Molly Mielke got a grant from Immersed Ventures that let her quit her job, then Tyler Cowen selected her for Emergent Ventures. She credits that program's speed and openness to unconventional work with changing how she thinks about funding innovation.
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Can you walk us through a bit of like what your process of applying for a grant looked like? It's weird right now. I think like I— so I got a grant from Immersed Ventures and it was what inspired me to quit my job and go out on my own basically. And that was amazing and it kind of kickstarted my thinking about how we fund more innovation. And I was very lucky that that was Tyler Cowen is the person who picks for Emergent Ventures. I got introduced to him and it was— the beauty of Emergent Ventures is it's an incredibly short, streamlined process and he makes a decision very quickly. Most grants are not like that. Most of them are like very long time horizons. You have to like probably know the foundation already. And what's nice about that program too is they fund all kinds of like weird stuff. It's usually like new institutions or people that are exploring ideas or they're just promising individuals that should be given more time and not just in a boring job.