I don't know why, but as a non-American, this seems to be more of a Nerd vs Jock kinda thing. Am I correct in my interpretation?
Yes.
The Stanford Startup and the MIT Startup (2013)
21–30 of 78 posts
Re: The Stanford Startup and the MIT Startup (2013)
#22Wow so finance school startups and engineering school startups are different?
Re: The Stanford Startup and the MIT Startup (2013)
#23Wow so finance school startups and engineering school startups are different?
Don't @ me I went to a SUNY
Re: The Stanford Startup and the MIT Startup (2013)
#24A 10% projected improvement in a bulk chemical process isn't that useful unless you're already in the industry. It's not enough to justify entering the industry. 2x, though...
Re: The Stanford Startup and the MIT Startup (2013)
#25A 10% projected improvement in a bulk chemical process isn't that useful unless you're already in the industry. It's not enough to justify entering the industry. 2x, though...
The real company that this was based on probably projected beating the cost of the equivalent Haber-Bosch industrial setup but ultimately couldn’t reduce the nanoparticle production costs and pivoted to selling nanoparticles. I think the best “carbon free” ammonia is still 50% more expensive than the cheapest ammonia, but there seems to be continuous research into promising methods. I’m not a chemical engineer though, and do not know how to qualify research, but this recent article from a Stanford group was intriguing: https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2023/04/ecofriendly-ammoni...
A similar area with a ton of interesting research is sustainable production of silicon where current smelting uses carbothermic reduction of silica in an arc furnace
Re: The Stanford Startup and the MIT Startup (2013)
#26A 10% projected improvement in a bulk chemical process isn't that useful unless you're already in the industry. It's not enough to justify entering the industry. 2x, though...
The real company that this was based on probably projected beating the cost of the equivalent Haber-Bosch industrial setup but ultimately couldn’t reduce the nanoparticle production costs and pivoted to selling nanoparticles. I think the best “carbon free” ammonia is still 50% more expensive than the cheapest ammonia, but there seems to be continuous research into promising methods. I’m not a chemical engineer though…
Total world silicon production for ICs isn't that big. It's about 9 million metric tons / year. Steel production is around 2 billion metric tons / year.
Re: The Stanford Startup and the MIT Startup (2013)
#27A 10% projected improvement in a bulk chemical process isn't that useful unless you're already in the industry. It's not enough to justify entering the industry. 2x, though...
The real company that this was based on probably projected beating the cost of the equivalent Haber-Bosch industrial setup but ultimately couldn’t reduce the nanoparticle production costs and pivoted to selling nanoparticles. I think the best “carbon free” ammonia is still 50% more expensive than the cheapest ammonia, but there seems to be continuous research into promising methods. I’m not a chemical engineer though…
There has been some recent work from KAUST calling the Stanford work into question.
Re: The Stanford Startup and the MIT Startup (2013)
#28As an east coaster the MIT startup hypothesis tracks very well. It's not just MIT but most startups out here i've been involved with. They're generally moonshots of tech, "guaranteed" to sell bc you have to buy bc the tech is superior. :)
Since following HN years back i've been trying to speak up at these companies with ideas like building a brand, market test-fit, etc and been given the cold stare. Thanks to this article I now see it's cultural. Typically these founders have relevant experience in their field, so they "know" there's a fit without testing and prefer to remain in stealth mode until the big reveal.
Re: The Stanford Startup and the MIT Startup (2013)
#29The article names its archetypes not entirely fairly, based on my experience at three MIT startups. Two were novel-tech academic spinoffs, and the third was alumni applying/integrating COTS tech driven by customer problem domain. Of those three, two were business-thinking much like the article's "Stanford" archetype. The other had, like the article's "MIT" archetype, a period to develop tech from the lab, and a chall…
And Google is a pretty good counter-example to “The Stanford startup has developed no new technology”
AFAIK, the Markov chain page ranker existed before Google (Jon Kleinberg's papers, e.g.), what Google paper added were some smaller bells and whistles, like using the text description of the hrefs.
Re: The Stanford Startup and the MIT Startup (2013)
#30The article names its archetypes not entirely fairly, based on my experience at three MIT startups. Two were novel-tech academic spinoffs, and the third was alumni applying/integrating COTS tech driven by customer problem domain. Of those three, two were business-thinking much like the article's "Stanford" archetype. The other had, like the article's "MIT" archetype, a period to develop tech from the lab, and a chall…
And Google is a pretty good counter-example to “The Stanford startup has developed no new technology”
I don't think these archetypes apply to the mid-90s Stanford/MIT scenes