New RFS – Breakthrough Technologies
blog.samaltman.com
blog.samaltman.com
Tesla took four years to introduce their first product, the Roadster. When they went public two years later, they had gone through a net loss of around 300 million dollars, and were still two years away from introducing the Model S. Even then, it had a few near-death experiences. SpaceX took 200 million dollars of investment, and took four years to launch their first flight, which failed. Over the next two years, their second and third flights also failed. Neither company really showed momentum until seven to nine years after founding.
It would be nice to see a clear path from a three-month-to-demo-day minimum viable product to a breakthrough company that overturns a capital-intensive industry, but it's hard to think of good examples of this so far. At the least, it would probably require substantial development before applying to YC, and/or starting with a very limited prototype.
I'm not convinced that this describes the Thalmic guys at all.
There are lots of these types of people in every recent YC batch.
They're for sale now, whereas boosted is still a month away from the 2nd batch preorder that I made.
On the weight-range-performance triangle, boosted picked weight and performance, where as this company picked weight and range. This board seems like a better setup for commuting, whereas boosted might be better for the "sport" of longboarding with its 2kw dual-motors.
All of the alternatives I have seen either are too heavy, too expensive, insufficient range or power, or simply created without an understanding of how a skateboard functions.
From Sam's article:
> We think the YC model works well for these companies. We invest with infinite time horizon and are not afraid of risky-looking companies. ... And our model helps companies figure out a right-sized initial project achievable with a small amount of time and money—great companies get built with a series of small wins that compound over time, and early momentum is critical. A common failure mode of many ambitious companies is to bite off an initial project that is far too big and expensive.
Boosted Boards is exactly such a company.
ScaledComposites followed a somewhat similar model: it took them 3 years to build SpaceShipOne[1] and win the X-Prize. That attracted enough investment for them to begin work on the VirginGalactic stuff.
3 years may be a lot longer than the typical 3 months YC development cycle, but it's easy to imagine building a scaled down drone version in 3 months (After all: "it's just a remote control plane").
SpaceShipOne took 18 months to get to first (unmanned) flight.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scaled_Composites_SpaceShipOne
But realistically, how could YC get involved with early stage startups in most of these categories? Examples like SpaceX and Tesla don't have minimum viable products. You can't build part of an engine in three months and then show it off on demo day. Creating solutions for these problems at the most rudimentary level will require months if not years of effort and significant financial backing. It's hard for two guys in a garage to build a prototype 10X battery or come up with innovative biotechnology. In order to get in on these ideas early enough for it to make sense, YC might have to start throwing caution to the wind and accept founders who have only drawings and computer models. It's just so difficult for a small group of people to have a noticeable effect on problems on this scale.
The best way to get involved with the next world changing idea might be to choose capable and intelligent people and say "I'm willing to bet on anything that you do, even if you're not sure what it is or if it changes completely tomorrow". I think YC already has a process for accepting single founders without concrete ideas and they could expand on that. Or start making changes to attract founders whose companies are farther along in their development. No matter what they do, setting big goals usually doesn't hurt. I hope that the YCombinator organization is willing to make some of the changes necessary to move closer to them.
You can't build a database in three months and show it off on Demo Day either, but we've funded many database companies.
You don't need to have shipped by Demo Day. You just need to have achieved enough to convince investors to give you more money. What "enough" means depends on what you're building. Experienced investors know how much they can reasonably expect from each type of company in 3 + n months.
Incidentally, we have battery and AI companies in the current batch.
Would or could ycombinator fund a company that could only tell you what to expect in 0.25 + n years where n>9 and Boeing, GD and ATK are all working on similar problems?
Here is my stream of consciousness post about this. I could have thousands of words about it so this is intentionally brief. I am always trying to improve my abilities on this subject, and will discuss it more but this is what I've got right now.
Breakthrough technology innovation is fundamentally different.
This could be tough for teams which have been geared to a goal within sight.
In natural science especially, it takes a research laboratory which has to be built in advance, and this means a much further stage of bug-free completion compared to release 1.0 of software (where traction may immediately begin).
And then you get to start the pursuit of a/the breakthrough, over an unknown time-frame, only after which if you succeed, then you can begin to package and monetize it.
When you "pivot", you usually need a new or additional laboratory, and be prepared to set R&D back to square one.
Capital is needed for different things, in different ways, in different amounts, and at different times with differing terms than other high-profit or high-return operations. Compared to software engineering & marketing projects, these differences are so drastic, it's been interesting to me so I've been looking at it when I can.
My interest in capital would be for natural science breakthroughs but to outsiders most available capital only appears on the "map" due to the search for the next facebook.
I guess that's a concept where capital would be on a "map" and entities worth investing in would be good to have on their "radar".
I wouldn't want to be shot down, I would want my technology to be guided in for a safe landing. Aviation fuel, and a wonderful takeoff.
Some of these capital projects are so strong that tech capital is like Hollywood money & connections where the talent does not actually have to be that good any more. They can make a star out of anyone, and the system now tends to exclude the kinds of talent that made it great to begin with.
It would be interesting to see what that type of west coast machine could do with one of my technologies, areas of expertise, or even simple innovative ideas. This has captured my imagination for a while now, but I guess I just have an over-active imagination.
Ideas especially are not supposed to be worth anything on their own without action, but in natural science, if you are successful enough to have an actionable idea or breakthrough, and take action, it will usually be a longer-term committment than a software project, and before you have a chance to complete and/or leverage the development, most likely better ideas will come along which even if recognized as better will have to wait until later on for attention. If you are really advanced at things they don't teach in school, you will also have trouble getting your point across. Either way you end up with better ideas than anyone including yourself has had a chance to take action on or leverage in any way, so the best ideas lie dormant and unappreciated since they are just ideas and can not be worth anything compared to ones that have already been invested in.
If your life's work is geared toward breakthrough innovation in natural science, you end up with a lab like Thos. Edison and not many people can relate to that any more.
This is what has been on my mind for a couple hours now, since I first got the "RFS" in my email. I just subscribed to the Sam Altman blog not that long ago because I ran into some material of his which was inspiring.
I'm not a social networker or a software engineer, and I'm not from a silicon valley industry, so I've been trying to get realistic ideas how these kinds of companies get off to such a good start with their capital. Now all of a sudden horizons here have broadened to include natural science, this is even more inspiring.
I would expect some people would figure I'm too old for this ycombinator type stuff, but here I am now.
For example, let's say Mate Rimac, the founder of Rimac Automobili (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rimac_Concept_One) who is a Croatian guy scratching an itch by producing the type of bonkers performance EV that he wanted to become reality, came to yc and you liked him, but his team, lab, equipment etc was all back home in Croatia. What would you do? It seems like some of these ideas will be constrained by location.
Another way to think of it is to think of an core database engine as analogous to a part of a propulsion mechanism. You can "demo" the core to show that a technology has promise. In case of a DB, you'd use a micro-benchmark with a synthetic workload; in case of a propulsion mechanism, you could use a software simulation.
The full RDBMS (transactions and locking, query optimization, buffer pool, etc...) takes far longer to build.
Finally, the equivalent of a "spaceship" here would not be more than the RDBMS, but a full ecosystem of systems software, middleware, and applications (e.g., app servers, messaging, CRM, ERP, etc..)
But I read this post as suggesting that YC wants to fund companies that are themselves doing new research, rather than looking for companies that are doing spinoff/commercialization of established research labs.
In the early late 1800s and early 1900s, governments and industrial titans around the world were spending unbelievable amounts of resources on what was the hardest problem of their day: human flight. The primary focus of their efforts was increasing engine power. Of course, it must have seemed, only the most powerful entities had any business trying to fly.
Two "guys in a garage" were obsessed with a different approach, which they called solving "the flying problem." To most everyone in the world they must have seemed crazy, like overenthusiastic children who had never grown up.
Guess who won?
Perhaps that's the role YC could fill: to find, inspire and support the Wright brothers of today with just enough resources to keep on going but not enough to change who they are underneath: two guys (or girls) in a metaphorical garage with a crazy obsession.
(The Wright brothers weren't the financial success they should have been, given the magnitude of what they accomplished. YC & the modern Silicon Valley ethic could certainly help in improving that outcome as well. Google is a good analog here).
What make you so sure? The people assuming that "of course" you'll need a ton of money to get started on a big idea are the ones usually left behind in the dust.
And yes, many biotech ideas are "startupable".
Really? Did you mean NMR?
edit: found this, https://pines.berkeley.edu/research/optical_detection which, although not yet handheld MR (imaging), could be quite a big advance.
But there is this: http://www.medgadget.com/2005/04/handheld_mri_of.html
If you don't know about it already, it is a project jump-started in part by Neal Stephenson, to build a 15km tall tower.
But even then, 15 km would only be ~5% of a typical low earth orbit (LEO) of 300 km, so ... yeah, not worth it at all.
This tower seems like a truly useless project.
If such a tower were built, it would indeed be a huge waste of natural resources; but it would improve our engineering abilities.
I'm pretty sure we can improve our engineering abilities in much more constructive, useful ways.
That statement is very passive. There has been a shift in the past 30-35 years in public perception as to whether or not government is an agent of good (with noted problems) or if it is unfortunately necessary but the smaller it is the better we are all off. Unfortunately, in my view, those who believe in investing in basic research are losing out to those who believe the existing market structure is always superior.
I'm highly doubtful that YC or other similar groups really have the stomach for the long term investment that is necessary to make up for that loss of government backing. If your model is that waving a couple hundred million dollars around will induce a eureka moment in somebody smart, it is bound to be a failure. Real breakthroughs typically seem like breakthroughs but actually were the result of spending decades and a lot of money searching dead ends and making incremental progress.
At best it seems like YC can pick some slightly higher hanging fruit than the current model allows, but they can't afford to reach very high.
On the other hand, one can start with $100k which is mainly used to secure the rest of the funding.
This new "shift" is essentially what the Founders Fund is trying to do.
There's also the issue of whether Silicon Valley has the requisite infrastructure to facilitate these sorts of projects. If you want to do projects in robotics, DARPA has both money to give you, deep connections with the universities developing the basic science, and a program manager to manage the project that typically has a PhD in the field. There's a lot of downsides to DARPA, namely that everything has to have some sort of military angle, but there's a wealth of technical expertise sloshing around there.
The last head of DARPA now heads up Google X. SFBA has tens, if not hundreds, of billions of dollars available to it.
Capability isn't the question. Its the will that matters. As an investor, are you willing to sacrifice returns for the equivalent of the laser or the transistor?
Now could they acquire that capability? Sure, with time and money you can buy whatever you want. But will comes into play there--why invest in that capability when you can get quicker returns in consumer products?
I do agree, though, that a big corporate R&D lab like at Google is better-positioned to tackle these sorts of projects than VC-funded start ups.
And interestingly it also seems to go against Mark Cubans SV hypothesis as well.
YC now (publicly) looks like it's working on the ideas and types of companies that the world needs more of. If this shift is real, it opens up YC to smart people without CS degrees. (I know it was before, but it's perception as well) And there are exits, they're just outside of SV. GE, Philips, Exxon, GSK, Pfizer, Bombardier...
This is a key issue, I think. When doing something technically innovative, a very common pattern is that the team that spends all the money & time up front to get the first working version is not the one that ends up with the successful market leadership: once the up-front investment is sunk, a 2nd team can much more cheaply iterate on the market/business side of things and capture the market without spending money on the R&D. Sometimes it might even be a different market, since inventions researched for one purpose may turn out to be applicable in another field. Patents are an attempt to provide a mechanism to reimburse the first group in that scenario, but are pretty imperfect.
One reason I prefer to see research publicly funded is that I think it's often good that it's difficult to capture/monetize the benefits benefits of research breakthroughs. I'd rather not have researchers spending their time trying to figure out how to encumber/"own" the results of their research out of a need to get their investors an ROI.
I didn't become an engineer to crank out CRUD apps in some rock star's crazy DSL all day.
Ventures like SpaceX and Tesla that have a long lead time and (at least in these two cases) are loss-making at the start probably wouldn't get YC-VC funding. Or at least they wouldn't get anywhere near the level of funding they'd need to get to profitability point.
I wager that for some of the really big world-changing projects we simply have to be willing to fund it as long as necessary, taking an extremely long-term view. And for this, VC funding is probably not going to be enough. Both Tesla and SpaceX needed to take in public (read: Government) funding to keep going.
how can a first time entrepreneur actually receive substantial investment without putting in such a large personal investment?
Elon is an all-in kind of guy, but has his hands full. More Elons please.
it's an honest question and I think about this all the time. If you can solve the funding issue, I would bet a lot more people will choose the more ambitious projects. What can a spaceship company accomplish with $100k?
Here's the first product of Boeing, which built the bottom stage of the Saturn V:
Elon Musk seems like the counterexample because he started with so much capital and credibility. But he was very obviously thinking steps from the start. Each one risky. Build engine. Build high end car. Buildlower end cars. Maybe then build parts for other manufacturers.
Most big goals are reached in steps. The more difficult and risky the goal the more steps there are and the bigger and riskier they are likely to be but they are still steps.
If your goal is building spaceships you could start by doing something useful with satellites as a step 1. This could be a kickstart-able sized undertaking.
https://www.google.ie/search?q=site:https://www.kickstarter....
Obviously if you are trying to push the boundaries of what a cold start startup can possibly achieve, you are going to find yourself on the difficult-impossible border region but that's the point, isn't it?
If your life's work was geared toward making money for investors someday in case you encounter capital, and you were not going to let a lack of capital keep you from starting your pressing research anyway, a number of decades would be expected to have elapsed before you had the most attractive technology you could offer up for investment into.
For those things that truly require decades before maximum fruition, there is no substitute for decades, just do it.
-Unfortunately, there seems to be far more opportunity out there than ability.... We should remember that good fortune often happens when opportunity meets with preparation.
-Pretty much everything will come to him who hustles while he waits.
--TAEdison
Design a better pump. Build a VTVL hopper. Work on a GPS that will work at high altitude / high acceleration. There's a whole group of new-space companies out there. Solve one of their pain-points.
Normally that would be plenty impressive, but I don't think that is a particularly impressive resume for somebody looking to start a rocket company. The connection between Paypal and space exploration isn't exactly strong, even with an undergraduate degree in physics. I suppose he could also put "hassled Russians for a decommissioned ICBM" on his resume too though. ;)
Paypal wasn't exactly some trivial event in his life, it IPOed in early 2002 and made him (and his investors) fabulously wealthy. It was also one of the first successful IPOs in the wake of the .com bubble bursting.
Musk made ~$25M from shares that were sold in the IPO, and his remaining stake of the company (10 percent!) was worth somewhere near $150M.[1] I'd say that's a pretty impressive resume.
It's a bit easier to start a rocket company when your net worth is in the 9-digit range and you just made a bunch of investors a ton of money in your first project.
It's only in hindsight that it was reasonable to start a car company in Silicon Valley at all.
The Tesla Roadster was first shown to the public in July of 2006. By that time, Tesla had already raised (and spent) nearly $60M. Before they sold the first Roadster, they had raised $145M including $40M of Elon's own money.
Plowing $150M into a car company before making a sale isn't remotely reasonable.
Why not? After all, it resulted in Tesla.
My interpretation is that with some serious runs on the board, YC is now in a better position to have a stronger crack at bolder, hardware-heavy ideas.
Reading TechCrunch announcements for many recent YC inclusions has had me thinking "Really? That made it in?" This RFS had me quite excited for what submissions YC might encourage or nurture towards serious funding.
I think he misunderstands the meaning of the term "basic research":
"Basic research (also called pure research or fundamental research) is a systematic study directed toward greater knowledge or understanding of the fundamental aspects of phenomena without specific applications or products in mind." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_research)
So the very idea of basic research is that there are no forseeable commercial applications (or indeed any practical applications).
Personally, I think that private funding is NOT suited to finance fundamental research, since the time horizon there is way too long for most VC companies, and I doubt that many of them would finance something "just because it is interesting and we don't understand it yet".
Even in 'research', there are different types and different motivations. I believe the Science that we see today is more a reflection of the past decades' focus on commercial innovation. As opposed to the previous few centuries, where science was the product of exploration and curiosity. How we do science today will not be the same as how we do science in 10 years.
There could be other interesting use cases for this kind of platform of course: I think in research education this could be a great tool to collect money for student projects at schools and universities, which in the long term will benefit science a lot by producing more scientists :) I just think that funding professional, institutionalized research is and should stay the job of the government.
Fwiw, I'm working on internet infrastructure (see profile)
Honest question: if small startups can now do what used to take the resources of nations, isn't there something even cooler that the resources of a nation could do? I'm not knocking what small startups can and do achieve, but in the last few years I've started feeling like the humanity is sort of giving up on big ambitions and ideals of unity, of making big breakthroughs together.
Nations need to convince a lot of people about the viability and rationality of a project before putting many resources at it. Most great (and crackpot) ideas are lost on this process, the ones that survive are completely changed.
As it stands, the politicians could care less if we entered another dark age. All they care about are votes, and power.
I hope the best for this initiative at YC, but having known brilliant scientists, they are the furthest thing from entrepreneurs. They are intrinsically motivated, and don't care much for fame, money or prestige. As such, most are terrible at making sales pitches.
Sam makes it abundantly clear that there won't be another Bell Labs. Sadly, that is precisely what we need. The real breakthroughs will require extremely slow, deep thinkers which have the autonomy and time to work on very hard problems without interruption in the form of sales pitches, VC meetings, demo days, and above all a constant scramble for funding.
This [1] is the closest I've seen to a modern day Bell Labs.
There are schleps involved in doing great work of all kinds. People capable of true greatness overcome them.
Hustling is one of those tasks surely too. You have to be able to balance the selling and/or delivery in some way to keep the ball rolling.
Not many scientists, especially researchers, are entrepreneurs but those that have lived by their own technology might just be the ones that have the abilities that would be good for investors. Still may not be very "brilliant" compared to working for an institution. Depends on the person.
>most are terrible at making sales pitches. Oh, well.
Given capital, a breakthrough entrepreneur can turn a used car salesman into a technical representative, there will always be a time or place when persuasiveness is critical. Looks like Musk could use a number of car dealers about now. It's supposed to be easier to find sales talent than accomplished scientists.
Bell Labs I always thought was exactly what Bell needed, since they were living on their own technology.
Has anybody here worked for 2Wire? I've got some interesting theories. I think it's no Bell Labs but I could be wrong. That could be another thread.
>The real breakthroughs will require extremely slow, deep thinkers which have the autonomy and time to work on very hard problems without interruption in the form of sales pitches, VC meetings, demo days, and above all a constant scramble for funding. Two ways of doing this are to be really big or be really small.
Janelia does look interesting but who owns the product of your research?
Probably whoever builds the lab.
I druther build my own lab.
How many well-equipped non-institutional researchers are there any more anyway? I thought so.
Odds are pretty slim. If you don't do it your dang self it just might not get done.
But genius, the exceptional individual, "Great Man" or "Great Woman", is not just a theory, Einstein & Curie did appear. And true quantum leaps were made.
My point is that we need research institutions with stable funding over long periods for talented people to push the boundaries of science, without relying on the circuses of VCs and Wall St.
The money YC gives is minimal, so the main benefit for YC involvement is experience. If YC has nobody who has expert knowledge in biotech, it would be waste of everyones time to get involved.
Another thing is money. Most science startups need more than just people with PhD's willing to live with ramens. They need lab equipment, samples etc that cost tens and hundreds of thousands dollars.
This is a noble goal and I'm glad that YC wants to invest in these sort of companies, but they need to do a lot more work to convince startups of this sort that the value proposition makes sense for them.
> If a company needs to raise a billion dollars of funding over the course of its life, that doesn’t scare us—in fact, that’s a plus.
San Francisco's city government is falling over themselves to legalize and encourage in-law units, whether they're built in basements, garages, wherever. The problem is that the permitting process is a byzantine nightmare, and working with the local construction industry is equally maddening and fraught with peril. Also, because of Prop 13, a lot of homeowners are sitting on property that's disproportionally valuable compared to their liquid assets, and so there are a lot of situations where people can't afford to build an in-law unit, even though (if they could) it would pay for itself very quickly.
Therefore, I think someone needs to create the SolarCity of SF in-law units. The company takes care of all the paperwork and even pays for all the construction. In return, they get a cut of the rent for the next 20 years.
If you take my idea and run with it, all I ask in return is that, once you hit your first billion in revenue, you put a bust of me in your headquarters' lobby.
The idea here would be that anyone with rent control for a certain unit would be able to put out an offer for conditions under which they would vacate the property. Once you have standing offers for all units in a building, a developer could make a bid to satisfy those rent control rights and buy the property from building owner.
People with $800 rent control in say a studio might be willing to exchange their studio apartment for a 1 bedroom in a new building within 1-mile in the regions of a city, and this new unit would come with a contract for all the same rights as rent control, but that it would be limited to that tenant and that tenant alone (it can't be "passed" on by adding people to the contract).
So lets say I'm a developer with a few properties under construction. When I see a building where all the tenants have made offers that I can meet in some way using units in my projects under construction. I crunch the numbers and make offers to each of those individuals. Once I get all the tenants to accept the offers I make, I then approach the property owner and make an offer on the property. Once I buy the property, I can then give each of those tenants a property in my other buildings and then demolish the original building and build something taller with more units. Even if I destroy the old building and build something newer with only marginally more units because of zoning laws, I would now have a new construction free of current rent control rights.
The key here is to create legal mechanisms that make rent control rights a fungible commodity that can be traded. By making rent control rights fungible, you essentially decoupled the rent control from the physical structure, you create a way for the owners of the structures to be able to use the land under that structure for its highest and best use.
Furthermore, this approach is much more amiable than Ellis Act evictions since it gives rent control renters an out that is comparable to their current situation. Even more, it gives them the opportunity to move to a larger unit in case they've outgrown their current rent control place and would like to stay in the city to raise a family (e.g. someone with a 1-bedroom can requests offers for a two bedroom place at a comparable rate relative to their current living situation).
Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7406572
I love the change in focus to be more bold, real, rather than just chasing easy things like software/apps/games. But, the model must change too. I think Sam & team are up for that challenge, & will adapt, so don't think of this as a permanent shortcoming in any way.
I have to plug the newest BBC In Our Time podcast on absolute zero - where basic science research (hey let's see how cold we can make this gas? Cool! Now this one?) provided refrigeration, superconductivity, superfluids, MRI scanners and more.
We cannot think VC can replace government long term funding but we can and should support VCs who are willing to go all in on long term funding and make it cool again. Politicians will go a long way on just standing next to billionaire investors for photoshoots.
Aren't all social services crowdfunded?
This is actually kind of a nice illustration of how backwards our ideas of social services have become.
For the last couple of years, we've been taking existing technologies, and applying them to different markets or creating new markets. AirBnb, Uber, Homejoy, Twitter are good examples of this.
This can't last forever on any one existing tech, and so @sama's just calling for startups that are technology risks instead of market risks. Such startups may be more capital intensive, but not to the point where it's a non-starter unless you have 100 mil, like others are talking about.
I think the best preventative healthcare is a population (I almost said cohort (yikes)) that is educated enough (with all that entails) to make better short term and long-term decisions for themselves, including developing the desire to become and stay healthy, to know how to weigh the risks of activities, to know how to find information for themselves and evaluate such information with a critical and logical mind. This would also go a long way in helping our political process.
Is this a tall order? You bet. Beyond horizon, but desperately needed.
For instance, I'm tackling energy economics, and doing business development alone in this industry dwarfs YC's round.
$20,000 for 2-10% of investment isn’t particularly attractive when you need to raise an enormous amount of money. Moreover, Y Combinator doesn’t have partners with relevant experience in most of these markets.
As far as I can tell, the other answer on your comment seem to be the only place on the internet where this usage of this acronym is documented.
What does RFC stand for? "Request for Comments". Presumably, because standards have to be reviewed by other people and get their feedback.
I assume the spirit is same here.
We do RFS #8 (Ephemeralization Apps) and now, thanks to this post, we're also on the RFS "Improving healthcare".
I have a request to existing founders, mentors or partners of YC:
We have an amazing team and a real problem we're solving in healthcare. Hundreds of doctors are waiting to use our app. I'm wondering if you could help us by reviewing our application and sharing some feedback/advices. Please don't be shy, that would be really appreciated. Just ping me phzbox at gmail
That's what Loomio is doing: http://boingboing.net/2014/03/19/loomio-democratic-decision-...
Building infrastructure for citizens to self-govern. Using the internet to enable large-scale decision-making, without the need of large government.
Whereas, sadly, i was shaking my head at some of this list. How could any person with the faintest clue write both these things:
> Healthcare. Healthcare in the United States is badly broken.
> Education. If we can fix education, we can eventually do everything else on this list
Healthcare in the United States is badly broken because your system of government is a complete mess. The solution is not healthcare startups, or some kind of breakthrough in education, it is to adopt the system every other civilised country on the planet uses, which is to make healthcare as whole a service, not a business.
Oh, and how about:
> Transportation and housing. About half of all energy is used on transportation
We already have trains, trams, buses, and bicycles. These technologies solve the transport problem and are all at least a century old. But the government doesn't build infrastructure for these, it just keeps building physical and financial infrastructure for cars, which are probably the daftest invention in the history of civil transport. Don't get me wrong, cars are fantastic sporting and extreme environment vehicles, but by now it is abundantly clear that they have no place in everyday life.
> And housing continues to get more expensive, partially due to difficulties in transportation.
But mostly due to the fact that existing homeowners have no financial interest in increasing the supply of housing, but, because of the way the government's power over zoning and eminent domain is beholden to their interests, do have a stranglehold on it.
But of course, fixing government is not something you can do with a startup, and it's not something Mr Altman could make much IRR off, so that's not what he's suggested.
Another idea is just any consumer focused startup in one of the areas he focused on. For example an inexpensive solar panel kit you could buy at Walmart. Or maybe advanced hydroponics kits for people to grow some of their own food. I believe the key to really taking advantage of new technologies in an efficient way is to get them widely distributed and into the hands of individuals and families. And I think that high tech solutions to a number of traditionally highly centralized or large organization-driven areas such as energy and food production can make better distribution of those things practical and will result in not only a more efficient but also more robust and secure future for families.
We're working on it: http://automicrofarm.com/ (well, aquaponics, not hydroponics).
If not how would someone who doesn't know about YC or follow it (or read this blog post on HN) know to apply if that is what they are contemplating doing?
YC has for sure tons of applicants. But there are almost certainly a large number of people out there that don't know the ropes and don't know it even exists. There is really (afaik) no widespread farm team development that feeds into YC.
I have an unannounced goal in my projects to achieve something bigger than this... to use the internet to change political systems, the structure of them and how populaces engage with them.
I think it has to be fait accompli though, already done. It will take a generation to achieve fully and putting it in a pitch deck or advertising it before it's done is only going to allow people to attack it before it's taken root.
I truly believe this is possible and achievable. But when I share the plan (in person, not on the internet) and get passionate about politics, a few are inspired and believe... and most think I'm off-the-planet crazy (though they don't think it's unachievable).
Fait accompli... I need to get it done for it to be already done.
I believe the company is going to be successful, make a huge return for investors, and change the lives of users (I've seen that first-hand already). But I also believe it can be a trojan horse for a set of ideas that can change societies and how we choose to be governed.
I'd largely got to the point where I wasn't going to consider YC, but if they're serious about this one and can be more ambitious, I might be tempted to apply.
Not that I'd argue with you with where we're at today. The destination may be over the horizon, but the first milestone is right in front of us and looks like we've barely moved. Which is true.
Almost regardless of how impact is quantified, the answer is going to be yes.
Looking at any influential forum within any given vertical, that same pattern is repeated over and over.
Impact is material and real, when enough people with a shared interest come together.
Could the impact have been more measurable if the technology that powers forums been more supportive of the users needs? Again it's hard to answer that software that more easily helps pull people together in the real (as well as in the virtual) world and strengthen those bonds within a community wouldn't have more impact than software that didn't.
Forums are impactful, and do bring about advances. But currently only in small groups and without the impact or advances being accessible to other groups. The question isn't whether this happens in forums, but whether it's possible to encourage it to happen and what may emerge if it happens more often in similar ways. Could forums be used as a testing ground for new political structures within large groups of people, could they be used to evolve and prove those structures, and could the mechanisms of self-organisation within a forum be mapped back onto the real world.
It's not as crazy a thought as you might imagine, the seed is there and the tools do not support the way people are already trying to work. The tools today hold people back from what they naturally try to do, but if the tools supported people better things could be different.
I think it's a mistake to think about real and virtual world as separate things. We live in a single world, and the online part grows more important with time. There are bits that are quite independent from the offline part, like interacting on HN with pseudonyms. Other bits, like Facebook, are typically much closer and interconnected with our offline life. Some mobile apps are even more integrated with the real world, although they are not very social.
- smart pothole patches. Currently patches barely make the road any more driveable and uneven road surfaces result in billions in economic loss due to accidents, repairs, and traffic.
- drone machine equipment. Employ operators in the midwest in trailers while they control equipment all over the world. You'll get few accidents and utilize resources more efficiently. Put the operators in geographically advantageous locations and you can run the equipment 24/7.
- Volunteer traffic shaping network. I figure all you need is 15-20 volunteer drivers to effectively eliminate rush hour stop and go traffic on one side of a highway by throttling throughput. Create an app to help coordinate and reward them.
You already have millions of internet connected (gps localized) accelerometers on the roads daily. If you could convince enough drivers to record/report that information you'd have a decent map of any rough spots.
Good luck with that. If you even tried to convince drivers to do that, they'd scream about a conspiracy to track everyone's movement (beyond the tracking that already exists).
https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=infrared%20repai...
I'm imagining essentially a self leveling cement that untrained people can use that has the same lasting properties of the infrared repair solutions.
But how on earth will participating in YC help? its not some damn webapp or incrementalizable b2c/b2b product. Some things also don't have a natural exit, even if the biz outcomes are grand and/or interesting.
seriously, convince me its worth my time to apply even though I don't want investors. please. (I know many folks who did YC and are happy with it, I just don't see how it'd help in the domains I do work in.)
One thing that makes YC and other incubators so amazing is people who didn't grow up with a wealthy family and have financial obligations such as student loans can hack together a prototype over a weekend, apply to YC, and have almost as good of a chance of getting in as anyone else. I can totally see why YC would want to fund later stage companies though.
That being said, would love to attend a YC non-software demo day.
They're trying to make space travel much cheaper with re-usable launches.
Checklist: - find a superstar physics team - get 0.5B in funding.
Seriously, Thorium rocks. Look it up.
My starter for ten:
"The Internet lets people around the world coordinate action" HelpYourNeighbour.com Given certain amounts of basic training and oversight, social services could outsource small amounts of care to anyone willing to help - elderly person in need of trip to doctors, local park needs trees planting. All this is kind of sort of done on adhoc basis by charities - seems very inefficient and probably lacks the network effect lift that a single government approved point has.
Really? Why should 20% be unsustainable?
There is no economic law that says the distribution of your expenses over various expenditures must stay equal. If you think about it, there can't be such a law; if it held, since nobody spent anything on electronics/flight tickets/Big Macs/etc. a century ago, you shouldn't spent a cent on them, either.
The richer we are, the less we need to spend on essentials such as food and shelter. That leaves a greater fraction of GDP for things such as healthcare. Most people will say they value health more than possessions, so what's strange about allocating more money to it?
So, how the heck to do that?
Maybe what we are doing is just using computing to automate what we have long done manually. Then we know how the heck to do that and mostly just need to program it.
Maybe we can think of a reasonably good way to do that using just intuitive heuristics and just need to program those.
But, what else can we do?
Here's an example: Suppose at a server farm we have a system and want to monitor it for any problems not seen before. Suppose the system can report 100 times a second numerical data on each of 12 variables. Suppose the server farm is relatively stable and we can collect such data for three months, let the data 'age', and be fairly sure that the system was operating 'normally' (correctly, without problems) during those three months.
Now what? In real time, how do we monitor the system? AI 'expert systems'? Been there; done that; don't think so.
And our customers are highly concerned about both detection rate and false alarm rate. The 12 variables used carefully seem to promise a good detection rate, but what the heck to do about keeping false alarm rate down? Intuitive heuristics? I don't think so. Something in 'machine learning'? I doubt it. Now what?
Okay, it's a research problem in the applied mathematics of applied probability.
Okay, what's the lesson here? The applied math now should be seen as the uniquely powerful crucial methodology for much of the progress we seek, say, in the RFS. Why? Because in a strong sense, math has by far the most powerful methodology in civilization. How? Why? Because applied math can take what we have, use that as hypotheses in mathematical/logical deductions and, with theorems and proofs, come up with mathematical consequences that are rock solid logically and give us what the heck we want, far beyond anything we ever did manually or could ever guess with intuitive heuristics.
Net, the key methodology for much of the progress we want, that is, taking what we have and getting to what we want, is some applied math, with theorems and proofs, possibly in part or largely original, and sometimes with some advanced math prerequisites. Such math promises to be one of the most important pillars for the exploitation of computing in the future, assuming that we do get such exploitation.
So far I have yet to see "applied math" mentioned on the Web site of any venture firm.
Another example? Sure: Take the data we have and get to what we want in, say, ad targeting. So, sure, there are lots of techniques for ad targeting, but what are the more powerful techniques, say, that give much more effective ad targeting, and how do we find and confirm the power of such techniques? Well, in some cases, maybe most, the best methodology will be some math such as I described.
VC, YC, SV, entrepreneurship, computing, etc. will have to take applied math quite seriously or miss out on a lot of what might have been and struggle for decades in nearly useless mud wrestling instead.
You've been warned. Be warned. You neglect applied math and you can't win and must lose compared with what is possible, big time. Did I mention that the theorems and proofs of applied math form the most powerful methodology in civilization? Believe it.
I'm going to have to review my physics textbook, but I could swear that steam engine consumes energy.
edit: Can't believe I'm getting downvoted. I thought this place was full of pedantic engineers, like me?
The steam engine turns energy into work. If anything, it probably increased the price of energy (at least temporarily, until the steam engine was put to work in the fossil fuels mining business).
Before the steam engine, there was the horse. The horse turned a much smaller fraction of the energy input into useful work.
This means that the steam engine lowered the cost of useful work. We (over)simplify this, and say that the steam engine lowered the cost of energy.
But I have a nagging feeling that I may be explaining the blindingly obvious to the deliberately obtuse...
If you're going to be pedantic, at least be correct.
If you were to consult your physics textbook, somewhere near the beginning under the heading "Conservation of Energy", you'd see that the steam engine neither creates nor destroys energy, merely transforms it into a different form.
Technically you said that the steam engine consumes energy. Which is silly since it merely consumes coal (which contains energy).
But point taken, your meaning was implied and obvious but not explicit. Sorry for wasting your time with a needlessly pedantic correction that added nothing to the conversation.
In light of this new information, are you still confused about the downvotes for your initial comment?
In all seriousness, fixing my local animal shelter's web site has a bigger impact on this planet than 99% of Silly Valley's app lottery.