the videos and sharing the physics is want I want to spend most of my time doing. I’m just going to need to wrap a business around this idea. Fortunately, the economic incentives seem to line up: increased marginal effort on making videos leads to increased marginal improvement of our main content funnel.

More to come!

Sean