171–180 of 219 posts
Am I the only one who doesn't know what RFS stands for? Its not clear from AcronymFinder either.
As far as I can tell, the other answer on your comment seem to be the only place on the internet where this usage of this acronym is documented.
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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.
They're for sale now, whereas boosted is still a month away from the 2nd batch preorder that I made.
On the weight-range-performance triangle, boosted picked weight and performance, where as this company picked weight and range. This board seems like a better setup for commuting, whereas boosted might be better for the "sport" of longboarding with its 2kw dual-motors.
I hope someone is crazy enough for the Tall Tower project. It is the kind of project the Human Race needs to convince ourselves that we are still capable of getting Big Things done. If you don't know about it already, it is a project jump-started in part by Neal Stephenson, to build a 15km tall tower. http://hieroglyph.asu.edu/project/the-tall-tower/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TE0n_5qPmRM
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By not starting with spaceships, but instead with something that can evolve into spaceships. Here's the first product of Boeing, which built the bottom stage of the Saturn V: http://www.boeing.com/boeing/history/boeing/bw.page
I feel like this is not a good comparison. Boeing took fifty years to go from the company that built that plane, to the company that helped build the Saturn V. I'm all for long time horizons, but I don't think that most startup founders envision spending fifty years on a company in order to finally, at the end of that, get to do what they wanted to do in the first place.
Checklist: - find a superstar physics team - get 0.5B in funding.
Seriously, Thorium rocks. Look it up.
There'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…
You can't build part of an engine in three months and then show it off on demo day. You can't build a database in three months and show it off on Demo Day either, but we've funded many database companies. You don't need to have shipped by Demo Day. You just need to have achieved enough to convince investors to give you more money. What "enough" means depends on what you're building. Experienced investors know how muc…
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By not starting with spaceships, but instead with something that can evolve into spaceships. Here's the first product of Boeing, which built the bottom stage of the Saturn V: http://www.boeing.com/boeing/history/boeing/bw.page
I feel like this is not a good comparison. Boeing took fifty years to go from the company that built that plane, to the company that helped build the Saturn V. I'm all for long time horizons, but I don't think that most startup founders envision spending fifty years on a company in order to finally, at the end of that, get to do what they wanted to do in the first place.
Elon Musk seems like the counterexample because he started with so much capital and credibility. But he was very obviously thinking steps from the start. Each one risky. Build engine. Build high end car. Buildlower end cars. Maybe then build parts for other manufacturers.
Most big goals are reached in steps. The more difficult and risky the goal the more steps there are and the bigger and riskier they are likely to be but they are still steps.
If your goal is building spaceships you could start by doing something useful with satellites as a step 1. This could be a kickstart-able sized undertaking.
https://www.google.ie/search?q=site:https://www.kickstarter....
Obviously if you are trying to push the boundaries of what a cold start startup can possibly achieve, you are going to find yourself on the difficult-impossible border region but that's the point, isn't it?
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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 progres…
You would find it fascinating, illuminating, and mind changing to read David Wootton's biography of Galileo. An outstanding scientist, and a relentless hustler like you would not believe. There are schleps involved in doing great work of all kinds. People capable of true greatness overcome them.
Hustling is one of those tasks surely too. You have to be able to balance the selling and/or delivery in some way to keep the ball rolling.
Not many scientists, especially researchers, are entrepreneurs but those that have lived by their own technology might just be the ones that have the abilities that would be good for investors. Still may not be very "brilliant" compared to working for an institution. Depends on the person.
>most are terrible at making sales pitches. Oh, well.
Given capital, a breakthrough entrepreneur can turn a used car salesman into a technical representative, there will always be a time or place when persuasiveness is critical. Looks like Musk could use a number of car dealers about now. It's supposed to be easier to find sales talent than accomplished scientists.
Bell Labs I always thought was exactly what Bell needed, since they were living on their own technology.
Has anybody here worked for 2Wire? I've got some interesting theories. I think it's no Bell Labs but I could be wrong. That could be another thread.
>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. Two ways of doing this are to be really big or be really small.
Janelia does look interesting but who owns the product of your research?
Probably whoever builds the lab.
I druther build my own lab.
How many well-equipped non-institutional researchers are there any more anyway? I thought so.
Odds are pretty slim. If you don't do it your dang self it just might not get done.
But genius, the exceptional individual, "Great Man" or "Great Woman", is not just a theory, Einstein & Curie did appear. And true quantum leaps were made.
They're trying to make space travel much cheaper with re-usable launches.