SURPLUS

First, there are many standard reasons to use a for-profit corporation when trying to do good. For-profits operate with tight feedback loops. They can be more certain that they produce value (see: gains from trade, Paul Graham on wealth, “surplus”). They can tap into a much larger pool of available financing. They can compensate founders and early employees with financial upside, should the venture work out well.

For-profit models are surprisingly flexible: Elicit, Apollo, Goodfire, Wave, Dwarkesh, Lighthaven and Manifest all demonstrate different approaches to making money while also serving the public interest.

Now is an excellent time to start a for-profit, given vast torrents of funding available from Anthropic employees and OpenAI Foundation. These funds are distributed out of 501c3 entities — but 501c3s can pay for for-profit services, and invest in for-profit corps. There’s a $100B market waiting to be constructed; shovels waiting to be sold.

And ideologically, we think that equity is a beautiful mechanism for value alignment and credit allocation. Manifund has previously experimented with impact certificates to bring this concept to the charity world; now, we think that plain ol’ corporate equity will work fine, maybe with a light sprinkling of retroactive funding or prize rounds or advance market commitments to finance public goods.

It is absolutely the case that Anthropic or METR are great places to work. But maybe:

— You’re well suited towards starting projects: you enjoy independence, have high risk tolerance, and moving fast.

— You’re worried about the balance of power, as labs accumulate more talent and funding.

— You have an idea that you can’t stop thinking about, a pain point you have to solve, something nobody else is doing that you think will have a big impact.

Building great software takes more than coding. Product taste, visual design, distribution, sales and marketing are all things that 2026 LLMs still fail at. (Not to mention long-term coherence and maintainability within a codebase.)

We’ve developed these supplementary skills needed to ship successful products, and would love to foster them in a new generation of founders.

First and foremost, we’re hoping to incubate projects that produce massive good for the world.

Of course, we’d be happy if our investments turn out profitable, helping us invest in more great projects.

Finally, Manifund, Lightcone, and many others would be excited to hire founder-shaped folks; even if your specific project doesn’t succeed, your time at Surplus will be a fantastic work test.