11 ms·

EleVR leaving Y Combinator Research

173 points by alanfalcon 9y ago

Judgmentality 9y ago
As someone who used to be incredibly interested in VR (until recently I wanted to join Valve to work on it full-time and I followed many of the VR startups), I'd never heard of them. It seems they did a lot of great work, but perhaps they could have marketed themselves better? I've no doubt what they say is true - being non-profit makes fundraising hard. But nothing helps like building a brand, and it seems they focused entirely on making cool things instead of making a name for themselves (which is great, but it's not helpful for fundraising).
- mnx 9y ago
  I found out about them after Vi Hart posted about them on her (absolutely amazing) YouTube channel. But even though she is an amazing communicator, I wasn't really sold on their idea. So, I think you are correct - they seem to have paid very little attention to marketing themselves.
- firasd 9y ago
  You may have a point. I checked randomly and it seems like elevr doesn't have its own Twitter profile apart from the team members' personal profiles.
- Keyframe 9y ago
  What made you cool off from VR?
  - Judgmentality 9y ago
    I haven't seen anything that makes me think it's more than a gimmick. The tech itself is still a few years away from being where it should be (higher resolution, wireless, better framerate, improved immersion), but more importantly I've yet to see a compelling use case for it. Until somebody can make a case for why VR, it's just an expensive toy, and not even a particularly fun one after a very short period of time. It reminds me of the Novint Falcon so many years ago. Really cool technology that nobody wanted.
    - tapoxi 9y ago
      A few friends of mine are VR developers, so I've tried every sort of headset and game under the sun. Short of CAD/CAM and video games, I can't see a reason for VR in its current form. And though I love video games, the space requirements, isolation, and setup involved for the Vive lead me to prefer non-VR experiences. Having tried a Hololens though, I'm certain that AR can improve in a direction where it would replace my laptop. I wouldn't like to use it for games, though.
      - Judgmentality 9y ago
        So I haven't tried AR yet, but I do know it has a laws-of-physics limitation - it's impossible to draw black on the screen. Basically, you can only make things brighter than the background, not darker - so if you're already in a bright world, good luck seeing anything. Subtitles become impossible unless you're in a black/dark room because you can't draw black borders on the text, and just outlining things in general (so you can see them) is essentially impossible. http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/why-you-wont-see-hard-ar-anytime-soon/ http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/why-you-wont-see-hard-...
        guycook 9y ago
        > laws-of-physics limitation This is only true if you limit your AR HMD design to beamsplitter + projector. There are existing prototypes [1] which demonstrate quite accurate lcd based occlusion for darkening the environment on a per-hmd-pixel basis. [1] http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3041178 http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3041178
    - erikpukinskis 9y ago
      VR is a dev kit industry right now and that's ok. It's like we invented the mouse but no one has invented WIMP yet. (Windows Icons Menus Pointer) Or we have an automobile but not yet a steering wheel. There's a big research project to figure out some basic interaction primitives for VR, and there won't be any uniquely powerful VR experiences until after the first round of that work is complete. > why VR 1) Humans like feeling like we're nearby to other people we like. Ask anyone in a long distance relationship. VR will start a price war between digital and physical spaces. $800 for a single plane ticket vs. $800 for two headsets so you can sit in the same room as your kids doing their homework back in the Philippines every night. 2) Body language is the basis for much of our communication. The reason Google Hangouts, conference calls, etc, don't work as well as being in an office together is we rely on eye contact and posture to do turn taking, communicate emotional context, etc. VR with eye contact and finger tracking would give physical work spaces a huge run for their money. Basically: VR puts virtual spaces on the same playing field as physical spaces. Not automatically better in any case, but able to compete. Right now virtual spaces mostly compete in a separate arena. As a slogan: Eye contact is the killer app of VR.
Invictus0 9y ago
It has always appeared to me that VR was like 3D++, a fad inspired by futurists that would never be economically viable or practical. 360 video is a nice novelty but I don't think anyone ever thought that it would be preferable to have all video recorded or viewed in that format.
- vasilipupkin 9y ago
  as virtual experience quality gets better, you will see more and more applications starting with anything porn related
  - ethbro 9y ago
    Real-time 3d graphics started with computer games rather than porn.
- corysama 9y ago
  IMHO, any argument that specifies "all" or "always" is trying to sneak in a subtle but significant bias. I'm a huge fan of VR, but it don't think it will take over all media. I don't even think it will take over a majority of media. I do think its a new opportunity for more intense medium that most people don't want most of the time, but simply was not an option before. If you are serious about some task/event/experience then VR is a small hassle that has a huge payoff. For casual 6 clicks per minute experiences, the Web will continue to do just fine.
nostrademons 9y ago
We seem to be in an interesting time where everyone is casting around looking for the next "big" idea, regardless of whether it works, and as a result the only way to do useful "small" ideas that work is to fund them yourself or get ordinary, non-import people to help fund them (i.e. crowdfunding or ICOs). All the attention is on flying cars, self-driving cars, killer robots, alternative currencies, artificial intelligence, 600 mph vacuum transportation, and missions to Mars. The last time I can think of when the tech landscape looked like this was the early 90s, when everybody was hung up on artificial intelligence, pocket computing, handwriting recognition, voice recognition, WebTV, 3D graphics, and virtual reality. We ended up getting many of those, 15 years later, but the real huge story of the decade was the WWW, which was really unimpressive when it first came out (I remember comparing it unfavorably to Gopher in 1993; Gopher at least was semi-organized). The WWW overshadowed everything else because the problem it was solving - which many people didn't know they had - was more universal than the problems solved by any other technologies that had just entered the market, and its solution was just barely viable enough to solve that problem. Meanwhile, the tech for many of the other much hotter problems of the time was 15-20 years out; they couldn't actually be solved by the processing power available in 1992. I wonder if there's a similar overlooked-but-universal problem that someone in a garage is working on now, that'll spark a new wave similar to the dot-com boom.
- Judgmentality 9y ago
  So what do you think are the big problems being worked on today which people are overlooking because the technology isn't as sexy as self-driving cars? I agree with you that funding chases the flashy stuff, and real businesses are built on substance. I'm just curious what you think will end up breaking out from this era of funding. Obviously hindsight is 20/20, but I heard an interesting tidbit from a famous investor about the dot com bubble: you either invested in Google or you didn't. I wonder if things will turn out similar this time as I still haven't seen a good IPO from a tech company in years (would love for people to provide counter-examples as I don't track this very closely).
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    > So what do you think are the big problems being worked on today which people are overlooking because the technology isn't as sexy as self-driving cars? Making computers disappear.
macsj200 9y ago
YC has a research division? What do they work on?
- p4bl0 9y ago
  You can visit http://ycr.org/ http://ycr.org/ for more info.
tw1010 9y ago
So what can we learn from this? Did they tackle more things than their time-constraints allowed? Or was the issue that they thought they had more time than they did and they weren't in clear enough communication with the investors? Would it have been better to just stick with a few really promising projects and build something that they could sell so they wouldn't have to be as dependent on investors which would give them some margin for experimentation?
vihart 9y ago
Vi Hart here... someone sent me this with confusion that it was at the top of HN yet all the comments are completely irrelevant. My understanding is that HN and YC are usually about startuppy stuff and business models and investors and etc, so I guess it makes sense that everyone's in that mindset. We're not a startup and not looking to reach a broad audience, get investors, or create a product. We even wrote a thing a while back regarding our not being a startup, because it is an unfamiliar concept to many people: http://elevr.com/were-not-a-startup/ http://elevr.com/were-not-a-startup/ The HARC group at Y Combinator Research has/had an ambitious vision of bringing back the basic research model that led to many fundamental innovations in the 60s, including a handful of groups in addition to ours. The kind of research that creates enormous value that cannot be captured by individual investors or companies, but that lifts the industry/people as a whole. I think if world events had been different, the timing would have worked out well for a resurgence of this kind of research. Ok nice chat, HN. You're a weird place. Vi
- tw1010 9y ago
  "I think if world events had been different, the timing would have worked out well for a resurgence of this kind of research." But surely you knew that before you started the venture? Wouldn't it have been better then to produce a finished marketable product which allow you to actually keep going long-term which a project like this so require. I just don't really see what the strategy for success was here.
- wonderous 9y ago
  Shocked to hear Vi call HN a "weird place" - especially after creating an account only five minutes ago.
  - vihart 9y ago
    I dunno, probly that weird vibe you get when a community spends more time trying to sleuth out ways to delegitimize your words via irrelevant factors than considering that maybe as the author of the original content maybe you know a thing or two.
yeukhon 9y ago
To be honest, there aren't that many choices left: Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, and Telsa are probably the only one with deep pocket for VR research... There is no real non-profit research (unless you really want to go back to become a university research lab); peoole want the results and commericalizd them. I would be surprised if none have reached out througout the years.
- alanfalcon 9y ago
  I'd be shocked if Disney isn't on that list, though I have no idea what commercial pressure their imagineering team is under. I'd love to see eleVR continue at Pixar, though I'm not really sure if Vi and the team see that kind of destination as a viable option given their goals.
  - ptrott2017 9y ago
    yup Disney should be on the list - Disney Research (https://www.disneyresearch.com/ https://www.disneyresearch.com/) have a long history of being involved in multiple areas of VR research.
    - throwawaybbqed 9y ago
      Seems really cool. I wish they had systems openings.
      - erikpukinskis 9y ago
        You might look through their published papers, find someone in the area you're strong in, and ask them if they need help, or if there are likely openings in the future.
wonderous 9y ago
Anyone aware of an explanation of how YC Research makes choices to fund and defund projects?
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
abetusk 9y ago
Why is YCR so short-sighted? Isn't this a clear win for everyone involved and good press for Y-Combinator to begin with to keep EleVR alive and funded?
fuzzfactor 9y ago
Looks like you have an impressive amount of technical accomplishments. I know what you mean about irrelevance. Maybe I can be less so. No surprise that most of your new technology is not within reach of attracting commercial interest since that was not the idea to begin with. >Unfortunately, a combination of forces in the world make nonprofit long-term research a tough sell right now. It doesn’t matter how good we are at what we do. Everyone is overextended trying to solve all the world’s problems at once, and we’re in the unpopular space of being neither for-profit nor directly and immediately philanthropic. So true, but I actually feel like it was a much more rare combination of events which made it possible to do what you have done. It's almost never going to be an easy sell. You were so fortunate and wise to have jumped at the opportunity to research in a way that few will ever experience. Even if you did not have very much chance of making it your life's work without appropriate funding over such a term in advance, you seem to have immediately utilized what you did have by devoting the maximum amount toward as much technical progress as possible. From experience I say that carrying on as if you had funding for longer term open-ended projects is the best way to make technical progress without distraction. It can still take many years to get good enough to make even an exponential increase in the breakthrough rate become tangible or useful though. I'm an extreme alternative researcher where my life's work has been to independently out-research some of the most well-funded petrochemical giants without a PhD myself using the same equipment on my own analytical benches. So I guess that is ambitious too. Took a while to get good here and people didn't think it could be done but experimentation & discovery always was one of my strengths. Paying for it as I go by operating at an insignificant fraction of their cost, and when the opportunity is there, prioritizing commercial projects where money can be made relative to the rate at which it would cost them to do it themself. Having a commercial component in service to such high rollers in their regular operation was the path of least resistance for the young me to gamble on the likelihood of my ships continuing to come in. I like clean environments, would prefer less toxicity and have always been an extreme energy saver so otherwise I don't need more tankers on my own behalf, but it's our local industry, and the most promising thing for survival when I was young was to get into alternative fuels and additives, so it is what it is. Even though I've been a small-time operator, the environment is a hell of a lot better off than it would be with anyone who would have otherwise replaced me. Battery research seems more promising than ever now, and I feel so bad for having done almost nothing in that field but it would probably take a couple years to get up to speed. Not having actual prosperity I could never start that without giving up my current life's work, but it does seem like an area where butt could be kicked to widespread advantage. As long as you need to devote excessive effort toward survival activities, you never get to really do what you prefer to do or are best at for enough of the time to accomplish but a fraction of your technical potential. Anyway, in a situation where a good year still yields only 1% of breakthroughs that could be made profitable over the near term on the commercial side, it was essential to keep the nose to the grindstone maximizing the amount of experimentation. So you end up finding an abundance of excess stuff which would be good for other kinds of businesses or could become the foundation for entirely new businesses, most of which would require capital so that would be out of the question. Without capital having been available to get rolling doing this, there has never been anything like a network in place. When you're making unprecedented progress on technical breakthroughs that can be exploited for survival using the resources you already have, one of the least rewarding gambles you can make is to divert attention to pusuit of elusive new sources of backing rife with dead ends and unfavorable terms to boot when there is interest. Any way you look at it there's an incredible balance where you can't depend too much on continued good fortune and you can't justify dramatically slowing technical progress by diverting the amout of resources it takes to avoid the ravages of all possible bad fortune with absolute certainty. You'll get better at this. You are going to do extremely well, already experienced at getting up on the tightrope without a net not knowing what lies at the other end, tripping up, falling off, badly injured and now very near death in this incarnation. Even if the Grim Reaper completes the call, you are still willing to try again in the same type situation where a single mistake or miscalculation can be devastating. Ambitious people you are. If you want to continue to try it the same way all you are going to need is a better network. You've accomplished a huge milestone with only a single obstacle remaining, not like when you were first getting started any more. And I'm here to remind you that there are unexplored alternatives however unlikely, with the best option probably not thought of yet. I would get to work heavily researching both of these possibilities thoroughly. You all need to talk to the maximum people everyday anyway in various network directions and during the hard sell maybe you already have a product or service that could be offered for a fee when you run into someone who could not provide you with financial help otherwise. Salvage from what you have accomplished if possible. Whenever someone doesn't respond positively get two names & numbers from them and you will eventually never be able to call them all. Seems like the best opportunity would be expected when you find someone who is benevolent and directly has a close relationship with a highly suitable potential partner, and you have their trust to the degree that they will actually make the introduction for you. You would be surprised too when a contact does the opposite and gives you the number of someone they dislike who they want you to bug instead of them. If you expect the unexpected this may also have some potential itself. Benevolence seems to be what you need for mere survival now rather than the overall strength which could give a bigger impact in the long run. YCR sounded like an interesting concept to me since nonprofits are one of the alternatives I have always considered experimenting with. Extreme money-making under that umbrella can be done where it's perfectly legitimate to optimize for producing new or providing low-cost already-baked technology and licensing it or providing a service around it for much more money since you're just going to use the income no differently than donations for continued operations anyway, with no greedy shareholders to get in the way. With the impression I get of the YC network it just seems like butt could be kicked through YCR somehow unforseen. It's almost always going to be impossible for most to survive financially as a byproduct of what you do without diverting extreme effort away from what you actually do at least occasionally. You wouldn't have done this if you weren't going to someday be comfortable enabling other companies to bring in more income or solve more problems leveraging and commercializing your breakthroughs than you would ever expect for yourself to begin with. That's the business model that exists which you can not help finding yourself in without trying. Not too dissimilar to me who has had no choice but to operate in a capitalist market when I have not been a capitalist, merely an entrepreneur focusing on research overwhelmingly more so than development, according to my resources.

173 points by alanfalcon 9y ago

As someone who used to be incredibly interested in VR (until recently I wanted to join Valve to work on it full-time and I followed many of the VR startups), I'd never heard of them. It seems they did a lot of great work, but perhaps they could have marketed themselves better? I've no doubt what they say is true - being non-profit makes fundraising hard. But nothing helps like building a brand, and it seems they focused entirely on making cool things instead of making a name for themselves (which is great, but it's not helpful for fundraising).

mnx 9y ago
I found out about them after Vi Hart posted about them on her (absolutely amazing) YouTube channel. But even though she is an amazing communicator, I wasn't really sold on their idea. So, I think you are correct - they seem to have paid very little attention to marketing themselves.
firasd 9y ago
You may have a point. I checked randomly and it seems like elevr doesn't have its own Twitter profile apart from the team members' personal profiles.
Keyframe 9y ago
What made you cool off from VR?
- Judgmentality 9y ago
  I haven't seen anything that makes me think it's more than a gimmick. The tech itself is still a few years away from being where it should be (higher resolution, wireless, better framerate, improved immersion), but more importantly I've yet to see a compelling use case for it. Until somebody can make a case for why VR, it's just an expensive toy, and not even a particularly fun one after a very short period of time. It reminds me of the Novint Falcon so many years ago. Really cool technology that nobody wanted.
  - tapoxi 9y ago
    A few friends of mine are VR developers, so I've tried every sort of headset and game under the sun. Short of CAD/CAM and video games, I can't see a reason for VR in its current form. And though I love video games, the space requirements, isolation, and setup involved for the Vive lead me to prefer non-VR experiences. Having tried a Hololens though, I'm certain that AR can improve in a direction where it would replace my laptop. I wouldn't like to use it for games, though.
    - Judgmentality 9y ago
      So I haven't tried AR yet, but I do know it has a laws-of-physics limitation - it's impossible to draw black on the screen. Basically, you can only make things brighter than the background, not darker - so if you're already in a bright world, good luck seeing anything. Subtitles become impossible unless you're in a black/dark room because you can't draw black borders on the text, and just outlining things in general (so you can see them) is essentially impossible. http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/why-you-wont-see-hard-ar-anytime-soon/ http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/why-you-wont-see-hard-...
      - guycook 9y ago
        > laws-of-physics limitation This is only true if you limit your AR HMD design to beamsplitter + projector. There are existing prototypes [1] which demonstrate quite accurate lcd based occlusion for darkening the environment on a per-hmd-pixel basis. [1] http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3041178 http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3041178
  - erikpukinskis 9y ago
    VR is a dev kit industry right now and that's ok. It's like we invented the mouse but no one has invented WIMP yet. (Windows Icons Menus Pointer) Or we have an automobile but not yet a steering wheel. There's a big research project to figure out some basic interaction primitives for VR, and there won't be any uniquely powerful VR experiences until after the first round of that work is complete. > why VR 1) Humans like feeling like we're nearby to other people we like. Ask anyone in a long distance relationship. VR will start a price war between digital and physical spaces. $800 for a single plane ticket vs. $800 for two headsets so you can sit in the same room as your kids doing their homework back in the Philippines every night. 2) Body language is the basis for much of our communication. The reason Google Hangouts, conference calls, etc, don't work as well as being in an office together is we rely on eye contact and posture to do turn taking, communicate emotional context, etc. VR with eye contact and finger tracking would give physical work spaces a huge run for their money. Basically: VR puts virtual spaces on the same playing field as physical spaces. Not automatically better in any case, but able to compete. Right now virtual spaces mostly compete in a separate arena. As a slogan: Eye contact is the killer app of VR.

Invictus0 9y ago

It has always appeared to me that VR was like 3D++, a fad inspired by futurists that would never be economically viable or practical. 360 video is a nice novelty but I don't think anyone ever thought that it would be preferable to have all video recorded or viewed in that format.

vasilipupkin 9y ago
as virtual experience quality gets better, you will see more and more applications starting with anything porn related
- ethbro 9y ago
  Real-time 3d graphics started with computer games rather than porn.
corysama 9y ago
IMHO, any argument that specifies "all" or "always" is trying to sneak in a subtle but significant bias. I'm a huge fan of VR, but it don't think it will take over all media. I don't even think it will take over a majority of media. I do think its a new opportunity for more intense medium that most people don't want most of the time, but simply was not an option before. If you are serious about some task/event/experience then VR is a small hassle that has a huge payoff. For casual 6 clicks per minute experiences, the Web will continue to do just fine.

nostrademons 9y ago

We seem to be in an interesting time where everyone is casting around looking for the next "big" idea, regardless of whether it works, and as a result the only way to do useful "small" ideas that work is to fund them yourself or get ordinary, non-import people to help fund them (i.e. crowdfunding or ICOs). All the attention is on flying cars, self-driving cars, killer robots, alternative currencies, artificial intelligence, 600 mph vacuum transportation, and missions to Mars. The last time I can think of when the tech landscape looked like this was the early 90s, when everybody was hung up on artificial intelligence, pocket computing, handwriting recognition, voice recognition, WebTV, 3D graphics, and virtual reality. We ended up getting many of those, 15 years later, but the real huge story of the decade was the WWW, which was really unimpressive when it first came out (I remember comparing it unfavorably to Gopher in 1993; Gopher at least was semi-organized). The WWW overshadowed everything else because the problem it was solving - which many people didn't know they had - was more universal than the problems solved by any other technologies that had just entered the market, and its solution was just barely viable enough to solve that problem. Meanwhile, the tech for many of the other much hotter problems of the time was 15-20 years out; they couldn't actually be solved by the processing power available in 1992. I wonder if there's a similar overlooked-but-universal problem that someone in a garage is working on now, that'll spark a new wave similar to the dot-com boom.

Judgmentality 9y ago
So what do you think are the big problems being worked on today which people are overlooking because the technology isn't as sexy as self-driving cars? I agree with you that funding chases the flashy stuff, and real businesses are built on substance. I'm just curious what you think will end up breaking out from this era of funding. Obviously hindsight is 20/20, but I heard an interesting tidbit from a famous investor about the dot com bubble: you either invested in Google or you didn't. I wonder if things will turn out similar this time as I still haven't seen a good IPO from a tech company in years (would love for people to provide counter-examples as I don't track this very closely).
- jacquesm 9y ago
  > So what do you think are the big problems being worked on today which people are overlooking because the technology isn't as sexy as self-driving cars? Making computers disappear.

macsj200 9y ago

YC has a research division? What do they work on?

p4bl0 9y ago
You can visit http://ycr.org/ http://ycr.org/ for more info.

tw1010 9y ago

So what can we learn from this? Did they tackle more things than their time-constraints allowed? Or was the issue that they thought they had more time than they did and they weren't in clear enough communication with the investors? Would it have been better to just stick with a few really promising projects and build something that they could sell so they wouldn't have to be as dependent on investors which would give them some margin for experimentation?

vihart 9y ago

Vi Hart here... someone sent me this with confusion that it was at the top of HN yet all the comments are completely irrelevant. My understanding is that HN and YC are usually about startuppy stuff and business models and investors and etc, so I guess it makes sense that everyone's in that mindset. We're not a startup and not looking to reach a broad audience, get investors, or create a product. We even wrote a thing a while back regarding our not being a startup, because it is an unfamiliar concept to many people: http://elevr.com/were-not-a-startup/ http://elevr.com/were-not-a-startup/ The HARC group at Y Combinator Research has/had an ambitious vision of bringing back the basic research model that led to many fundamental innovations in the 60s, including a handful of groups in addition to ours. The kind of research that creates enormous value that cannot be captured by individual investors or companies, but that lifts the industry/people as a whole. I think if world events had been different, the timing would have worked out well for a resurgence of this kind of research. Ok nice chat, HN. You're a weird place. Vi

tw1010 9y ago
"I think if world events had been different, the timing would have worked out well for a resurgence of this kind of research." But surely you knew that before you started the venture? Wouldn't it have been better then to produce a finished marketable product which allow you to actually keep going long-term which a project like this so require. I just don't really see what the strategy for success was here.
wonderous 9y ago
Shocked to hear Vi call HN a "weird place" - especially after creating an account only five minutes ago.
- vihart 9y ago
  I dunno, probly that weird vibe you get when a community spends more time trying to sleuth out ways to delegitimize your words via irrelevant factors than considering that maybe as the author of the original content maybe you know a thing or two.

yeukhon 9y ago

To be honest, there aren't that many choices left: Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, and Telsa are probably the only one with deep pocket for VR research... There is no real non-profit research (unless you really want to go back to become a university research lab); peoole want the results and commericalizd them. I would be surprised if none have reached out througout the years.

alanfalcon 9y ago
I'd be shocked if Disney isn't on that list, though I have no idea what commercial pressure their imagineering team is under. I'd love to see eleVR continue at Pixar, though I'm not really sure if Vi and the team see that kind of destination as a viable option given their goals.
- ptrott2017 9y ago
  yup Disney should be on the list - Disney Research (https://www.disneyresearch.com/ https://www.disneyresearch.com/) have a long history of being involved in multiple areas of VR research.
  - throwawaybbqed 9y ago
    Seems really cool. I wish they had systems openings.
    - erikpukinskis 9y ago
      You might look through their published papers, find someone in the area you're strong in, and ask them if they need help, or if there are likely openings in the future.

wonderous 9y ago

Anyone aware of an explanation of how YC Research makes choices to fund and defund projects?

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

abetusk 9y ago

Why is YCR so short-sighted? Isn't this a clear win for everyone involved and good press for Y-Combinator to begin with to keep EleVR alive and funded?

fuzzfactor 9y ago

Looks like you have an impressive amount of technical accomplishments. I know what you mean about irrelevance. Maybe I can be less so. No surprise that most of your new technology is not within reach of attracting commercial interest since that was not the idea to begin with. >Unfortunately, a combination of forces in the world make nonprofit long-term research a tough sell right now. It doesn’t matter how good we are at what we do. Everyone is overextended trying to solve all the world’s problems at once, and we’re in the unpopular space of being neither for-profit nor directly and immediately philanthropic. So true, but I actually feel like it was a much more rare combination of events which made it possible to do what you have done. It's almost never going to be an easy sell. You were so fortunate and wise to have jumped at the opportunity to research in a way that few will ever experience. Even if you did not have very much chance of making it your life's work without appropriate funding over such a term in advance, you seem to have immediately utilized what you did have by devoting the maximum amount toward as much technical progress as possible. From experience I say that carrying on as if you had funding for longer term open-ended projects is the best way to make technical progress without distraction. It can still take many years to get good enough to make even an exponential increase in the breakthrough rate become tangible or useful though. I'm an extreme alternative researcher where my life's work has been to independently out-research some of the most well-funded petrochemical giants without a PhD myself using the same equipment on my own analytical benches. So I guess that is ambitious too. Took a while to get good here and people didn't think it could be done but experimentation & discovery always was one of my strengths. Paying for it as I go by operating at an insignificant fraction of their cost, and when the opportunity is there, prioritizing commercial projects where money can be made relative to the rate at which it would cost them to do it themself. Having a commercial component in service to such high rollers in their regular operation was the path of least resistance for the young me to gamble on the likelihood of my ships continuing to come in. I like clean environments, would prefer less toxicity and have always been an extreme energy saver so otherwise I don't need more tankers on my own behalf, but it's our local industry, and the most promising thing for survival when I was young was to get into alternative fuels and additives, so it is what it is. Even though I've been a small-time operator, the environment is a hell of a lot better off than it would be with anyone who would have otherwise replaced me. Battery research seems more promising than ever now, and I feel so bad for having done almost nothing in that field but it would probably take a couple years to get up to speed. Not having actual prosperity I could never start that without giving up my current life's work, but it does seem like an area where butt could be kicked to widespread advantage. As long as you need to devote excessive effort toward survival activities, you never get to really do what you prefer to do or are best at for enough of the time to accomplish but a fraction of your technical potential. Anyway, in a situation where a good year still yields only 1% of breakthroughs that could be made profitable over the near term on the commercial side, it was essential to keep the nose to the grindstone maximizing the amount of experimentation. So you end up finding an abundance of excess stuff which would be good for other kinds of businesses or could become the foundation for entirely new businesses, most of which would require capital so that would be out of the question. Without capital having been available to get rolling doing this, there has never been anything like a network in place. When you're making unprecedented progress on technical breakthroughs that can be exploited for survival using the resources you already have, one of the least rewarding gambles you can make is to divert attention to pusuit of elusive new sources of backing rife with dead ends and unfavorable terms to boot when there is interest. Any way you look at it there's an incredible balance where you can't depend too much on continued good fortune and you can't justify dramatically slowing technical progress by diverting the amout of resources it takes to avoid the ravages of all possible bad fortune with absolute certainty. You'll get better at this. You are going to do extremely well, already experienced at getting up on the tightrope without a net not knowing what lies at the other end, tripping up, falling off, badly injured and now very near death in this incarnation. Even if the Grim Reaper completes the call, you are still willing to try again in the same type situation where a single mistake or miscalculation can be devastating. Ambitious people you are. If you want to continue to try it the same way all you are going to need is a better network. You've accomplished a huge milestone with only a single obstacle remaining, not like when you were first getting started any more. And I'm here to remind you that there are unexplored alternatives however unlikely, with the best option probably not thought of yet. I would get to work heavily researching both of these possibilities thoroughly. You all need to talk to the maximum people everyday anyway in various network directions and during the hard sell maybe you already have a product or service that could be offered for a fee when you run into someone who could not provide you with financial help otherwise. Salvage from what you have accomplished if possible. Whenever someone doesn't respond positively get two names & numbers from them and you will eventually never be able to call them all. Seems like the best opportunity would be expected when you find someone who is benevolent and directly has a close relationship with a highly suitable potential partner, and you have their trust to the degree that they will actually make the introduction for you. You would be surprised too when a contact does the opposite and gives you the number of someone they dislike who they want you to bug instead of them. If you expect the unexpected this may also have some potential itself. Benevolence seems to be what you need for mere survival now rather than the overall strength which could give a bigger impact in the long run. YCR sounded like an interesting concept to me since nonprofits are one of the alternatives I have always considered experimenting with. Extreme money-making under that umbrella can be done where it's perfectly legitimate to optimize for producing new or providing low-cost already-baked technology and licensing it or providing a service around it for much more money since you're just going to use the income no differently than donations for continued operations anyway, with no greedy shareholders to get in the way. With the impression I get of the YC network it just seems like butt could be kicked through YCR somehow unforseen. It's almost always going to be impossible for most to survive financially as a byproduct of what you do without diverting extreme effort away from what you actually do at least occasionally. You wouldn't have done this if you weren't going to someday be comfortable enabling other companies to bring in more income or solve more problems leveraging and commercializing your breakthroughs than you would ever expect for yourself to begin with. That's the business model that exists which you can not help finding yourself in without trying. Not too dissimilar to me who has had no choice but to operate in a capitalist market when I have not been a capitalist, merely an entrepreneur focusing on research overwhelmingly more so than development, according to my resources.