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What's wrong with doing pure research as a Startup? Why does pure research have to only be the domain of Universities? I think it was a great experiment that

What's wrong with doing pure research as a Startup? Why does pure research have to only be the domain of Universities? I think it was a great experiment that failed, but that probably goes for something like 95% of great experiments. Lots of pure research goes nowhere. It's not like Geordie is defrauding the old and disabled. He's working with really really really smart people with lots of money. Honestly, we need more of this and less of SnapChat startups.

AndrewKemendo 10y ago
What's wrong with doing pure research as a Startup? Because there is no reliable way to fund it. Said another way, the time horizon for repayment is too long and too risky for traditional, non-corporate, non-public investing. Lets assume you have a breakthrough with research, now you have to make a product to sell. Which means you need to likely build a new market, or even in the best case of an existing market change the team composition to fund product development. Those are all risks that Banks and Venture Money (except in very rare cases) aren't willing to take.
ThePhysicist 10y ago
There's nothing wrong with doing pure research as a startup, in fact I'd love to see more of these kind of startups and I'm thinking about starting one myself! What's harmful (IMHO) is making spectacular claims (look we have a working quantum computer!) and then not back them up by evidence. It is of course okay to sell your product aggressively as a startup, and sometimes to oversell it as well (fake it until you can make it), but I really have my doubts that D-Wave can "make it" in the near future, as there are just so many difficult problems to solve for which we don't even have a viabe approach yet (e.g building large scale qubit coupling schemes), and trust me most quantum computing research groups have people that are at least as smart and dedicated as the people working at D-Wave.

AndrewKemendo 10y ago

What's wrong with doing pure research as a Startup? Because there is no reliable way to fund it. Said another way, the time horizon for repayment is too long and too risky for traditional, non-corporate, non-public investing. Lets assume you have a breakthrough with research, now you have to make a product to sell. Which means you need to likely build a new market, or even in the best case of an existing market change the team composition to fund product development. Those are all risks that Banks and Venture Money (except in very rare cases) aren't willing to take.

ThePhysicist 10y ago

There's nothing wrong with doing pure research as a startup, in fact I'd love to see more of these kind of startups and I'm thinking about starting one myself! What's harmful (IMHO) is making spectacular claims (look we have a working quantum computer!) and then not back them up by evidence. It is of course okay to sell your product aggressively as a startup, and sometimes to oversell it as well (fake it until you can make it), but I really have my doubts that D-Wave can "make it" in the near future, as there are just so many difficult problems to solve for which we don't even have a viabe approach yet (e.g building large scale qubit coupling schemes), and trust me most quantum computing research groups have people that are at least as smart and dedicated as the people working at D-Wave.