Microryza (YC W13) - crowdfund science that changes history

wefunder.com

29 points·gbelote··8 comments

Double-take: "Luckily her professor funneled money from an existing NIH grant to fund her side project."

But seriously, this is awesome, guys. So much science just doesn't get done because nobody's willing to fund it.

Ain't that the truth. What percentage of the national budget is for NSF? Probably >.01%? And how much of that is actually used for grants? And just how much of that is spread out over many different fields of disciplines??? Just sad. I hope these guys get somewhere.

I think "ordinary" people might be poor judges of good science research. I'm an engineer with a curiosity for many kinds of science, but even I would find it hard to determine whether a research project is promising and realistic.

The realistic but grounded research projects probably won't be as popular, as the "Put a man on Pluto" sort of projects.

The crowdfunding could easily go to the "wrong" projects.

While I agree with this to a point, it seems to me this empowers people to at least try to contribute. If even one of these projects leads to something useful, and a few others make people feel like they've helped out by putting their money towards something more useful than cable TV or McDonald's, that seems like an improvement.

This is really interesting haha. Crowdfunding company seeks crowdfunding. I'm excited to see how the VC climate shakes up in the next few years as crowdfunding becomes even bigger.

Previously: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5279985

congrats!! happy to be working with you guys

Awesome.

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