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We Built a Hacker News for Biotech

news.harlembiospace.com

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Re: We Built a Hacker News for Biotech

#71

Post by owensmp »

Snail_Commando wrote: post #69
DaveWalk wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pricing aside, I disagree: YC is in part a startup incubator, no? Those driven to work in an incubator space are precisely the kinds of people who can benefit from a "Hacker News for..." site. That said, there are many biotech incubators across the country, so perhaps this isn't my/your favorite. But even so, I commend them for getting the site off the ground.

> Pricing aside, I disagree: YC is in part a startup incubator, no? [Update: Before you read this wall 'o text, please consider the comment in the context of the update at the bottom.] I disagree, YC is not an incubator. Well, to be fair, incubator is kind of a nebulous term. I define incubator as: "entity that charges entrepreneurs for privileged access to ostensibly valuable [x y z]" or "entity that hires so called…

Agree with you in general, however, Hb was established as it was because the NYC ecosystem needed affordable lab space. The equipment made available turnkey through the member fee each month would otherwise be a large capital investment for each company. Thus we are providing considerable concrete value and allowing projects to proceed that otherwise would not be able to. Above and beyond this we provide a community of other life science entrepreneurs and a physical hub for the broader biotech community here in NY that didn't exist yet in the city.

Whether or not our model changes in the future remains to be determined, however, as Dave mentions in his next comment the long timeframe tech risks inherent to investing in many early stage biotechs present some unique challenges to a YC model in biotech.

Re: We Built a Hacker News for Biotech

#72

Post by Snail_Commando »

DaveWalk wrote: post #70
Snail_Commando wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pricing aside, I disagree: YC is in part a startup incubator, no? [Update: Before you read this wall 'o text, please consider the comment in the context of the update at the bottom.] I disagree, YC is not an incubator. Well, to be fair, incubator is kind of a nebulous term. I define incubator as: "entity that charges entrepreneurs for privileged access to ostensibly valuable [x y z]" or "entity that hires so called…

Very good points. Especially if you are a tech-based startup, the "glorified co-working space" is a model to be wary of. I concede that perhaps YC is less an incubator and more of a bootcamp, as mentioned upthread. I'd like to point out, however, that there several thriving biotech incubators around the country. Surely the demand must be coming from somewhere when tenants must be found to pay the bills. Indeed, I thi…

> I'd like to point out, however, that there several thriving biotech incubators around the country. Surely the demand must be coming from somewhere when tenants must be found to pay the bills. Indeed, I think the startups that enter an incubator space are well aware of the rent prices, and do so to to take advantage of the certified lab space provided which is impractical to build on one's own.

Yep, I was just about to update my answer with the following:

--[I want to emphasize that there isn't inherently wrong with co-working spaces. They just aren't in the same class as [YC, 500s, Techstars]

Also, I read up on Harlem, they claim that they are providing laboratory space. That's a pretty solid value add. So I can understand why they may be wary of losing their investment in capital.

I didn't consider this, but there is an argument to be made that things are different in more capital intensive industries. Unlike software, the incubator model may be more palatable in these industries.

Still, I think they should hypothetically re-price equity demands compared to software equity demands, not charge per unit. Just demand more equity.

Charging entrepreneurs is still bad signaling and can lead to adverse selection (if you market yourself as being equivalent to [YC 500s Techstars])--

------------------------------------------------------------------------

> A takeway from all this, for me, is that I'm wondering what one could do to make a biotech-focused YC a workable model. Unfortunately, the (comparatively) glacial pace of biotech startups dampens a lot of enthusiasm.

Honestly, I think it's a bit early for the YC model in biotech. Too many subsets of the market are just too capital intensive, time expensive, and subject to regulatory burden.

However, with exciting technologies like CRISPR and high throughput sequencing starting to come on to the scene, genetic engineering and DNA derived technologies may be much more viable as a low capital cost subset of the market. Also, DNA looks suspiciously like software embedded on extremely high density storage tape to me... :)

Re: We Built a Hacker News for Biotech

#73

Post by Snail_Commando »

owensmp wrote: post #71
Snail_Commando wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pricing aside, I disagree: YC is in part a startup incubator, no? [Update: Before you read this wall 'o text, please consider the comment in the context of the update at the bottom.] I disagree, YC is not an incubator. Well, to be fair, incubator is kind of a nebulous term. I define incubator as: "entity that charges entrepreneurs for privileged access to ostensibly valuable [x y z]" or "entity that hires so called…

Agree with you in general, however, Hb was established as it was because the NYC ecosystem needed affordable lab space. The equipment made available turnkey through the member fee each month would otherwise be a large capital investment for each company. Thus we are providing considerable concrete value and allowing projects to proceed that otherwise would not be able to. Above and beyond this we provide a community…

I just want to say, I jumped the gun a little with my original response to Dave earlier. I misunderstood what Harlem actually was. I realized you made a capital investment in lab space after I commented. Please see my second response to Dave for elaboration.

I stand by my original statement about "incubators", but now I'm weaseling out of calling you an "incubator". You definitely add essential early value.

Capital intensive companies definitely have different requirements than consumer internet companies at inception.

I'm really sorry about mis-characterizing you.

If it were up to me, I might consider re-branding as a sort of bio-coworking space or bio-collaborative space. For some reason, the word "incubator" makes me think 1999 Silicon Valley. But that's probably just me.

It would be really cool if you started investing, too.

Best of luck, I genuinely want you to succeed.

Re: We Built a Hacker News for Biotech

#74

Post by argc »

Lambdanaut wrote: post #39

I think the biggest problem with the homebrew biotech world right now is that even with the labs opening up, there's still such a barrier to entry. There's a "hello world" to biotech, no doubt; extract some DNA from strawberries or explore the tiny world with a consumer microscope. But then what? There doesn't seem to be much potential mid-tier work to be done in biotech. In contrast with software where there is a ve…

Well yes, but there is actually a huge intersection with computer science - bioinformatics. Since bioinformatics only requires data, which is much easier to get, and programming/statistics/data mining skills, the barrier to entry is lower than wet lab work. (When I say much easier to get, I'm talking about publicly available data, not creating your own data.)

Re: We Built a Hacker News for Biotech

#79

Post by atko »

ritchiea wrote: post #43

We see 1 or 2 of these "Hacker News for X" sites a month. Have any of you succeeded and developed a community beyond the spike of interest you received making the HN frontpage?

Spike of interest? Zero upvotes, zero interest :) I made a C# clone of HN/Reddit (well, sort of, still working on it) and it's open source, but I have yet to see any interest whatsoever :) It has been a great learning experience so far since this is my first .net project ever, being a 2nd year CS student in Sweden. The url? Funny you should ask: http://forbidme.com (yes, domain name is weird).

Re: We Built a Hacker News for Biotech

#80

Post by mappu »

zerop wrote: post #6

Hacker news for X ------------------------ Hacker news -- https://news.ycombinator.com/ data scientist -- http://www.datatau.com/ Designers -- https://news.layervault.com/stories finance -- http://www.boredbanker.com/ JavaScript -- http://www.echojs.com/ marketing -- http://www.inbound.org/ new Ideas -- http://firespotting.com/ growth hacking -- http://growthhackers.com/ tech -- https://lobste.rs/ finance (one more)…

Using the same software: http://hackerjews.com/ (nsfw post-modern racist trolling) and of course http://arclanguage.org/forum
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