Emergent Ventures funds unconventional, high-risk, high-reward projects that advance prosperity, opportunity, and wellbeing, regardless of field or career stage. It exists to jumpstart ideas that are too speculative or non-traditional for typical grantmakers, with a strong emphasis on founder quality and potential for outsized impact.

- High-risk, high-reward potential: the idea should be unconventional and have a chance of transformative impact. - Founder quality: intelligence, drive, originality, and ability to execute are heavily weighted. - Alignment with mission: the project must plausibly advance prosperity, opportunity, or wellbeing (broadly interpreted). - No strict eligibility: open to all ages, backgrounds, and career stages; no degree or affiliation required. - Brevity and clarity: the three-question application rewards concise, compelling, and specific answers. - Scalability or leverage: projects that can catalyze further progress or have multiplicative effects are favored.

Past winners include a wide range of archetypes: young founders building biotech or AI startups, independent researchers pursuing novel theories, creators of educational tools or media, and activists advancing progress studies. Named examples from the page include Tony Kulesa (Petri Bio) and Alexey (founder of New Science). The cohort is diverse in geography and discipline, with a strong tilt toward tech, science, and economics.

The platonic ideal applicant is a brilliant, self-directed individual with a bold, non-obvious idea that could reshape a field or create new opportunities for human flourishing. They are likely early-career or independent, have a track record of shipping projects or research, and can articulate their vision with clarity and passion in a few sentences.