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The dual PhD problem of today’s startups

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Re: The dual PhD problem of today’s startups

#51

Post by b4ke »

Igelau wrote: post #41
Andyfilms wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This, 100%. The author says how difficult it is for multidisciplinary teams to come together when they don't understand each others skillsets--but the same applies to the investors themselves. When you start talking about these complicated ideas, there comes a point where unless the investor is involved in the industry they're investing in, they simply won't understand the true impact of it. My company is trying to r…

> janitor as a service Tired of trusting the flimsy log sheet on the door to know when your custodial staff last cleaned the bathroom? We present: Toiletherium. A cryptocurrency-backed suite of apps and IoT devices that turns real cleaning into real consensus. Our state of the art MopMine equation incorporates real sweat and toil recorded by SmartMops into mining the next block. Pit teams against teams with MopSync,…

Was this gpt-3???

I’ll see myself out. Lol

Re: The dual PhD problem of today’s startups

#52

Post by WrtCdEvrydy »

haihaibye wrote: post #46
pontus wrote: post #32

The article misses the point, I think. The reason why (most, not all!) VCs are successful is not because they have some secret visionary insights into the future of technology but rather because they have the means of diversifying their investments in things that are more or less guaranteed to happen. Will work be more decentralized in 10 years than it is today? Yes. Will financial institutions move away from the arc…

>> Will work be more decentralized in 10 years than it is today? Yes. That's a big call during an unprecedented work from home pandemic.

That's because it was forced... I had to fight dozens of companies because "Oh, we need you in the office" and now I reply to each one who hits me up with the original message from their last time.

Re: The dual PhD problem of today’s startups

#53

Post by epicureanideal »

dustingetz wrote: post #34

capital is like water, it floods the low ground first

Yes, I wonder if eventually all the markets for relatively straightforward startups will be saturated, and capital will need to fund long time horizon projects to get good returns... I wonder how far off we are from that?

Re: The dual PhD problem of today’s startups

#54

Post by klhugo »

I'm in the middle of a PhD myself, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.

I actually agree with the author, certain fields are just very complex to develop a solid understand without proper mentoring and support you would get as a grad student.

That said, maybe the real issue is not the fact we need two PhDs each, but the question I want to raise, do PhDs need to take 4/5/6 years? (I'm not even considering the cases where people, like myself, do a 2 year master program before the PhD...). Honestly, in my humble opinion, it is not necessary.

Maybe universities could develop "industry focused dual PhD programs" to target specifically crazy folks like us :)

This might be something worth to fight for.

Re: The dual PhD problem of today’s startups

#55

Post by unishark »

sorethescore wrote: post #50
woeirua wrote: post #25

The reason you don't see more startups in the hard sciences is not due to the lack of hybrid talent as this article surmises. It's because: 1 - VCs are reluctant to fund capital intensive startups that have time horizons for exits that are significantly longer than software based startups. 2 - The product lifecycle is so much longer, which makes it inherently much riskier. In many cases it can be years before you eve…

This is so true. A mentor of mine has been developing a new cancer therapy with a physicist for over a decade. He's spent millions of dollars and all he has to show for it at this point is a machine for rats that can kill cancer better than the standard of care, for rats. He's building a machine for humans now but by the time he's done he'll have probably invested close to $10M all by himself just to have a single pr…

There's also reproducibility issues in biotech research. Investors are reluctant to believe anything works anymore until they see successful human trials.

Re: The dual PhD problem of today’s startups

#56

Post by wsinks »

ryan_j_naughton wrote: post #42
Igelau wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> janitor as a service Tired of trusting the flimsy log sheet on the door to know when your custodial staff last cleaned the bathroom? We present: Toiletherium. A cryptocurrency-backed suite of apps and IoT devices that turns real cleaning into real consensus. Our state of the art MopMine equation incorporates real sweat and toil recorded by SmartMops into mining the next block. Pit teams against teams with MopSync,…

Brilliant. The dystopia we find ourselves in is palpable. Your language drives home the insanity of our times because not only is this product absurd but also believable.

Yeah, that comment belongs on r/TIHI. Too close to home, too soon...

Re: The dual PhD problem of today’s startups

#57

Post by Igelau »

b4ke wrote: post #51
Igelau wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> janitor as a service Tired of trusting the flimsy log sheet on the door to know when your custodial staff last cleaned the bathroom? We present: Toiletherium. A cryptocurrency-backed suite of apps and IoT devices that turns real cleaning into real consensus. Our state of the art MopMine equation incorporates real sweat and toil recorded by SmartMops into mining the next block. Pit teams against teams with MopSync,…

Was this gpt-3??? I’ll see myself out. Lol

There's probably a good German word for the sudden doubt in one's humanity you get when you unintentionally fail a Turing Test. It's like the feeling I get when motion-activated sinks don't see me.

Re: The dual PhD problem of today’s startups

#58

Post by sjg007 »

woeirua wrote: post #25

The reason you don't see more startups in the hard sciences is not due to the lack of hybrid talent as this article surmises. It's because: 1 - VCs are reluctant to fund capital intensive startups that have time horizons for exits that are significantly longer than software based startups. 2 - The product lifecycle is so much longer, which makes it inherently much riskier. In many cases it can be years before you eve…

There are biotech VCs though just fewer of them and the screening process is quite rigorous. You have to get proof of concept in some academic paper first. That being said the AI drug design companies and the transformation of molecular biology with bioinformatics/NGS into more of an engineering paradigm (at least for diagnostics) will definitely change things. I'd expect medical devices to advance first and then new drug development.

Re: The dual PhD problem of today’s startups

#59

Post by orange3xchicken »

asdff wrote: post #35
hobofan wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not a lot of bioinformatics programs that I'm seeing. A lot of bachelors programs seem to focus on teaching almost exclusively the basics of BLAST and all it's boring related algorithms (basically everything in this Coursera course[0]) and their mathematical foundations. Master's programs sometimes are a bit better with a hint of ML, but ultimately most people I've encountered there are still awfully unequippe…

Any bioinformatics program covers machine learning these days. They might not have an explicit class called 'machine learning,' but you can bet it will be covered in the lecture sequence and the cutting edge of the field will be discussed in journal clubs, rather than in lectures which are about established fundamentals. For a pure biology undergrad who is probably med school bound, learning ML is superfluous so you…

I agree with this, and this was true historically as well - e.g. Biometrika - a premier journal in statistics - grew out of bioinformatics-like research.

Much of the groundwork laid for online learning & statistics/bandit algorithms/modern reinforcement learning was produced by biostatisticians working on techniques for efficient experiment design (e.g. Thompson Sampling during the 1930s in Biometrika).

Re: The dual PhD problem of today’s startups

#60

Post by dustingetz »

epicureanideal wrote: post #53
dustingetz wrote: post #34

capital is like water, it floods the low ground first

Yes, I wonder if eventually all the markets for relatively straightforward startups will be saturated, and capital will need to fund long time horizon projects to get good returns... I wonder how far off we are from that?

Another formulation of that is, if progress is happening fast enough, why not just wait for new short time horizon projects?
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