How we get to an abundant future

A perspective from Eli Dourado, Astera’s Head of Strategic Investments

Throughout a meandering career in government, academia, policy think tanks, startups, and investing, I have spent a lot of time thinking about what stalls progress and what to do about it to catalyze a more abundant future. I’m thrilled to have joined Astera to put this into practice by leading our strategic investments in the visionary science and transformative technologies that can yield an abundant future.

What excited me most about coming to Astera was the opportunity to develop a theory of where to deploy our philanthropic resources. Astera’s values and broad approach provide a framework for how we are going to deploy capital — efficiently, catalytically, creatively, boldly. But what we invest in could take many forms. We want our philanthropy to increase human flourishing, innovation, abundance, transformative science, and other abstract ideals. But there is no “human flourishing store” we can walk down to to make a purchase. We have to deploy resources into specific projects. Which ones? Why?

Any theory we develop to answer these questions will be iterative, subject to continual feedback and refinement. We expect to have some failures and to talk openly about the lessons we learn along the way. And yet I do think there is a good meta-framework for thinking about these issues. Last year I had the privilege of speaking at the Progress Conference 2024. My talk focused on explaining the causes of the Great Stagnation. Some of my charts were pretty grim — I called it the Dark Steven Pinker portion of the talk — but I ended on a more optimistic note: a way forward for the progress movement.

It’s a three-pronged approach involving technoeconomics, sociopolitics, and entrepreneurship.

Technoeconomics refers to the study and analysis of how technological capabilities and constraints interact with economic factors — like costs, productivity, and market dynamics — to shape the feasibility, performance, and adoption of technologies to grow the economy. What technologies are technically feasible and economically viable? How badly do customers want them? How do changes in input costs, learning curves, or performance metrics affect competitiveness? What is the optimal configuration of a system given technological and economic trade-offs?

These questions are critical if we want to have a concrete vision of the future we are trying to build. It’s one thing to say that a good future should include abundant energy. But if we are going to actually build a future with abundant energy, we need to start developing some definite opinions about which sources of energy can contribute in what ways. What are our projections for solar deployments? Can nuclear fission ever be cheap again? Why is it so expensive in the first place, given that it was so cheap in the 1970s? What about geothermal and fusion? What variants of each are most promising? How do solar and batteries fit into this?

Only after we engage with these kinds of questions will we have a basis for steering resources into energy technologies. We need to start with a concrete vision, and technoeconomics is the way to get one.

Sociopolitics refers to the intersection and interaction of social and political factors in shaping institutions, decisions, and outcomes. Technoeconomics tells us what’s fundamentally possible and what customers want, but sociopolitics is the source of cultural and institutional barriers to what is possible—what the rest of society wants. What kinds of innovations will be culturally rejected or refused by regulators or other institutions? What kinds of innovators and innovations are rewarded with money or status?

The ways that sociopolitical issues impact innovation start far upstream in the scientific process. Where does the funding for scientific and technological innovation come from? What are the incentives that these funding and reward mechanisms create for the kinds of questions that are asked in the first place? With our open science policy, we made the decision to defund journal publication, in part because journals create an incentive to develop polished narratives instead of discovering useful truths. As a science and technology funder, we are acutely aware of the shortcomings of other funding sources and also of how hard it can be for us to skillfully deploy funding. What are we tacitly incentivizing? How do we account for the fact that people tell us what we want to hear? We won’t always get everything right, but we are committed to grappling with these questions and working to foster institutions that are aligned with our mission of supporting visionary science and transformative technology.

Many people think of entrepreneurship as the activity of setting up a business. I like a different definition I got from Tom Kalil. Tom says that an entrepreneur is someone who is not limited by resources under direct control. An entrepreneur finds a way to get the job done while outperforming what they “should” be able to do with their starting resources. You can be a business entrepreneur, but you can also be a philanthropy entrepreneur or a science entrepreneur.

Resources are not just money. They are whatever is required to overcome the problems identified in the technoeconomics and sociopolitics part of the analysis. Projects require buy-in from all kinds of stakeholders, not just funders — what does it take to achieve that buy-in? For Astera to be unreasonably successful, we need to persuade the world’s most innovative scientists and technologists to work with us in sometimes unconventional ways. And we also need to catalyze change in other philanthropic organizations in the process. True success requires us to be entrepreneurial.

I believe that applying these three lenses will serve us well as we decide what kinds of projects to fund to drive transformative scientific and technological change. But — surprise! — it’s also what I think we should look for in the teams we support. We are looking for teams with ambitious and concrete ideas for what a compelling future could look like (technoeconomics), who are clear-eyed about the nontechnical challenges their projects may face (sociopolitics), and who have a relentless determination to surmount those challenges (entrepreneurship).

These attitudes are not the default in science and technology. What’s more common is an indefinite, nonspecific sense that the future will be better or worse. When there is a concrete vision, it is often not accompanied by an interest in engaging with the work required to instantiate it. And with the first two elements lacking, entrepreneurship in science and technology often takes on a performative, going-through-the-motions form.

If you are a scientist or technologist with a concrete vision for a better future, an intense interest in the obstacles to actualize it, and an unflagging drive to make it happen, please reach out. I’d love to hear from you.

Eli Dourado is Astera's Head of Strategic Investments.