Finally an answer to the question: "What do I have to do to get into YCombinator? Cure aids?"
Startup developing HIV/AIDS vaccine is 2nd nonprofit accepted into Y Combinator
111–120 of 135 posts
Re: Startup developing HIV/AIDS vaccine is 2nd nonprofit accepted into Y Combinator
#112I don't get it, isn't the point of investing to get the investment back in many multiples? How do you get your investment back if it's a non-profit?
If you cure AIDS, you're worth probably $50B, so there's that.
Re: Startup developing HIV/AIDS vaccine is 2nd nonprofit accepted into Y Combinator
#113I'm trying to understand what if any overlap a pharmaceutical nonprofit has with any value YC could add, from the scale of funds required, to product advice, to business model - everything seems entirely out of the range of YC's expertise.
Yeah... Anyone know how much YC is contributing and what they get in exchange? Some kind of ownership of the company? Do people taking part in the $482,000 fund raiser get ownership of the company? Why doesn't YC just donate money as part of the fund raiser?
They don't get anything.
Re: Startup developing HIV/AIDS vaccine is 2nd nonprofit accepted into Y Combinator
#114Lest anyone be confused by that headline, there are 6 other nonprofits in the current batch. So there is a 7-way tie for 2nd nonprofit.
Has YC considered any sort of broader access to the non-profits' portion of demo day for potential donors?
Re: Startup developing HIV/AIDS vaccine is 2nd nonprofit accepted into Y Combinator
#115This is going to be really inconvenient for all the people who say "sure, you are good at making photo sharing apps and dating sites, but you don't cure cancer or anything."
[deleted]
Re: Startup developing HIV/AIDS vaccine is 2nd nonprofit accepted into Y Combinator
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right now the project is only relying epitopes derived from actual controller targets. Our hypothesis is that if we go after the epitopes that HIV controllers preferentially target that we will get an immune response with memory in humans just as we have so far in our animal studies. The only way to test this is to execute on our clinical trial in humans. The current experiment we are aiming to perform is a good midd…
The experiment in blood sounds interesting, I hope it works! It looks like there might be differences between controller immune systems and regular ones that don't have to do with choice of epitope: http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2013/12/19/infdi... Does this make it less likely that targeting specific epitopes is all there is to the picture? (I'm happy to assume that we'll get an immune response with me…
The article is describing one of the many explanations that has been brought forward to explain why controllers do what they do. If you are looking for a common denominator across controllers broadly, the selective epitope targeting explanation seems to make the most sense to us and does not appear to be constrained by anything but the individual's HLA type which essentially determines what epitopes a particular individual's immune system can "see."
Re: Startup developing HIV/AIDS vaccine is 2nd nonprofit accepted into Y Combinator
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there some special "trick" that makes your team/approach so efficient or (just) the usual ones, e.g. less overhead due to small size, less bureaucracy than big pharma and so on?
Yes our overhead is far lower. Our other "trick" is that several members of our team are multi-talented. For example Dr. Herst can do tissue culture work, formulation development, analytical chemistry, and immunochemistry.
While I appreciate that it's possible to cut down the upfront costs with talented staff, it still seems that things like clinical trials will cost hundreds of millions of dollars (at least that's the price range I've seen for anti-malarial vaccination clinical trials) and still have a substantial chance of failure at later stage trials.
It would seem difficult to raise that kind of money from other than big pharma or typical pharma capital market sources who would want to see a large pay-off from such an risky investment (i.e. selling it in countries which could afford it).
Best of luck in any case!
Re: Startup developing HIV/AIDS vaccine is 2nd nonprofit accepted into Y Combinator
#118I'm trying to understand what if any overlap a pharmaceutical nonprofit has with any value YC could add, from the scale of funds required, to product advice, to business model - everything seems entirely out of the range of YC's expertise.
Yeah... Anyone know how much YC is contributing and what they get in exchange? Some kind of ownership of the company? Do people taking part in the $482,000 fund raiser get ownership of the company? Why doesn't YC just donate money as part of the fund raiser?
Non-profits don't have shareholders.
Re: Startup developing HIV/AIDS vaccine is 2nd nonprofit accepted into Y Combinator
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
We are pursuing all major funders we know of for funding for our work (including Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation etc.). The challenge is that it takes significant time to prepare grants apps, and go through the process. Some large funders such as EJAF only accept grant applications once a year. HIV/AIDS is an urgent challenge. Therefore we are crowd funding these dollars now to move our project forward immediately.…
> Its harder to get published if you release all of the data prior to publication. IF you succeed (and I hope you will).. just think how AWESOME would it be that the authors of one of the most significant achievements of the 21st century boicoted those greedy journals. You'll probably win a Nobel prize if you succeed, why care about a journal publication?!
> You'll probably win a Nobel prize if you succeed, why care about a journal publication?!
Presumably because getting published opens up large number of potential funding sources that would otherwise ignore them.
Re: Startup developing HIV/AIDS vaccine is 2nd nonprofit accepted into Y Combinator
#120I'd like to understand why organisations like the Gates Foundation / NIH aren't excited by this approach? I'm assuming they've rejected this, which would explain the need to crowdfinance the next part. If they haven't rejected it, why aren't they being approached for grants? Also, where's the science? Having something in the FAQ that states "We're awaiting publication in a peer-reviewed journal" is, to be blunt, pret…
A very large amount of weight, at least in NIH grants of the size we'd be talking about, is preliminary data.
One paper that's not even in press yet isn't going to set off any fireworks in a grant review committee, especially with funding as tight as it is right now.