[Linkpost] “Coordinal: A Postmortem.” by Ronak Mehta

This is a link post. cart;horse: Most startups fail, this one did too. Tried too much with too little, with a little too much ego. Coordinal Research's goal was to build an automated safety research platform. A researcher writes “Replicate X result from paper Y with tweak Z” and the system provisions a sandboxed compute environment, gathers context, writes code, runs experiments, and returns a research report plus oversight trail. The bet was that AI-accelerated research is coming whether we like it or not, and having this differentially happen for safety work faster is good. The bet didn’t pay off — at least not in the form I tried to make it. The main content is the condensed version. The full chronology, the final push, and the technical artifacts I shipped are appendices for anyone who wants them. See also our Manifund page for the original pitch/ask. The arc, in brief. The startup. Fall 2024 to Fall 2025: out of MATS 6.0, through Catalyze, into cofounding with Jacques. Most of Q1–Q2 2025 was grant applications and demo building (no dice on grants). In April a funder I’d previously pitched came back via a coworking connection. After a carefully-crafted email, we [...] ---Outline:(01:07) The arc, in brief.(03:01) Lessons.(07:16) What's Next.(08:46) Appendix.(08:51) A: The Startup.(16:00) B: The Startdown.(20:17) C: The Salvage. --- First published: May 18th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/uTffD74jJrQvHJuBY/coordinal-a-postmortem Linkpost URL:https://ronakrm.github.io/coordinal-postmortem/ --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.