Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Founder of GitLab battles cancer by founding companies

sytse.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 285 posts

Re: Founder of GitLab battles cancer by founding companies

#51

Post by [deleted] »

melling wrote: post #48
parsimo2010 wrote: post #46

(slightly sarcastic) So we should give rich people diseases so they are incentivized to fund medical research? Sid seems like a decent person. I'm glad that he's able to push cancer research forward on his own. Hopefully his work will make things better for everyone else with bone cancer. Seems like that is well under way. (and I guess I should recognize that he funded a cancer treatment company years before he knew…

Why can’t we just ask our governments to spend more on research? Want some rich person to donate $100 billion on cancer research? The US government and European governments could find that amount of money every year.

[deleted]

Re: Founder of GitLab battles cancer by founding companies

#52

Post by rvz »

croes wrote: post #47
rvz wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only Sid didn't come from any of those backgrounds, neither did the founder of Freshworks who literally started his company based on reading a hacker news comment. [0] So I only see more excuses here. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28336815

So it was luck

Nope. He applied to YC and took that risk and already knew how to make money.

You miss 100% of the shots if you do. not. try.

Re: Founder of GitLab battles cancer by founding companies

#53

Post by BobbyJo »

melling wrote: post #48
parsimo2010 wrote: post #46

(slightly sarcastic) So we should give rich people diseases so they are incentivized to fund medical research? Sid seems like a decent person. I'm glad that he's able to push cancer research forward on his own. Hopefully his work will make things better for everyone else with bone cancer. Seems like that is well under way. (and I guess I should recognize that he funded a cancer treatment company years before he knew…

Why can’t we just ask our governments to spend more on research? Want some rich person to donate $100 billion on cancer research? The US government and European governments could find that amount of money every year.

You can't compare the output of small teams driven by a fanatic with a single output metric with government funded research. NIH invests about 40 billion in research a year in the US as it is I believe.

Re: Founder of GitLab battles cancer by founding companies

#54

Post by moralestapia »

"maximum diagnostics"

Love this! This is the way! And he proved it correct.

I remember one time I mentioned this in a casual conversation only to get back very low IQ responses with some fatuous arguments that the tests caused the disease or something.

There was this one guy Tomas something (can't remember the last name, a weird one), doesn't matter, what I do remember is how he was desperately trying to explain how more tests led to more diagnoses and that was ... somehow bad? Lmao.

Something I've observed, I've lived in Canada/US and Latin America, in the former you have to wait months for a CT scan, in the latter you can get it the same day you need it. If the "third-world" can do it, there's no excuse.

Re: Founder of GitLab battles cancer by founding companies

#55

Post by VectorLock »

melling wrote: post #48
parsimo2010 wrote: post #46

(slightly sarcastic) So we should give rich people diseases so they are incentivized to fund medical research? Sid seems like a decent person. I'm glad that he's able to push cancer research forward on his own. Hopefully his work will make things better for everyone else with bone cancer. Seems like that is well under way. (and I guess I should recognize that he funded a cancer treatment company years before he knew…

Why can’t we just ask our governments to spend more on research? Want some rich person to donate $100 billion on cancer research? The US government and European governments could find that amount of money every year.

In another timeline they're doing a "Cancer Moonshot" right now.

Re: Founder of GitLab battles cancer by founding companies

#56

Post by melling »

BobbyJo wrote: post #53
melling wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can’t we just ask our governments to spend more on research? Want some rich person to donate $100 billion on cancer research? The US government and European governments could find that amount of money every year.

You can't compare the output of small teams driven by a fanatic with a single output metric with government funded research. NIH invests about 40 billion in research a year in the US as it is I believe.

I asked Gemini AI and it says the NIH spent $7.3 billion last year.

Would it be a big deal to double that?

Re: Founder of GitLab battles cancer by founding companies

#57

Post by bfbsoundetch »

A very motivating post. What he said “It became my own job to keep myself alive. Nobody else was going to do it for me at this point” really stayed with me. It’s powerful to see someone take that level of responsibility in such a difficult situation. I also appreciate how his ability to fund his own treatment can end up benefiting the broader community. Wishing him the best. Cancer is awful, and it just took one of my professor life just a few months ago.

Re: Founder of GitLab battles cancer by founding companies

#58

Post by light_hue_1 »

declan_roberts wrote: post #50
melling wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can’t we just ask our governments to spend more on research? Want some rich person to donate $100 billion on cancer research? The US government and European governments could find that amount of money every year.

The United States and world spend huge amounts of money on this, not even to mention the enormous amounts of private research. The takeaway here is getting money into the hands of smarter and more motivated people.

No we absolutely don't. The US hardly spends anything on research.

The entire yearly budget for the National Cancer Institute is $7 billion dollars. To put this in perspective, that's 3 days of funding the DoD. For cancer. That kills well over half a million Americans per year.

The takeaway is that we should invest in research rather than letting people die.

Post reply on HN