Project summary

A 3-month runway grant so I can work full-time on AI uplift for EA orgs and executive function coaching for EA staff.

What I do:

• AI uplift for orgs: async contractor engagements to clean up an org's operations with AI. I've just finished my first 4-week engagement (an AIM spinout, £2.3k), and I built https://eaaiuplift.com/ as the public-facing directory for the people doing this work (19 profiles so far).

• Executive function coaching: ~5 hours a week with a team lead at 80,000 Hours for 10+ weeks. His weekly self-rated productivity went from 5.6 to 7.5/10. Case study: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MwzcKwK41O0xfsjX2eDHtqsEX6UIozVR3Mg8744BTeo/edit

Why runway: I have ~£3k of net worth. Client acquisition takes 3-6 weeks from cold pitch to first payment, so I am constantly treading water. £10k means I can take on more engagements at a subsidised rate for budget-constrained AIM/EA orgs, and spend the next 3 months on strategy rather than the next invoice.

What are this project's goals? How will you achieve them?

1. More AI uplift engagements with EA orgs, at subsidised cost. I charged my first client £2.3k for 4 weeks. I'd like to charge ~£1.5k and run 2-3 engagements in parallel. Main learning from the first one: overwhelmed founders struggle to reply async, so human reply time is the bottleneck. Shorter, cheaper, parallel engagements are less bottlenecked by it. Since launching eaaiuplift.com internally I have several warm conversations with EA orgs to convert.

2. Keep coaching EA staff. Continue with the 80,000 Hours team lead, take on 1-2 more clients at EA or AI-safety orgs, and start 1:1 AI-use coaching (people in the EA AI Uplift Slack are asking for it).

3. EA AI Uplift fieldbuilding. https://eaaiuplift.com/ now has 19 public profiles plus individual and organisation assessment tools. The aim is a public directory, a place for skill sharing, and case studies that get more orgs to adopt this (e.g. Good Impressions, who have had an in-house uplift person for 6+ months). I'll post it to the EA forum next week.

How will this funding be used?

I currently have ~£3k in the bank, total. So ~£10k would go straight into my bank, buying some more security.

My costs will remain the same (rent, food, £200/month Claude, £200/month Codex). I am currently bootstrapping myself and just about making ends meet, without enough slack to replenish runway, and a few delays or cancellations away from £0.

More concretely:

1. I'd be able to take on more AI uplift engagements at reduced cost (e.g. AIM orgs that are budget constrained).

2. I'd have the breathing room to reassess my current load, thinking more strategically rather than tactically.

3. I'd be able to rest at weekends, feel safe, and be in fight-or-flight less.

Who is on your team? What's your track record on similar projects?

Just me! https://www.alexanderlarge.com/legible

👆 this link contains more on my track record, e.g. I worked at the EA biotech startup Alvea for 1 year as a process improvement specialist (relevant to AI uplift), and was a finalist for the "executive assistant to the office of the CEO" role at Longview Philanthropy.

https://www.alexanderlarge.com/references

From the 80,000 Hours team lead I coach (quoted with his approval, from the case study):

"This is the most well-organised I've ever been at anything in my life, I think."

"I think there is just a very clear difference in the graph of weekly wellbeing and weekly output before and after. It feels quite easy to point at causation here. This is a very longstanding pattern."

Track record, last ~3 months:

1. Executive function coaching: at least 50 completed calls with a team lead at 80,000 Hours, including a retrospective. His weekly self-ratings rose from 5.6 to 7.5/10 for productivity and from 5.2 to 6.75/10 for work enjoyment. He approved a case study with these results: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MwzcKwK41O0xfsjX2eDHtqsEX6UIozVR3Mg8744BTeo/edit

2. AI uplift contracting: a 4-week, £2,300 engagement with an AIM spinout is complete. I delivered accounting automation, operational documentation and an AI knowledge-base prototype.

3. EA AI Uplift fieldbuilding: launched https://eaaiuplift.com/ on 1 September. 19 public profiles, 72 people contacted, four practitioner conversations including people doing this work at 80,000 Hours and Good Impressions.

4. Shipping: I built and launched a paid revision app for police officers (https://policelawprep.co.uk/) from scratch in ~6 weeks, 22 paid accounts. Listed as evidence I can ship, not as a plan — this grant funds the uplift and coaching work above.

What are the most likely causes and outcomes if this project fails?

Most likely failure: the runway gets eaten by the same treading-water pattern, because client acquisition for coaching and uplift work stays slow, and I'm back to ~£3k in 6 months w/ nothing structurally different.

How much money have you raised in the last 12 months, and from where?

I've bootstrapped myself for the last ~3 months → no money raised from funders