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YC Research

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: YC Research

#341

Post by vickychijwani »

keithwhor wrote: post #239
vickychijwani wrote: post #226

Surely I'm missing something here. Won't giving YC equity to these researchers (who are working not-for-profit and releasing IP freely) incentivize research that benefits YC startups directly and hence increases the value of the equity held? Can someone explain why not? Honest question.

Doesn't Elon Musk encouraging other people to use Tesla's battery IP help drive the electric vehicle market to maturity faster, creating more opportunity for Tesla to succeed? The market is still the market. Not sure we should look this gift horse in the mouth. George R. Price figured out altruism can be reduced a math equation decades ago, it doesn't mean we can't embrace the good that comes out of decisions like th…

Sorry if my comment came across as needlessly pessimistic. I was super-excited when Elon Musk made the Tesla "open-source" announcement, as I was yesterday when I read this.

That comment was just me trying to apply my meager knowledge of startup economics here :)

Re: YC Research

#342

Post by cossatot »

shas3 wrote: post #252
selimthegrim wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amount of financial and administrative skullduggery within the UC system 2009 (after the financial crisis)-present (I was at UCSB as a grad student 2009-2011) is almost uncommunicable to people who weren't there. People simply refuse to believe some of the stories I tell them. e: Here's some hard facts - http://universityprobe.org

The best story I heard about this was from a math grad student / instructor about how you had to jump through multiple hoops to even re-up on chalk for the blackboard.

When I was at Michigan, if someone brought cookies for a seminar and wanted reimbursement then anyone who wanted a cookie had to sign a sheet and the cookie bringer had to enter it all into Concur.

Re: YC Research

#343

Post by vickychijwani »

coffeemug wrote: post #303
vickychijwani wrote: post #226

Surely I'm missing something here. Won't giving YC equity to these researchers (who are working not-for-profit and releasing IP freely) incentivize research that benefits YC startups directly and hence increases the value of the equity held? Can someone explain why not? Honest question.

> Won't giving YC equity to these researchers (who are working not-for-profit and releasing IP freely) incentivize research that benefits YC startups directly and hence increases the value of the equity held? That's equivalent to saying "won't paying in U.S. dollars to these researchers (who are working not-for-profit and releasing IP freely) incentivize research that benefits the U.S. Federal Reserve directly and he…

The difference in scale is 4-5 orders of magnitude here, probably more. And at such different scales, I don't see how the same rules apply.

For instance, trying to increase the value of USD with your work when billions of people on the planet are doing the same is basically impossible and unpredictable even if you're a great researcher / business leader / whatever, to say the least. The same is not the case with YC equity, where you can expect, with a fairly high probability, a significant increase in your equity if your research contributes hundreds of millions of dollars worth to a YC startup.

I'm not trying to be poke holes in the idea or anything like that, just genuinely wondering -- and the analogy to USD doesn't seem like the right answer.

Re: YC Research

#346

Post by paxcoder »

mdpopescu wrote: post #332
markbao wrote: post #132

Reminds me in some way of this tweet from PG last year: > Paul Graham (@pg) — Markets are usually quite clever but one place they break is in encouraging treatments rather than vaccines. Subscription revenue. https://twitter.com/paulg/status/498875418527543297

As someone else already replied, that's an incentive problem. If you change the incentives to "pay $X a month while healthy, pay nothing when sick" then the profit would be in the cure. Unfortunately, we switched from that a while ago (my understanding is that we used to do "pay while healthy" around the 1900s) and now the current way seems "normal".

While what US has now is bad, your solution is not complete: One can imagine that in your scenario a doctor can claim you're not really sick, or lie that you have been cured. So what actually becomes profitable is not treating people.

Re: YC Research

#347

Post by caskance »

mdpopescu wrote: post #332
markbao wrote: post #132

Reminds me in some way of this tweet from PG last year: > Paul Graham (@pg) — Markets are usually quite clever but one place they break is in encouraging treatments rather than vaccines. Subscription revenue. https://twitter.com/paulg/status/498875418527543297

As someone else already replied, that's an incentive problem. If you change the incentives to "pay $X a month while healthy, pay nothing when sick" then the profit would be in the cure. Unfortunately, we switched from that a while ago (my understanding is that we used to do "pay while healthy" around the 1900s) and now the current way seems "normal".

That's essentially just the divide between fee for service and capitation, both common models. HMOs work the way you describe. ACOs have been around not as long (at least, by that name) but became big with Obamacare and essentially do the same thing.

Re: YC Research

#348

Post by Fede_V »

I think this is absolutely amazing.

sama has written multiple times about the 'distractions' that pull founders away from building beautiful products. Things like attending conferences, networking, fundraising, etc...

Conservatively, the academic equivalent of those things takes up at least 80%+ of the time of a professor's time - and the more successful you become, the less time you actually dedicate to research. In the life sciences, it's not uncommon to have PIs with 30+ people in their groups, and they might be barely aware of the kind of research that's being done in their lab.

I cannot emphasize enough how thrilled I am by this. One tiny concern: it's currently much easier to get H1B visas for researchers working in educational institutions than it is for people working in private for profit companies. Is there any way YC can spin this research into a legal status that would allow it to recruit researchers through the 'easier' academic H1B pipeline?

Re: YC Research

#349

Post by bartkappenburg »

mdpopescu wrote: post #332
markbao wrote: post #132

Reminds me in some way of this tweet from PG last year: > Paul Graham (@pg) — Markets are usually quite clever but one place they break is in encouraging treatments rather than vaccines. Subscription revenue. https://twitter.com/paulg/status/498875418527543297

As someone else already replied, that's an incentive problem. If you change the incentives to "pay $X a month while healthy, pay nothing when sick" then the profit would be in the cure. Unfortunately, we switched from that a while ago (my understanding is that we used to do "pay while healthy" around the 1900s) and now the current way seems "normal".

How about getting less sick by using a cure? That's still sick but the cure works (but maybe not in the strict definition of 'cure').

Re: YC Research

#350

Post by varjag »

toufka wrote: post #313
hbhakhra wrote: post #23

I 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…

How will this research remain bias-free when salaries are being paid for by YC? What happens when some of the research that is done paints some of the activities of YC or their companies in a less-than-positive light?

It's not really that different from work in another corporate research division (IBM, PARC, MSR, Bell Labs..). Even in academia you are still getting paid, and your work is influenced by funding frameworks, citation index and faculty interests.

Peer review has long been the traditional validation mechanism in science. I don't see why it wouldn't be applicable here.

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