Awesome news. It's interesting to see new ways to fund research.
BTW the "Read more" at https://ycr.org/ point to the Y Combinator blog not to the post permalink. It will became confusing once you write a new post.
YC Research
21–30 of 389 posts
Re: YC Research
#22This 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?
The first group will be in SF. TBD on other groups. But unlike startups we fund, these people work for a YC organization, so we will provide space etc.
Re: YC Research
#23I like the idea of YC funding research. Bias free and politics free research can go a long way. A couple of questions though for @sama:
1. Where will the research be based? Is YC providing space to setup lab?
2. One of the problems I see with this is lack of fellow researches present on site making casual collaboration harder (compared to a research university campus). Have you thought of that?
3. Are you planning on funding researches with track records or people with high risk/high reward ideas that are relatively new?
Re: YC Research
#24Interesting. I am curious though, as to why YCR researchers will also receive equity in Y Combinator as part of their compensation? Especially given that both are organized separately and YCR discoveries won't be funneled through or used in YC. I am also assuming that YCR will pay market rate salaries.
Re: YC Research
#25That'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?
Yes, but we're coming in on the very high end of the comp scale. We're also considering doing things like YC guaranteeing 100% mortgages for the researchers--housing prices in the bay area are a joke.
We're starting relatively small (on the order of 10) and grow from there at a reasonable rate.
Re: YC Research
#26@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).
Microsoft Research is also an excellent organization for CS related research.
Re: YC Research
#27@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?
you could allow free use of patents under a license that requires the entity doing so to also allow free use of their patents. If you believed the patent system is largely counter productive (as I do), this would be an awesome way of trying to address this a constructive way.
Re: YC Research
#28@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?
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Re: YC Research
#29@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.
Well, everyone would be able to use YC Research's public outputs defensively as prior art.
Re: YC Research
#30Interesting. I am curious though, as to why YCR researchers will also receive equity in Y Combinator as part of their compensation? Especially given that both are organized separately and YCR discoveries won't be funneled through or used in YC. I am also assuming that YCR will pay market rate salaries.
Above market salaries and also equity.
We want to get the best people in the world, and I think YC equity is a pretty compelling thing to get. We're competing against e.g. Google, and Google stock is also a pretty compelling thing to get!