Who funds the quests.

Fast grants. High-variance, unconventional, talent-first.

Run by Tyler Cowen at the Mercatus Center. Extremely short application, decisions in weeks, no strings attached. The operational embodiment of permissionless innovation.

best for: Unproven people with a weird, specific idea and no credential path.

$100k to stop out of school and build something important.

Founded by Peter Thiel to challenge the university credential monopoly. Selects for spikiness over well-roundedness. Alumni include founders of Ethereum, Figma, and Luminar.

best for: Under-22 builders with spiky talent and a real project.

$100k for creators across domains, art, science, history, startups.

Funded by Jim O'Shaughnessy. Domain agnostic, invests in the person and their Good Quest. Fellows include documentary makers, physics theorists, and startup founders.

best for: Agency-specific builders whose project does not fit a discipline box.

$100k over two years for 18-24 year olds tackling climate change.

Founded by Alexis Ohanian. Integrates fellows into the 776 venture network for company-building support beyond the grant itself.

best for: Young climate-focused founders bridging activism and company building.

Two-year salary and national-lab access for scientists taking PhD research to market.

Success stories include Fervo Energy (geothermal), Sublime Systems (decarbonized cement), and Twelve (CO2 electrolysis). The critical node in the hard-tech stack.

best for: Technical founders who need time and lab equipment, not just cash.

Catalytic capital for climate tech that would not get conventional VC funding.

Invests only when its capital is additional (a deal would not happen otherwise). Blends philanthropic dollars with for-profit vehicles for long-horizon deep tech.

best for: Climate-tech teams facing the Valley of Death between science and scale.

ARPA-style coordinated research programs for big-if-true platform tech.

Creates technical roadmaps and funds milestone-based programs. Examples: molecular additive manufacturing, nanomodular electronics.

best for: Research areas that are not yet startups but could unlock whole fields.

Climate biotech is neglected vs pharma. Fund the gap.

Garden Grants ($50k-$150k) for greenhouse gas removal research at the protein-engineering scale. Filling the gap between pharma biotech funding and climate needs.

best for: Early-stage experiments in greenhouse gas removal and climate biology.

Outcome-first venture creation. Define the holy-grail outcome, then recruit founders.

Sectors: agriculture, computation, climate, pharma. Example: defined "Restoring the underground network of forests" and recruited Rhizocore to build it.

best for: Founders who want a co-founder thesis and institutional support from day one.

Hard climate tech studio, pair scientists with operators.

Paris-based. Founders in Residence program targeting hard climate problems like high-temperature industrial heat. Portfolio includes Aerleum (CO2 to fuel).

best for: Scientists who want an operator co-founder paired in residence.

Contrarian hard tech that rebuilds the industrial base.

Portfolio: SpaceX, Anduril, Varda, Flock Safety, Palantir. Publishers of the "Choose Good Quests" thesis that named this category.

best for: Scaling massive hard-tech quests, space, defense, biotech, fusion.

National-interest technology, aerospace, defense, manufacturing, public safety.

a16z practice aligning e/acc with civic duty. Explicit thesis that American prosperity requires renewed industrial capability.

best for: Founders rebuilding American industrial capacity.

Counter-conventional science at the edges of physics and biology.

Portfolio spans neurotech, robotics, genomics, space, and AI. Known for betting on emerging fields before they have categories.

best for: Technical founders at the frontier who need contrarian conviction capital.

Every portfolio company must solve a UN SDG. Profit with purpose, no exceptions.

VC firm with a hard mandate: no portfolio company without a mapped SDG solution. Portfolio includes Solugen (green chemistry), Pivot Bio, and Nautilus.

best for: Mission-aligned technical founders who want to marry returns and impact.

Growth-stage impact investing with rigorous Impact Multiple of Money scoring.

TPG impact platform. Developed the IMM methodology with Y Analytics, the most rigorous ex-ante impact scoring in use today.

best for: Growth-stage impact companies with measurable IMM.