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Comment by mycologos | Hacker News Reader

Hopefully the Simons empire has enough people who will keep executing his vision and stave off bureaucratic rot.

Making money is one thing, but circulating so much of it back through math and science is a great legacy.

The thing is that he genuinely loved math. I don't think there's really anyone in his orbit who loves math as much. His family is his family and his colleagues love money.

We'll see in the coming months and years whether he was able to create a structure that continues his legacy but usually the answer to that question is no.

His foundation also donates a lot to neuroscience research, particularly for Autism. I think there was a family reason for that, so probably at least some of his scientific philanthropy will continue for awhile. But yeah it's extremely hard to create a structure that would perpetuate without the remaining people at the top truly buying into and understanding the mission.

I have heard that he had at least one child with autism, hence his desire to fund efforts to better fund autism and the brain.

It's hard watching venerable institutions rot into "just avoid administerial short term blame" death loops. You have to have skin in the game, not just hire a temporary manager for it.

subtweet @apple

I think it's doable. Institutions under top leadership can thrive long after its founders die. This is true of almost every Fortune 500 company. I am sure there is enough redundancy to continue the foundation's goal. Carnegie foundation or Ford foundation, or Apple computers after jobs died .

I don't understand the relationship with Steve Jobs. Nobody's arguing that Renaissance, his investment fund, will do well without him.

We're talking about the philanthropy that Simmons led in mathematics and science through his foundation.

Now, whether this support will continue depends on the will of Jim as well as his family.

I’d argue that Ford and Carnegie foundations are not good examples here, having veered very far from the intention/goals of the original donors into directions that are arguably diametrically opposed. Essentially they were hijacked from within by hired “professional managers” who pursued their own agendas. Maybe in the future we can set up AIs to make the decisions on our behalf after we’re gone, because humans are extremely unreliable over longer time frames!

It’s also not unheard of to structure a foundation to just run their assets down over time exactly on the theory that, given enough time, who know how the money will be distributed.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_M._Olin_Foundation

sadly, the trend for these sorts of things is to sour after the original founder leaves...

There is an esoteric concept that has some dynamics that explain this phenomenon somewhat. Not to get to into the weeds (the origins of this concept are esoteric religious ideas - I mean this secularly, as it relates to business entities) but the concept is an 'egregore'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egregore#:~:text=An%20egregore....

I don't see it on the Wikipedia page, but the theory that explains the degradation of a companies original mission statement can be summarized as this: "Within an organization(egregore) there exists three classes of individuals... the primary two of which are those that serve in the name of the egregore, and those that serve the egregore directly, the third (a smaller %) being those un-loyal to the current structure and would change the egregore to suit their needs. Of the main two: The dichotomy can be spilt along lines like developers/founders vs marketers/sales, where developers are interested in serving the mission statement and developing a good product, and marketers are interested in growth and survival, at the expense of everything else. So when the developers/founders leave, the vacuum that is created is filled either by those that would change the egregore, or corrupt the mission statement in the name of growth and profit."

This is a simplistic model - with a fair bit of predictive and explanatory power. I have found it useful to describe that shift inside a corporation.

I find the tension between founders(idealists) / marketers(survivalists) pretty interesting. The Jobs-less apple era is one recent instance I assume.

Both are needed. But Currently there are no checks in place to prevent this 'mind-share' take-over, so to speak...

Simons has been out of day-to-day management for quite some time. He was succeeded by co-CEOs who were then themselves succeeded, IIRC. (These are my recollections from reading The Man Who Solved the Market). Apparently his management style was always pretty hands off and they operated multiple successful quant strategies that were led by others. Their Medallion fund returned 22% after (huge) fees in 2022 according to the WSJ. [1] That's the employee only fund that has blown the doors off for 30+ years. They do have a few other funds that manage much more $ and manage external money that have never performed at Medallion's level. In other words, it seems like succession will not be a major risk for them in the near term.

[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/big-hedge-funds-are-top-perform...

It would imply good processes for keeping out those that would run it to the ground in the name of (short term) profits... That makes me hopeful...

But every succession is a risk. Every merger is a risk... ask Boeing.

This split exists not just in organizations but in society at large. Some people are builders and some are redistributors. Builders take pride in creating value and redistributors can provide useful service by making value available to more people. Very often engineers are not interested in marketing/selling their product and redistributors fill a useful niche.

However, some fraction of redistributors are willing to enrich themselves at the expense of others. These should never be allowed to make decisions affecting others. A founder should always look for people from the first group by looking at their past behavior and make sure those succeed him.

HHMI is going strong. didn't really kick until gear until after Hughes died, but still

That's because the HHMI as planned by Hughes was kind of a scam. It took legal decisions against his family to establish HHMI as a serious biomedical funding agency.

Thanks for sharing this, super interesting!

Interesting concept. Would love to learn more if you can think of a reference

Edit: Claude for the rescue

"Here are some additional sources that discuss the concept of an egregore and how it can be applied to understanding group dynamics and the evolution of organizations:

"The Anatomy of the Body of God" by Frater Achad (Charles Stansfeld Jones) - A detailed exposition on the occult concept of egregores from a ceremonial magic perspective.

"Web of Debt" by Ellen Hodgson Brown - This book discusses egregores in the context of economic systems and the power of collective beliefs shaping institutions.

"The Egregore Effect" by Jack Willis - Explores egregores as self-reinforcing memetic constructs that shape group behavior.

"The Cult of Information" by Theodore Roszak - While not directly about egregores, it discusses how ideologies and worldviews can take on a life of their own within organizations.

"The Organizational Hologram" by David Bohm - Applies concepts from quantum physics to understanding the undivided wholeness of organizations

Thank you for not dragging us into the weeds of esotericism.

What is the source for the quotation in your post?

I am struggling to find that, sadly I am coming up short. It was from an essay, I believe, with a secular view of these things. But I can't seem to find the author. that was before I had zotero to organize these sources :)

> Hopefully the Simons empire has enough people who will keep executing his vision and stave off bureaucratic rot.

I think that fear is why the Gates foundation (or was it the one by Buffett or both?) have to spend down their endowment within a few years of the founder's death and then close shop.

For what it's worth, the foundation was actually kickstarted by his wife.

I used to think this kind of thing was because someone didn't care.

But I also think someone is at high level, a partner might be the only one who can look at things from above, seeing the big big picture.

Of course it could be the person doesn't care, but it could also be the person is busy, etc

I actually think they both cared. My comment was more to point out that she is still alive and is a computer scientist, so the foundation still has founding leadership.

It is not about enough people, it is about THE PERSON. Every people is different and there are people who are more different and outliers.

I wonder if he left any of the rest of his money to the foundation, or if it all stays with his family.

https://givingpledge.org/pledger?pledgerId=288

giving it away

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