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Comment by master_yoda_1 | Hacker News Reader

Somehow I feel that YC model has failed us as humankind. People makes shitload of money working on shitty problem and cancer research still has to ask for donation at local grocery store.

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Don't think of this as "cancer research has to go begging". There's plenty of money for cancer research. Cancer research begs in the local store because it's so popular that begging in the local store is extremely lucrative.

Biotech is the second largest sector of VC after software. $15B was invested in biotech startups in 2019. The biggest subsector of biotech VC is startups working on cancer drugs.

However there is zero overlap between the top biotech VCs and top tech VCs (including YC) so awareness of biotech is low outside of the industry

What do you mean zero overlap? YC does biotech (https://www.ycombinator.com/biotech/).

I just meant zero overlap among the top VCs. YC is doing some really cool things in biotech but they are pretty new to it. In terms of dollars invested, exits and returns, the top biotech VCs are funds like the column group, orbimed, 5am, versant, foresite, flagship, third rock, atlas, arch, sofinnova. These funds only do biotech and have been doing it for decades

> cancer research still has to ask for donation at local grocery store.

Erm no. Cancer Research has been booming in investment for at least the past 15 years. I will let you ponder on this:

> "Oncology is the area with the largest proportion of clinical development spending with 40% of total pipeline expenditure, with close to 20% market share of pharma sales in 2024"

https://www.evaluate.com/sites/default/files/media/download-...

Also, some of the biggest M&A in Pharma in the recent years have been about Cancer Research and Treatments. A few examples:

- Shire taking over Baxalta.

- BMS taking over Celgene

- Roche taking over Genentech

- Abbvie taking over Pharmacyclics

And there's more coming...

YC is still a VC, meaning that its modus operandi is to make relatively safe bets that are expected to materialize with ~10 years. They never promised to make humanity's really hard and important problems their main focus. At best, they might be bold enough to allocate 1-5% of their funds to those hard bets, and that's already impressive and net-positive. To fund basic research, we need a direct and explicit commitment from the government or big foundations like Gates.

That is the exact opposite of the early stage VC model, where the few hits pay off the numerous misses.

FWIW Y Combinator is starting to fund more biotech companies [1] (some of which are working on cancer treatments) and also funds non-profits [2].

1. https://www.ycombinator.com/biotech/

2. https://www.ycombinator.com/nonprofits/

Biotech is a long and winding road. Going through the YC startup list from the beginning, a lot of the startups are either out of business (ubiome), some variant of snake oil, or an AI mashup for lead generation. Then there are a whole host liquid biopsy new entrants which is an extremely competitive space. The lab management software one seems the most promising actually since it is an established market.

https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2018/07/17/th...

Ubiome patients sold for 7 million two weeks ago.

Bad management but great idea.

Sounds like they overpaid.

Ginkgo is doing very well.

how so?

The NIH budget is about $40B. Between NCI, ACS, etc, on the order of $10B+ on cancer research.

I don’t know how much YC invests per year, but back of envelope seems like $75-200m.

Or not even 1% of the NIH budget.

Having worked with both YC and NIH processes, I would say the former is 100x more capital efficient, and if NIH were to give YC 1% of its budget to distribute, you would see blockbuster returns. As it is NIH wastes billions a year on overhead of its application processes alone.

> People makes shitload of money working on shitty problem

I think this conveniently ignores the YC companies working in more meaningful spaces (e.g., healthcare, renewables, etc).

That said, you have a point. Ultimately, it appears the deciding factor for YC funding is growth potential, which is by no means guaranteed to align with the public good (assuming some reasonable consensus about what that is).

For that matter, though, you could level the same criticism against the broader economic model YC operates within. Anyone arguing either distributes resources with unbeatable efficiency probably has an impoverished definition of "efficient" or an axe to grind, whether they're aware of it or not.

“Cancer research” doesn’t have to do that, some organizations interested in “cancer research” do that

Medical research is funded in as numerous of ways that everything else is, while also being subsidized by the government

Is cancer research starving for money?

People get to do what they want with their money so long as they don't hurt others, I think you're simply against capitalism, I fail to see how this is a YC thing.

Donations have no ROI...

Venture capitalism is capitalism. The goal of a capitalist business is to deliver profits to the investors, and YC succeeds under that model.

The alternatives are businesses owned by the other stakeholders - workers, consumers, or community/state. Or some mix of the above, there are problems with each individually.

I think replies to this comment miss the point. The author is stating that the "YC model" -- which falls under capitalism -- is generally incapable of fostering the development of society in any meaningful way.

So how would it be like if it were to foster society in a meaningful way? What else should they be doing?

They should not. Mine was a factual statement. I'm not saying they should be doing things differently; else they would become something else than a startup accelerator.

What I'm saying is that their moral contribution to society, as a startup accelerator, is minimal.

Indeed, I believe this is true of virtually all the Silicon Valley.

[Edit: Fixed typo.]

I don't agree. I think enterprise software is a big lever that we can use to improve society. It looks different to biotech and cancer cures, but it's still important.

Enterprise software should make businesses more efficient, and productive. And we have that now. I can run a business that employs people from anywhere, using Quickbooks (accounting & billing), Rippling (HR/payroll/IT), Brex (charge card) etc. I built a simple website earlier this year on Squarespace (far better than handcoding it myself, or using old editing software). I can collect payments from anywhere using Stripe and Paypal. If I was running an ecommerce site, I'd probably be using Shopify and that related world of plugins.

Productivity growth is one of the biggest challenges of our time, and software lets us do that, without harming the environment. YC is a great addition to capitalism and societal development.

Yes, technology can benefit any field; I know it. But this doesn't make all this startup business around things which are completely divorced from reality worth to pursue.

Productivity growth is a myth of the money-centric attitude that I'm criticizing; I don't see how it could confute my point.

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