Reflection: nonprofit vs for-profit

Note 2023-08-18: This is a clumsy freewrite and kind of just a mishmash. 

I'm not sure why, but I've gone in circles on this one for the last 2 months: Should I start a nonprofit or a for-profit? I needed to write some reflection down here so I can stop being confused.

Non-profit benefits:

Possibly a higher probability path to a breakout career

Impact is much closer to the ground (hence not deluded)

Higher probability of organizing a great Manhattan Project

Makes full use of my talent?

A job like this ensures that I am networking and making friends with the kinds of people I think I'd really enjoy being around

For-profit benefits:

Sustainable living, including the ability to have a family

Compounding effect of business acumen

Use what I learned in college

Reward for hard work? Or, ability to be taken care of re: family, health, and welfare/time off

Creating a self sustaining organization

Creating abundance

Okay, so what are the things I "need"? Strong relationships, a meaningful contribution to humanity, and money to sustain. 

The other thing as well is the opportunity to organize a "great Manhattan Project" that accomplishes something extremely useful for the world and which otherwise would not exist. I think this is something along the lines of, The best societal use of my talent is in leadership until proven otherwise, hence I still need to prove it otherwise.

What are the great Manhattan Projects which otherwise wouldn't occur? Seems like, climate regulatory bottlenecks in the U.S., modernization of California, or pandemic defenses against another really bad pathogen.

Naturally, seems like you can't have everything. And trying to optimize can make your head spin. I've been trying to optimize for years. Doesn't seem to be productive. 

Last 6 months, I've also been reading How to Decide by Annie Duke on and off. I think I should apply some of the techniques to this decision-making. 

What's the conclusion? Still, I don't know.

Plan A: Nonprofit

Plan B: Series of tiny business projects that compound on each other, a bit like an underdog rebel. And go back to grad school.

Plan Z: Back to the office job, but at least it pays well and can allow me to move to New York

Okay, so I have a need for a vibrant social life, and it seems like this is going to come from binding together people under a common cause. Otherwise the adhesion of people seems to flitter away. Interest groups are what bind people together, and it seems like if this is my biggest interest group I should cultivate it instead of let it sit to the side. One thing that confuses me about adulthood is that people don't choose their coworkers, and so you end up spending so much of your life with people that may or may not nourish your existence(?).

The nice thing about working on climate change is that people were quite willing to take your meeting, and so it's easy to form a friend connection that way.

Okay, so by writing this, it seems like the best path forward is still the nonprofit route. 

Oh yeah, I mean the key paradox I was going to before was that, when I was trying to do the for-profit route, the biggest impediment was in fact the lack of connections. Hence really the bottleneck to be solved is having more connections. So if the nonprofit route is the direction with the highest probability of a breakout career that doesn't yield money but does yield more connections, then ultimately that's the best place to be aiming.

I think that reminds me of a family friend I met in Singapore who was a successful serial entrepreneur, and he told a pretty interesting story about how it's important to serve the community first before striking your success as an entrepreneur. In his case, he spend a lot of time serving the government and business community of Singapore, and so later when he wanted to start some businesses, it was so clear that he had done so much for Singapore that Singapore was going to bend over backwards a little bit for him. That's the first time I'd heard something like that. So, it's to say that it's not like non-profit and for-profit work exist in completely different domains. Ultimately, the most important thing is to be really good at what you do.

I think the A, B, Z planning helped a bit. Ultimately, there's still a lot of research and validating of Plan A before I dive headfirst into it. And if it's looking to be quite unpromising, then back into the trenches of small, creative businesses I should go.