I'm personally very encouraged that YC is open to civic data startups. I think there's still a lot of low hanging fruit in government for hackers to solve.
New RFS – Breakthrough Technologies
141–150 of 219 posts
Re: New RFS – Breakthrough Technologies
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
But it's plausible as a fast, minimal entry point to electric vehicles in general, potentially attracting more capital to expand a proven product line, instead of trying to start with a car. I hope they're planning something like that.
I think another company ate their lunch, unfortunately. Came out with a similar product for 1/2 the price and 2x the range. That company also makes other EVs..
have a link or a name? sounds interesting.
Re: New RFS – Breakthrough Technologies
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many first-time entrepreneurs have raised more than $100M. They started with small amounts and showed great results at each stage.
I 100% agree when it comes to software, but if we are talking about long term ground breaking technology.. how can you start a spaceship company without a $100M initial investment? what results can you show at an early stage? it's an honest question and I think about this all the time. If you can solve the funding issue, I would bet a lot more people will choose the more ambitious projects. What can a spaceship compa…
Take a look at John Carmack's Armadillo Aerospace work, or at XCOR aerospace.
Design a better pump. Build a VTVL hopper. Work on a GPS that will work at high altitude / high acceleration. There's a whole group of new-space companies out there. Solve one of their pain-points.
Re: New RFS – Breakthrough Technologies
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
Both Thalmic Labs and the Meta project are examples of longer term projects that raise money through YC. There are a bunch more in the current batch that have a much longer time frame. While the three month demo is a constraint, it is not one that kills ambitious projects at YC.
Given that these more visionary, long-term, scientific startups will often require founders of a different demographic than what we're used to seeing (eg. older, more experienced in a given field, maybe with obligations like a spouse and kids), will you guys modify your approach to evaluating applications, more specifically the founding teams?
Really great question...I'm hoping someone chimes in here.
Re: New RFS – Breakthrough Technologies
#145SpaceX and Tesla were really possible because of the large amounts of money that Elon put into the companies, it is estimated that Elon invested $100MM into SpaceX. his extremely impressive resume was not enough to receive the level of funding to get the company off the ground (get it?) how can a first time entrepreneur actually receive substantial investment without putting in such a large personal investment?
Was Elon's resume impressive back in 2002 when he was starting SpaceX? That was before even Tesla, so as far as I can tell back in 2002 his resume had a BS in Economics, a BS in Physics, X.com, and Paypal. Normally that would be plenty impressive, but I don't think that is a particularly impressive resume for somebody looking to start a rocket company. The connection between Paypal and space exploration isn't exactly…
He also had a successful exit in Zip2 (acquired for $300mm) before Paypal.
Re: New RFS – Breakthrough Technologies
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But Tesla is a good example of starting reasonably. The Tesla Roadster was first shown to the public in July of 2006. By that time, Tesla had already raised (and spent) nearly $60M . Before they sold the first Roadster, they had raised $145M including $40M of Elon's own money. Plowing $150M into a car company before making a sale isn't remotely reasonable.
Plowing $150M into a car company before making a sale isn't remotely reasonable. Why not? After all, it resulted in Tesla.
True, but Fisker took more than that, and then went bankrupt. Car companies can fail like any other startup. Tesla itself very nearly failed.
Re: New RFS – Breakthrough Technologies
#147"It used to be the case that governments funded a lot of development of breakthrough technologies. The bad news is that they have mostly stopped; the good news is that the leverage of technology is such that now small startups can do what used to take the resources of nations." Honest question: if small startups can now do what used to take the resources of nations, isn't there something even cooler that the resource…
As is becoming abundantly clear, the world is run by politicians with little to no understanding or respect for science. These people, like most, believe in the "genius" theory, where an Einstein just magically appears and make a huge breakthrough once every hundred years. They don't understand that science is a slow, incremental process which happens over hundreds of years, and requires steady investment for progress to continue.
As it stands, the politicians could care less if we entered another dark age. All they care about are votes, and power.
I hope the best for this initiative at YC, but having known brilliant scientists, they are the furthest thing from entrepreneurs. They are intrinsically motivated, and don't care much for fame, money or prestige. As such, most are terrible at making sales pitches.
Sam makes it abundantly clear that there won't be another Bell Labs. Sadly, that is precisely what we need. The real breakthroughs will require extremely slow, deep thinkers which have the autonomy and time to work on very hard problems without interruption in the form of sales pitches, VC meetings, demo days, and above all a constant scramble for funding.
This [1] is the closest I've seen to a modern day Bell Labs.
Re: New RFS – Breakthrough Technologies
#148There's a new sheriff in town. Previously YC treated some of these things, especially "AI" (whatever that means) as third rails. They've funded an extremely broad range of companies, but if you go back and check their past investments most of the areas listed in this RFS are underrepresented. Infrastructure, food and water, biotech, robotics...YC could be reaching much higher in terms of ambition than it has in the p…
I was in an accelerator program a few years ago alongside a peer company who had a new process for refining carbon nanotubes. It was founded by a university chemistry professor, and he basically had a working implementation in his office and wanted to scale it. That was not a very prestigious accelerator program, so he really seemed out of place alongside the other crazy startups. Maybe that's an example of a "world-…
That could work, although I see that as a somewhat different class from what this post is talking about. Academic spinoffs are one semi-established way of managing the issue of long lead times and research risk: you do the up-front risky research in academia, and then start up a company once you have something close to a prototype. That way your time-to-product in the company is not so huge, because you have a prototype or close to one at t=0.
But I read this post as suggesting that YC wants to fund companies that are themselves doing new research, rather than looking for companies that are doing spinoff/commercialization of established research labs.
Re: New RFS – Breakthrough Technologies
#149I feel like this is a big shift in focus for YC and for the industry if others follow suit. This will do a lot of good in changing the image of the typical startup, from who starts them to what their ambitions are, signaling to those in other industries that the valley isn't just about young code-slingers and iOS apps. I hope this encourages people in STEM with years of specialized domain experience to look at starti…
Someone needs to show that you can actually make money with something like this. The problem with these sorts of ventures is that besides being capital-intensive and risky, it can be quite hard to capture the economic benefits of the development in a way that justifies the investment. There's also the issue of whether Silicon Valley has the requisite infrastructure to facilitate these sorts of projects. If you want t…
> it can be quite hard to capture the economic benefits of the development
This is a key issue, I think. When doing something technically innovative, a very common pattern is that the team that spends all the money & time up front to get the first working version is not the one that ends up with the successful market leadership: once the up-front investment is sunk, a 2nd team can much more cheaply iterate on the market/business side of things and capture the market without spending money on the R&D. Sometimes it might even be a different market, since inventions researched for one purpose may turn out to be applicable in another field. Patents are an attempt to provide a mechanism to reimburse the first group in that scenario, but are pretty imperfect.
One reason I prefer to see research publicly funded is that I think it's often good that it's difficult to capture/monetize the benefits benefits of research breakthroughs. I'd rather not have researchers spending their time trying to figure out how to encumber/"own" the results of their research out of a need to get their investors an ROI.
Re: New RFS – Breakthrough Technologies
#150There's a new sheriff in town. Previously YC treated some of these things, especially "AI" (whatever that means) as third rails. They've funded an extremely broad range of companies, but if you go back and check their past investments most of the areas listed in this RFS are underrepresented. Infrastructure, food and water, biotech, robotics...YC could be reaching much higher in terms of ambition than it has in the p…
I think the key for founders targeting these kind of applications is to figure out a strategy that means they can deliver something in the short term, something that lets them attract the resources they need to reach longer term goals. I like Planetary Resources approach to this: long term they want to mine asteroids, but they started with a Kickstarter to put a satellite into space which is a meaningful way of moving a little way down their development path. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/arkydforeveryone/arkyd-...