I suspect that's one of the differences between the CS world and life science world (again broadly speaking). In CS, there tends to be a pretty large gap betwe

I suspect that's one of the differences between the CS world and life science world (again broadly speaking). In CS, there tends to be a pretty large gap between academic projects and commercial software projects both in terms of the expected output and the goals. For the life sciences that's not the case. Even in commercial companies you end up doing a lot of fundamental research or you acquire it via partnerships or IP acquisition. There are some aspects of biology that likely translate better to the tech model. But for most aspects, especially anything to do with therapeutics, it is essentially impossible to avoid the hard slog. No software is going to change how you study efficacy and toxicity in animal models and human testing. With more targeted therapies the complexity only goes up. I think YC should invest in the life sciences, but it should be a different model, perhaps an innovation on the existing tech transfer model, perhaps building an incubator that ends up being an IP funnel for pharma, or to provide some competition in an underserved area, but the software mindset is generally going to fail.