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YC Research

blog.ycombinator.com

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261–270 of 389 posts

Re: YC Research

#261

Post by biswaroop »

cossatot wrote: post #219
matheweis wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, I knew things were bad, but the education system must be well and truly broken when the students at one of the world's top research universities are leaving to build startups, and calling it a broken system on their way out. (No sarcasm intended; I couldn't find a way to say this better).

It's not necessarily the 'brokenness' of the system that forces people out but the consequence of producing PhDs faster than new positions are being created. "You don't have to go home but you can't stay here". No one expects that all high school students will become high school teachers. Why should it be the same for PhDs? A lot of what is wrong with the academic system is this expectation, which is bewilderingly pr…

You've said it better: it's not completely non-functioning, but just far from optimum. I've learnt so much from grad school: I wouldn't exchange my years here for anything.

Re: YC Research

#262

Post by guelo »

This seems weird. They'll fund open ended research and then what? Are there any metrics to guide the outcomes? Why would the average super rich guy want to put any money into this?

Re: YC Research

#263

Post by BurningFrog »

hugh4 wrote: post #234
matheweis wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, I knew things were bad, but the education system must be well and truly broken when the students at one of the world's top research universities are leaving to build startups, and calling it a broken system on their way out. (No sarcasm intended; I couldn't find a way to say this better).

In fairness, all systems are broken, academia isn't much more broken than anything else involving large numbers of mortals. The basic problem is that we need to rank one researcher's merit against everyone else's, and there's no perfect way to do this because nobody can familiarise themselves with every individual's research. Rely on peers' opinions to measure merit and you just reward back-scratching. Rely on object…

> As an overall system, academic science produces new knowledge at an astounding rate

Maybe. But I can't really imagine how you'd measure that, or what you'd compare it to.

Even if the current system is pretty great, it can only get better with competition from alternative systems, like what's being announced here.

Re: YC Research

#264

Post by Dowwie »

Are there plans for peer review and highly rigorous verification of results prior to publication?

Hopefully YCR busts some of the myths perpetuated by industry.

Re: YC Research

#265

Post by jrmo »

dewitt wrote: post #38

> "To start off, I’m going to personally donate $10 million..." Holy cow. That's real money. Sincerely very impressed by the commitment.

As a researcher, I've run the numbers on what it would take to start a new nonprofit research institute. Assuming some other sources of revenue (e.g. grants), 10M was actually the sweet spot to get a minimum sustainable group off the ground (about 5 PIs, with postdocs and grad students). This is for math/cs/physics theory, where there are no experimental costs. The IP stance is surprising -- for an independent group, it is tough to give up on a potential source of revenue. Seems like YC itself provides a way to monetize the ideas, though, since some of them will likely feed into the VC side and help the companies.

Re: YC Research

#266

Post by mtraven »

InquilineKea wrote: post #140
mrdrozdov wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

25 years is a reasonable number for how long it took deep learning research to begin getting traction. I would think AI would be a strange choice since it seems like there are a lot of research opportunities in academia and industry for this topic, but for the same reason I would say AI research is ripe for disruption.

How would funding AI through YC Research be different from what MIRI and FLI do?

Well, they mostly support research designed to prevent harmful AI, which is important but hardly the only or best approach to AI research.

Re: YC Research

#267

Post by j2kun »

sama wrote: post #82

I was hoping to answer questions here for awhile but I'm getting pulled into a crisis so I have to go. I'm going to do an AMA on HN later this week (mostly to answer questions about applying to YC) and would be happy to answer more questions about YCR then.

My only question is where do I sign up? (as a young researcher who wants to work on important problems)

Re: YC Research

#268

Post by sama »

Imscaredofsama wrote: post #205
pw wrote: post #127

> I’m going to personally donate $10 million Statements like this always turn me off. I guess it's because it breaks the illusion that Sam and everyone else at YC are normal people like most of us. They're not. They're INSANELY wealthy by any reasonable standard.

The whole sama thing doesn't compute for me and has negatively impacted my otherwise stellar view of YC. He dropped out of Stanford, founded Loopt (which raised $30 million and then acqui-sold for $43 -- and I'm sure Sequoia got the bulk of it), was then made a YC partner and finally appointed president. His Wikipedia page says he's made some angel investments in successful companies like AirBNB, but my question is:…

This is worth answering.

I made single-digit millions from the Loopt acquisition. Almost all the money I've made has been as an investor. I got lucky in that the first few investments I made in 2009 (very small dollar amounts) were really good, so I was able to raise capital to keep investing at a much larger scale with other peoples' money. I didn't have much liquidity until last year.

Takeaway 1: the easiest, lowest-risk way in the world to make a lot of money is to get fees for investing other peoples' money.

Takeaway 2: if you make money that way I think you should give a lot of it away.

Takeaway 3: FWIW this is a lot of money for me, but it's what I most want to support.

As a side note, I was pointing out that living in SV is becoming possible only if you get a job like that one, and that that's really a problem.

Re: YC Research

#269

Post by silverlake »

omnisci wrote: post #218
silverlake wrote: post #215

> We think research institutions can be better than they are today. I hope you'll expand on this. Is there something that YCR can do that academic research can't do? You might have more impact if you use that money to influence US and EU gov't to invest more in basic research. A 1% increase in annual gov't funding will be vastly larger than YCR's total budget. The Gates Foundation is tackling difficult health issues…

To answer your first question, 1. they can move much faster than academic research. More money in basic research isn't going to fix the antiquated process in which academics live. It's also not going to help researchers learn how to budget properly, or learn to manage people. So that alone is a value add. A 1% increase in gov spending simply adds money without fixing a problem that currently exists....not really goin…

I agree that academic science has problems, but YCR isn't going to have any impact on academic research, funding nor publications. My guess is that YCR will attempt to be a mini-Xerox PARC: 20 people working on interdisciplinary stuff in CS. It'll be fun, but it'll be small.

Re: YC Research

#270

Post by jrmo »

My academic friends and I are constantly talking about how we need startups to counter/disintermediate the constantly growing administrative overhead at universities. Without viable alternatives there is just no pressure to keep administrative costs from balooning. This is a great start and I hope to see more like it.
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