This looks amazing ... a modern Bell Labs or Xerox PARC.
Bell Labs had an annual budget of over 3 billion since the 80s.
Clearly if it seems promising we're going to up the funding significantly.
YC Research
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Re: YC Research
#12This thread [0] from couple of days back on Alan Kay's views on recreating Xerox PARC seems relevant. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10322929
We talked to Alan at great lengths in the process of putting this together. He is the most insightful person I've ever met on how to structure an organization for great research.
Re: YC Research
#13> We’ll especially welcome outsiders working on slightly heretical ideas (just like we do for the startups we fund) and we’ll try to keep things small—we believe small groups can do far more than most people think.
What's the process for an outsider to get involved? This sounds like a really cool and much needed movement. Will more information be coming soon on how to apply/join/contribute?
Re: YC Research
#14This sounds interesting. I'm curious to see what areas the research will be focused on.
Are there plans to provide laboratory space for areas that require it? Would researchers be housed in some space in MV, or would they work out of their own space like YC startups?
Re: YC Research
#15@sama - are the members of these groups going to be selected by YC or will there be an application process similar to YC? This is awesome to see, maybe YCR could be the next Bell Labs or something (although Google probably has a hold on that now).
For now they are going to be hand-selected by me (the area we are starting with requires pretty specific domain expertise). Not sure what we'll do in the future.
@sama - Interesting, I definitely think the toss up between meaningful research and high paying engineering work is very broken. You mentioned how compensation will not be determined based on conferences and papers, do you have any specifics on how you would measure "quality of output"? Will researchers be compensated differently based on said quality?
(As often times the quality of research output is hard to gauge immediately without the greater context of time passing)
Re: YC Research
#16That's great! Two questions:
- Will the researchers need to be based in the Bay Area - AFAIK: not the best place to raise a family?
- In the short term, how many researchers do you plan to hire?
Re: YC Research
#17This is awesome. I'm really excited to see what groups are announced - this is going to gather some great minds!
Re: YC Research
#18@sama - are the members of these groups going to be selected by YC or will there be an application process similar to YC? This is awesome to see, maybe YCR could be the next Bell Labs or something (although Google probably has a hold on that now).
For now they are going to be hand-selected by me (the area we are starting with requires pretty specific domain expertise). Not sure what we'll do in the future.
Any helpful teasers on what that domain might be ?
Re: YC Research
#19This is a logical step in YC's path as the "new" university. It's a great experiment to run, and I can't think of better people to do it.
Re: YC Research
#20@sama: is one of the intentions for this group to acquire patents, so that you may be able to use them in defense for YC companies?
No--all IP developed is free to the world, so we wouldn't be able to use it defensively.
It is possible to structure it as "patent granted to everyone, but expires the moment they bring up a lawsuit against us or any of our licensees" to do doubly good for the world.