At the moment, I am working full time in industry and exploring my FoC ideas on the side, which seems to be common among people here. I would like to find a path that allows me to spend a lot more of my time researching and exploring FoC ideas. I could go into academia full time, but that also has overhead of its own. What are other options I should be considering?

Find a company that will let you do FoC-related work. Steve found this in Dark, a startup. I found this in an old education media company that needs custom, modern art tools. Some get this out of Google, or Apple. The commonality seems to be companies that need a domain-specific tool and are willing to pay for that tool to be created from whole cloth. Note that it doesn't need to be a software company in the traditional sense, just a company that is willing to pay for software to be created. It could be a film production studio, or a logistic company, or a design firm.

If you're American, you should probably vote for Andrew Yang (and support yourself with UBI). As an Australian I'm out of luck.

I’m looking for a cofounder for Kwaia. Got some funding, working on a demo, but things are still in flux.

@Ivan Reese Ah thanks, those are all great points. 😄 I should look around at more types of companies I wouldn't normally be thinking of.

I lived with poverty wages for a number of years then had some industry success, preserved my low burn rate, saved up, and have been lucky enough to be able to self-fund....i think getting yourself into a position where you can self-fund, then finding other funding, is ideal....if you always are depending on outside funding, it's going to be stressful and often you won't be able to do your best work because you'll be taken in directions by your funders that might be short-term focused....once you can self-fund though, it's very good to try and not self-fund, as it extends your run-way and also provides good feedback that you are not drifting to far away from applicability

@Breck Yunits Are there funding routes you think work best? As in grants, traditional VCs, etc.?

@J. Ryan Stinnett great question. That gives me an idea--perhaps we could crowd build a spreadsheet of potential funding sources for FoC ideas: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/159A7SoYeC5MCmKBp1WePaL8t3D_9Q5GrGH0Y6jK-PbM/edit?usp=sharing

I wrote a bit about self-funding - https://scattered-thoughts.net/writing/frugality-is-non-linear/. It's much more plausible than you might think.

@Breck Yunits Great idea to start a spreadsheet! 😄 I'll add other funding sources I've noticed.

Love that post @jamii !!

I worked in industry for a long while, saved some money, and then decided FoC is more important than more money and started working part time on Lamdu with @eyal. Btw if you haven’t already worked much in industry it might be good to do so for the experiences and understanding various needs and existing approaches.