follow up from call

Hey Elon,

Nice chatting earlier.

As I mentioned on the phone, here’s the latest early draft of the blog post: https://​​quip.com/​​6YnqA26RJgKr. (Sam, Ilya, and I are thinking about new names; would love any input from you.)

Obviously, there’s a lot of other detail to change too, but I’m curious what you think of that kind of messaging. I don’t want to pull any punches, and would feel comfortable broadcasting a stronger message if it feels right. I think it’s mostly important that our messaging appeals to the research community (or at least the subset we want to hire). I hope for us to enter the field as a neutral group, looking to collaborate widely and shift the dialog towards being about humanity winning rather than any particular group or company. (I think that’s the best way to bootstrap ourselves into being a leading research institution.)

I’ve attached the offer letter template we’ve been using, with a salary of $175k. Here’s the email template I’ve been sending people:

Attached is your official YCR offer letter! Please sign and date the your convenience. There will be two more documents coming:

• A separate letter offering you 0.25% of each YC batch you are present for (as compensation for being an Advisor to YC).

• The At-Will Employment, Confidential Information, Invention Assignment and Arbitration Agreement

(As this is the first batch of official offers we’ve done, please forgive any bumpiness along the way, and please let me know if anything looks weird!)

We plan to offer the following benefits:

• Health, dental, and vision insurance

• Unlimited vacation days with a recommendation of four weeks per year

• Paid parental leave

• Paid conference attendance when you are presenting YC AI work or asked to attend by YC AI

We’re also happy to provide visa support. When you’re ready to talk about visa-related questions, I’m happy to put you in touch with Kirsty from YC.

Please let me know if you have any questions — I’m available to chat any time! Looking forward to working together :).

- gdb

Blog sounds good, assuming adjustments for neutrality vs being YC-centric.

I’d favor positioning the blog to appeal a bit more to the general public—there is a lot of value to having the public root for us to succeed—and then having a longer, more detailed and inside-baseball version for recruiting, with a link to it at the end of the general public version.

We need to go with a much bigger number than $100M to avoid sounding hopeless relative to what Google or Facebook are spending. I think we should say that we are starting with a $1B funding commitment. This is real. I will cover whatever anyone else doesn’t provide.

Template seems fine, apart from shifting to a vesting cash bonus as default, which can optionally be turned into YC or potentially SpaceX (need to understand how much this will be) stock.