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Why YC went to DC

ycombinator.com

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Re: Why YC went to DC

#331

Post by coldpie »

baxtr wrote: post #303
serial_dev wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, I can see how basically any product can have some useful features backed by AI. I never felt that with web3.

That’s because you don’t understand the value of a decentralized blockchain in a zero trust world! /s

Honestly, I think any person or organization that bought in to the blockchain hype should be barred from making any financial decisions of consequence. If they bought into a scam as obvious as the blockchain crap, they're clearly not capable of holding any real responsibilities.

Re: Why YC went to DC

#332

Post by bumby »

ceejayoz wrote: post #311
nradov wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's simply misinformation. The US government funds some of the basic research that produces candidate molecules. But the vast majority of the cost in drug development comes in phase 3 human clinical trials. Almost all of that is paid for by pharmaceutical companies, and many trials fail.

That's not the biggest cost. > Seven of the 10 largest drugmakers by revenue in 2020 spent more money on selling and marketing existing drugs than on research and development for new drugs, according to an analysis published Oct. 27 by America's Health Insurance Plans. > GlaxoSmithKline spent $15 billion on sales and marketing in 2020 compared with $7 billion on research and development. Bayer spent $18 billion on sa…

I think this is missing the point. I don't think anyone is arguing that pharma spends a lot on marketing and that this cost is passed on to consumers. Rather, the point being made is that the US system disproportionately funds pharma R&D. Meaning, if the idea is to have parity with other countries, at least one of several options needs to happen: 1) other countries start funding more R&D, 2) other countries drug prices increase, 3) we accept that less R&D occurs, or 4) we find alternative sources for funding R&D.

Glib answers like "just do what other countries do" don't address any of that.

Re: Why YC went to DC

#334

Post by dbmikus »

SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #161
xyst wrote: post #160

> This country is built on the idea of rugged individualism, ingenuity, and grit. > It’s also built on the idea of equal opportunity Anybody else get “out of touch” vibes from this post?

I didn’t even get to that point, I got that when Tan referred to himself as a representative of “little tech”

I would consider YC a pretty clear representative of "little tech", albeit little tech with startup/hyperscale ambitions. So, IMO it's not out of touch, it's very on-point.

Re: Why YC went to DC

#335

Post by bumby »

graemep wrote: post #314
pjmorris wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Considering Medicare/Medicaid are currently approaching $1T annually to serve less than 20% of the population how dues your stroke of the pen plan pay for the increase when everyone is enrolled? Most countries manage on ~12% or less of GDP, the US takes ~17% of GDP to pay for healthcare [0]. For example, the UK manages to cover everyone for about 12% of GDP. If the US adopted a plan as ubiquitous as the UK, in the…

The UK's 12% is fairly typical, and a similar percentage funds (mostly better) systems in many Western European countries. Singapore has an excellent system costing about half the proportion of GDP.

Just to add to the nuance, you're comparing a country with 6MM people to one with 370MM people. What dynamics do you think that difference of scale has on the overall healthcare outcome?

Re: Why YC went to DC

#336

Post by miah_ »

Justsignedup wrote: post #327
siliconc0w wrote: post #9

If you need more things to fix: * Software R&D Amortization - taxes on make-believe profits * Patent law - protect small businesses from patent trolls * Automate government-driven compliance standards - enable small businesses to sell into large companies/government entities, automatic certification when using pre-approved cloud solutions. * Healthcare insurance - employees of SMBs automatically get access to medicar…

How about health insurance not being tied to profits. Startups pay the full brunt of health insurance since they don't have real profits they have nothing to write off. Meanwhile large orgs get to write off a ton of profits as Healthcare costs for employees. So startups tend to have real garbage insurance. As someone older with kids startups are getting more and more prohibitive because I need that Healthcare. Maybe…

"Maybe startups should be a young man's game."

No. Anybody of any age should be able to take part in labor, otherwise you're arguing for ageism.

Re: Why YC went to DC

#337

Post by bumby »

BrenBarn wrote: post #276
bumby wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Quit fucking around" and institute a national, single-payer plan that covers everyone, like every other modern industrialized country. Except we're not starting from a blank slate. So short of heavy-handed, dictatorial decisions how would you propose to get to a single-payer plan that covers everyone? You'll have to work with the existing hospital infrastructure, insurance companies, and citizens who don't want a…

There are many heavy-handed, dictatorial decisions I could imagine which would be immensely superior to the current situation.

No doubt, but then all we have to make sure is we have a benevolent dictator...forever. That pretty much pushes the long-term probability to zero.

Re: Why YC went to DC

#338

Post by zacharycohn »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #318
zacharycohn wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Essentially. An extremely oversimplified scenario: On paper if you made $1M in revenue, and had $1M in salary expenses that were all R&D, you would deduct $200k of that salary and be left with $800,000 in "profit" that you have to pay taxes on. Except you don't have $800k. You have $0k.

Yikes. I kept wondering why R&D has been dead for so long. I have made comments here on HN about how R&D is responsible for so many tech advancements we still use, especially at Bell Labs.

This is a recent change, thanks to the 2018 tax code changes (the implementation was delayed until this tax year).

Re: Why YC went to DC

#339

Post by baxtr »

coldpie wrote: post #331
baxtr wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s because you don’t understand the value of a decentralized blockchain in a zero trust world! /s

Honestly, I think any person or organization that bought in to the blockchain hype should be barred from making any financial decisions of consequence. If they bought into a scam as obvious as the blockchain crap, they're clearly not capable of holding any real responsibilities.

Like the idea.

Let’s find those people and put their names into a non-permutable distributed blockchain database in the cloud with public access!

Re: Why YC went to DC

#340

Post by stackskipton »

benslavin wrote: post #194
stackskipton wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Washingtonian is very pay to play. However, I'll point some that appear private like Cvent are in DC area because their early customers were trade groups that put on big conferences. These trade groups are here because they lobby the government. So doesn't appear government focused at first but is. Others may have private sector customers but do huge amount of business with government. Appian, looking at you. Yes, al…

Completely agree those lists are pay to play, but they also include some cool companies that underscore my point. Rocket Money (nee True Bill; Silver Spring) is fintech. Optoro (Bethesda) is retail supply chain. Alarm.com (Tysons) is home security. FrameBridge (also Tysons) is home goods. (Beyond that, you've got companies like Mapbox, ID.me, Opower, Motley Fool, and Capitol One.) Cvent - agreed on causation, but don…

Sure, with the money involved, there is some private companies. I worked for one you named. However, startup scene will always have government focused entities and therefore non-government specialized VCs (like YC) probably don't see juice worth the squeeze to try and find a few diamonds in the rough.

As for talent moving to companies doing interesting impactful work, I'm not sure I see it. Tech people moving into area seemed to be drawn by government work so they are gone. Home grown tech workers are mixed bag of which I'm one. Some followed their parents and join the ranks of government employees/contractors. Others did find private employment. Really good ones seemed to depart the area. I wasn't really good one, I just moved for my partner.

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