“Trying to raise money for privacy is like selling umbrellas in a drought. You know the rain’s coming, but no one wants to invest until they’re already soaked.”

Last week, a collection of builders, donors, and philosophical troublemakers gathered in a virtual bar known as X Spaces to discuss the noble and bewildering task of funding privacy in a world that keeps confusing it with invisibility.

With Gavin Birch (Luminara, Namada), Peter Van Valkenburgh (Coin Center), Ben West (Pretty Good OSINT Protocol), Andreas (Fileverse), Lefteris Karapetsas (rotki), and our own contributors, - Jensei, Alina Latinina and Mykola Siusko.

What followed was part strategy session, part group therapy, and part existential performance art. The topic? Public goods funding. The subtext? How to keep the lights on without selling your soul to a venture capitalist wearing sunglasses indoors.

Act I: The Economics of Independence (or, Trickledown Privacy and Other Fairy Tales)

You see, most people think public goods work like fairy dust. You sprinkle some donations, flap your arms meaningfully, and out comes privacy for everyone. In practice, it’s more like trying to crowdfund a spellbook while fending off dragons with a pamphlet.

The truth is this:

“Either you build slow and true, or you chase the money and watch your soul slowly wither”

Privacy tools don’t trend. They don’t go viral (unless you count surveillance tools). They don’t meme well, unless you’re a particularly principled lobster.¹

But that doesn’t mean they’re not essential. It just means you’ll have to build like a monk, market like a jester, and fundraise like a pirate.

Act II: The Three Laws of Privacy Funding (As Discovered by People Who Tried)

1. You will hit a wall.

   Not metaphorically. The wall will have names like “KPIs,” “strings attached,” and “we don’t have budget for that”.

2. Don’t take money from just anyone.

   Especially not from mysterious tech princes who think privacy is a feature toggle. Your mission is not a vending machine.

3. You will have to communicate.

   With users, with donors, and with each other. If privacy is your product, then trust is your marketing, and unfortunately, this one doesn’t speak in KPIs.

Lefteris summed it up nicely:

“If you don’t have the persona, you’ll have less traction.”

Which is unfair, really. But so is gravity.

Act III: Tools, Tips, and Acceptable Forms of Madness

Some practical tools emerged, usually mid-rant:

• Start small. Proof of concepts, memes, weird experiments. Privacy isn’t viral, but curiosity is.

• Consider a membership model. Give people a way to chip in regularly, especially if they love the vibes.

• Find angels early. Not the glowing kind with wings. The kind with wallets and a history of backing strange and beautiful things.

• Hire someone to help raise funds. Yes, they’ll take a fee. No, you cannot keep doing this alone.

• Mix and match. Grants, bounties, merch, dev work, public speaking, a traveling cabaret if you must. Survival is patchwork.

  Most importantly:

  “Don’t optimize. Don’t pitch. Just make it obvious you care”.

Act IV: A Word on Hope (and Other Unreliable Narrators)

Throughout the Space, there was an undercurrent of something dangerous: earnestness.

Some still believe in the idea of privacy as a shared right. Some still believe funding can come from people who don’t want to own you. Some even believe, and get this, that we need more naive, angry activists who haven’t yet learned to compromise.

And perhaps that’s the best kind of wisdom we can offer:

Be the kind of person who would get rugged for a good cause. It won’t make you rich. But it might just help the rest of us stay free.

And if you thought this tale ended with a neat moral and a donor-shaped deus ex machina, think again. The next chapter is TAPE_02, unofficially titled “Nobody Gives a Shit About Women or Privacy”, because subtlety is for people with marketing budgets.

It’s a conversation between myself and PG from Web3Privacy Now, who two years ago wandered into the woods of funding idealistic tech and somehow made it out alive (albeit with a slight eye twitch). We talk about the usual suspects: budgets, BD calls, and the philosophical nightmare of trying to define “alignment” without descending into PowerPoint decks.

Also making an appearance: Womxn in Web3 Privacy, or @winprivacy if you’re short on characters and long on vision. Think of it as the feminist infrastructure division of the resistance, incorporating research, Safe Events Initiative and Sisterhood programs.

Spoiler: there are no easy answers, but at least there’s company.

¹ Lobby Lobsters, for the uninitiated, is what happens when fundraising meets seafood NFTs.