Comment by glenstein
2 days ago
>if they had set up an endowment
Mozilla has had an endowment for, I think, ~15 years now, and they have invested it and grown it from around $90 million to around $1.2 billion and counting. Which now is a firewall in case of emergency, as well as a resource that's helping to stand up a VC fund which is one of their most interesting pathways to diversifying revenue.
> that's helping to stand up a VC fund which is one of their most interesting pathways to diversifying revenue
oh for fucks sake, that's even worse than blowing it on stupid ideas
JUST USE THE MONEY FOR THE BROWSER
They already spend more on developing the browser now than at any point in the entire history of Firefox, and that's after adjusting for inflation. They ship millions of lines of new code every year and apply thousands of patches. It's probably one of the biggest and most active open source projects in the entire world.
And just so we're clear, are you suggesting they shouldn't have an endowment at all, or that they shouldn't use the endowment to create any lines of long term revenue, or that they should but spending a fraction of a percent of it on a VC fund would not be successful? Whichever one you pick, there's at least one person who's exactly as upset at Mozilla for the opposite reason.
Edit: I would go so far as to say I think the VC fund is the single best idea Mozilla has ever had for long term financial independence. It builds on the success they've had thus far (such as it is) raising money from search licensing, and then using that search licensing money to stand up the endowment. Now, the VC fund leverages the endowment in a way that's the most serious path to financial independence they've ever had.
> And just so we're clear, are you suggesting they shouldn't have an endowment at all
did you read my comments in this chain?
> I would go so far as to say I think the VC fund is the single best idea Mozilla has ever had for long term financial independence.
do you look at Mozilla and see it as an example of an organisation that selected good investments over its existence?
would have it done better putting that money into treasuries? almost certainly
the point of an endowment for a foundation is to ensure the organisation continues to exist forever
not to gamble its future on 1 in 100 bets
and for a fund to have the possibility to have selected that 1 in 100: it has to be of significant size
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