Residency
Betting big on the misfits
Astera supports publicly minded innovators whose work isn’t a match for other institutions
We believe that openness is the key to faster, cheaper, and better innovation, and that many public goods with the potential to broadly increase human flourishing are systematically under-produced by government, academia, and markets. We want to help address these gaps by seeding and supporting a vibrant ecosystem of mission-driven, open projects that can catalyze further private and public sector advancements.
We support creative, high-agency scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs who are passionate about reducing the barriers to progress within and across domains.
Key constraints for our residencies include:
Open-First
Projects must yield public (open, accessible, nonproprietary) products and research that are unlikely to be created otherwise.
High-Impact
They must have line of sight to generating positive impact on a societal scale. We particularly like projects that have the potential to catalyze government or market funding in new directions.
“No Secret Sauce”
Residents must be enthusiastic about openness not only on the project level but on the metascience level, which means making it easy for others to learn both positive and negative lessons from their work.
Future-Focused
Our view is that we are approaching a technological discontinuity, and we prefer projects that will leverage the resulting opportunities or create new ones.
Resident Spotlights
Our Residents are hungry, dedicated, and opinionated entrepreneurs. They have a theory of change they’re testing, and they’re doing it with urgency.