Ask HN: What startups are working on hard, technically challenging problems?

#1

Post by mtae » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 10:08 PM UTC

I made the same post 4 years ago and there were some great responses. It's pretty outdated by now though so here's round two.

Link to previous thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9242217

In the article, "Silicon Valley's Youth Problem" [1] the author mentions Meraki (now Cisco-Meraki) as an example of a startup working on advances in technology rather than the latest web app. Do you know of other companies that fit the description?

Follow up: Are they (you?) hiring?

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/magazine/silicon-valleys-youth-problem.html

Re: Ask HN: What startups are working on hard, technically challenging problems?

#2

Post by rvz » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 10:40 PM UTC

I have seen only a very small number of startups genuinely face very hard engineering problems like what Corellium is doing. I will elaborate.

In a 9 year development span, they have fully virtualized a real iOS device (Yes, it is not a simulator) to the point that it is running on a rack of ARM64 hypervisors on bare-metal boards from the bootloader to the home-screen. They even managed to virtualize the secure-element and access the console from there.

A task like that is something that is very rare in startups these days and to get it fully working like this is a herculean task, because the interals are closed-source and undocumented and was certainly reverse-engineered. Corellium is also at the point at which Google is using it to cross-compile Golang builds for iOS and Android. That is how good it is.

I think this startup changes eveything in the mobile industry.

Re: Ask HN: What startups are working on hard, technically challenging problems?

#3

Post by tannrckb » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 11:24 PM UTC

Nervos Network is: https://www.nervos.org

Yes, we're hiring. Check out Angel list: https://angel.co/company/nervos-1/jobs

Re: Ask HN: What startups are working on hard, technically challenging problems?

#4

Post by cg94301 » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 11:44 PM UTC

At GrAI Matter Labs we are working on next gen non-von Neumann brain inspired computing assuring post-Moore performance scalability. This technolog is only moving now from research to production and has been labeled as transformational by Gartner. Our technology fuses neuro science and computer science in one architecture that is both, trainable and fully programmable.

And yes, we are hiring. https://www.graimatterlabs.ai

Re: Ask HN: What startups are working on hard, technically challenging problems?

#5

Post by boltzmannbrain » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 11:47 PM UTC

Latent Sciences: https://latentsci.com Building legit AI solutions (not deep learning (wat?)) to fight the most challenging diseases with broad impact.

Yes hiring: https://angel.co/company/latent-sciences/jobs

And to recommend a company I don't work for: https://tlon.io/ It's not yet-another-crypto, it's not faux-AI, it's real technology for the sake of building something new.

Re: Ask HN: What startups are working on hard, technically challenging problems?

#6

Post by nextos » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 11:54 PM UTC

I have this old dream of building a great verification / formal methods as a service company with the right mix of axiomatic specifications, data and flow analysis, abstract interpretation, model checking, type systems and theorem proving.

And with time extract project methods into tools and frameworks, and evolve them. A bit like 37signals did by extracting Ruby on Rails from Basecamp.

A source of inspiration is bridge engineering from the mid-to-late 1800s, when things became very rigorous thanks to applied mechanics and structure theory.

Galois and SRI were doing some work in the area, but it has not become as big or central to their business as I would have expected.

Re: Ask HN: What startups are working on hard, technically challenging problems?

#7

Post by tschwimmer » Tue, Aug 13, 2019, 12:41 AM UTC

Seems like Rigetti is working on some pretty cutting edge stuff: https://www.rigetti.com/

OpenAI also comes to mind: https://openai.com/

Re: Ask HN: What startups are working on hard, technically challenging problems?

#8

Post by p1esk » Tue, Aug 13, 2019, 3:38 AM UTC

boltzmannbrain wrote: post #5

Latent Sciences: https://latentsci.com Building legit AI solutions (not deep learning (wat?)) to fight the most challenging diseases with broad impact. Yes hiring: https://angel.co/company/latent-sciences/jobs And to recommend a company I don't work for: https://tlon.io/ It's not yet-another-crypto, it's not faux-AI, it's real technology for the sake of building something new.

I tried to understand what is tlon’s product (urbit), and failed. What is it?

Re: Ask HN: What startups are working on hard, technically challenging problems?

#9

Post by boltzmannbrain » Tue, Aug 13, 2019, 3:47 AM UTC

p1esk wrote: post #8

boltzmannbrain wrote: post #5

Latent Sciences: https://latentsci.com Building legit AI solutions (not deep learning (wat?)) to fight the most challenging diseases with broad impact. Yes hiring: https://angel.co/company/latent-sciences/jobs And to recommend a company I don't work for: https://tlon.io/ It's not yet-another-crypto, it's not faux-AI, it's real technology for the sake of building something new.

I tried to understand what is tlon’s product (urbit), and failed. What is it?

What is Urbit? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M04AKTCDavc

Don't know if I'd call it a product per se.

Re: Ask HN: What startups are working on hard, technically challenging problems?

#10

Post by p1esk » Tue, Aug 13, 2019, 4:16 AM UTC

boltzmannbrain wrote: post #9

p1esk wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried to understand what is tlon’s product (urbit), and failed. What is it?

What is Urbit? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M04AKTCDavc Don't know if I'd call it a product per se.

Yeah, they lost me at the first mention of a “personal server”. Let’s pretend I’m a farmer in Kansas. Why do I need it? What can I do with it?