Hello everyone — and thank you for making our last sprint on debt and deficits such a success. We had a great time reading your submissions and working on our own research, and we feel honored to get to do this work.
Today I’m excited to announce our next sprint, where we ask:
“What is missing from the healthcare debate?”
In particular we are interested in ideas that grapple with unleashing technology and markets to improve American healthcare.
The sprint will begin September 1st and will run through the end of the year.
In addition to the new sprint, we are also excited to talk about some of the changes coming to our format. Specifically, we will be shifting our content production, community, and essay contest with the intention of making them all more fun to participate in and better designed to elevate bold asymmetric solutions.
I’ll get into each of these changes in detail in the article, and if you have any questions please do not hesitate to reach out. But the spark notes version is this:
Community involvement in writing: we’re opening paid article submissions to all of you, with essay contest winners first in line.
Boyd Scouts: a Signal group chat for paid subscribers and contest winners, replacing the Discord.
Essay contest: more prize categories — including a few we just think are funny.
Community involvement in writing
Concretely, this means it will no longer be Will and me producing most of the content. Instead, we hope to use our growing platform to help elevate the ideas and voices of you all, in particular those writers who have submitted to and won prizes in our essay contest.
We have already reached out to some of you with an invitation to participate and will be reaching out to more as we move along in the sprint. But this is not the only way you can participate. As a big believer in personal agency, I want to open the doors to all of you.
You’ll find a Google form HERE where you can submit any ideas you have for an article on the subject, and you’re always welcome to email me or Will directly if you’d rather chat first.
The goal here is not for this to replace our essay contest, and if you want to write for us in the future, submitting something to it and winning a prize is your best bet. But we also want to acknowledge the exceptional work of our previous winners and offer them a chance to participate on a go-forward basis in this project if they are interested.
We will be paying authors a base rate of $100 for their articles. But if you think you should earn more — because of the size of your audience or the quality of your writing — the form includes a section to name a price, and you are always welcome to negotiate.
Building “Boyd Scouts”
We’ve created a Signal group chat that is open to paid subscribers and essay contest winners. If that’s you, a separate email with the link to join will be on its way.
Part of upgrading Boyd from a (very high quality) Substack into a real community is building a town square — somewhere for people who buy into the LFG American framework to connect and talk through the sprint and everything adjacent to it. A couple of months ago we announced a Discord, and while it still exists, the platform never quite fit. As a result, we will be retiring it and replacing that platform with a group chat, which we think better matches the ~vibe~.
I invite you to join us if this sounds like fun. It is as easy as becoming a paid subscriber — all donations are tax deductible.
We want Boyd’s funding to come from core supporters who want to be part of the conversation. For that to work, we need people like you to step up now, while it’s still early.
Here’s what we’re offering:
Supporter ($10/month or $120/year): Access to our private Signal chat and a quarterly call, where you can talk directly with us and other members.
Founding Partner ($1,000/year): Everything above, plus a monthly one-on-one call with us.
The Boyd Institute is a 501(c)(3). All contributions are tax-deductible. If you’re able to give through a Donor Advised Fund or make a direct donation beyond a subscription, it would meaningfully extend what we can do. Reach out to [email protected] for more information.
Essay Contest
Keep your eyes peeled for our essay contest announcement article, which will have all of the formal rules and submission form. But here is what we are thinking for upgrading the contest.
Over the last three sprints we’ve given roughly $7k a quarter in awards — over $20k total. It’s been a great bang for our buck, and the ideas and enthusiasm coming out of you all have been incredible.
Our model so far has been a top prize of $2,500, second and third place prizes of $1,000, and $300 honorariums. As always, we’re looking for the alpha, or basically the good ideas that we didn’t know we hadn’t thought of. But this time we’ve overhauled the prize structure, splitting the top prizes into two categories, and awarding superlatives instead of general honorariums.
Top prizes, $2,000 each:
People’s Choice — decided by a March Madness–style bracket competition on Notes. We encourage you to campaign for your own article aggressively.
Boyd’s Choice — internally judged by Boyd in a similar way as the previous top prizes: we’re looking for bold, asymmetric ideas premised on fundamental truths.
Five categories, $500 each:
Most Engagement — measured by likes on Substack as of the end of the essay contest window, subject to our discretion.
Most Feasible — the idea that could really work, and might actually have a chance of happening.
Most Outlandish — the idea we couldn’t publish but couldn’t stop thinking about.
Least Socialist — awarded with reverence and mild concern regarding the current political climate.
Most Lobbied-Against in Washington — save your prize money for legal fees.
I’m excited to keep this going for years to come — and I look forward to tackling healthcare with you all.
Awesome! I was hoping that Boyd would pivot to healthcare next. It’s the major policy issue I feel I understand the least despite having read a decent amount about it. I like a lot of these other ideas as well!
I'm excited about this topic as I work in healthcare! I feared we might be asked next how to bring about world peace ;)
There are no shortage of problems in the healthcare system. I already wrote a long piece on the public's deep misunderstanding of insurance denial and what people actually receive under single payer systems like Canada's. Time to think hard on real solutions.