5 ms·
3 anecdotes that might be useful. 1. TTI Chicago The holy grail? It is relatively new (15 yrs old) and does top notch research. Super prestigious in certain a
by screye 5y ago
3 anecdotes that might be useful.
1. TTI Chicago
The holy grail? It is relatively new (15 yrs old) and does top notch research. Super prestigious in certain areas. It is kind of related to UChicago, but also not really.
A key learning is that you can start your institute by borrowing some prestige. Split some of your funds with a prestigious university while allowing some of your researchers to hold adjunct positions at UChicago. The researchers get their academic prestige, and you get the researcher to work at your institute.
Eventually your institute will gather enough prestige that your researchers will call themselves members of TTIC first, and UChicago second.
2. Allen AI (The tempting example you want to avoid)
You are not Paul Allen. You do not have $2b to spend on your deathbed. You don't have every important person in the world on a quick dial. Your name isn't gilded in prestige as Paul's was. It's like trying to start a space exploring company by following in Bezos's footsteps.
3. Wadhwani AI (https://www.wadhwaniai.org/founders/ https://www.wadhwaniai.org/founders/)
I haven't personally worked with them, but attended a seminar about them once. At surface level it seems like something doable for a rich HN type. Decent but not impossible funding ($30m), clear vision, small but lean and seemed to be doing good work.
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At some point I want to start a fully independent educational institute. But so far, my goal is to focus on education (K12) rather than research. (that's when I get to it. I'll languish as a tech worker making castles in the sky for now)
- dnautics 5y agoAlong with Allen AI there is the Craig Venter institute. You did not just swindle wall street (I mean this in a good way) to fund scientific research and cash out at the top by having your board fire you (crocodile tears) to the tune of ~15B. Even if you did, your eponymous self-funded research institute will burn through its funds in a decade and your researchers will start having to do federal grant seeking at the point in time when federal grants are the hardest to obtain and other competitive research institutes are seeking a higher balance of private money. A better example to shoot for would be peter Mitchell's Glynn research institute. You raise money to study one thing and one thing only. You do your research in a garage (to be fair, of a giant regency manor) and finish it. And then win the Nobel prize. I'm still trying to find out what happened to Percy Julian's Julian research institute, which enjoyed some success but no longer exists as far as I can tell.
- dnautics 5y agoBy the way "by swindle wall street" I mean sell them on the idea that "you could patent human genes". I'm not convinced that Craig actually believed this was possible or that even it was a reasonable business model, but wall street in their boundless avarice certainly did; note that this all went down more than a decade before the myriad genomics supreme court case, which settles the issue in the negative.
- eindiran 5y agoIMO an important ingredient of the TTIC formula is physical proximity to the university. Your researchers can give talks on campus/meet up with Uchicago researchers/visit academic libraries by just crossing the Midway, a short and walkable distance. So if you do decide to go this route, make sure whatever university you choose as the host has enough space within walking distance that your researchers can easily interact with the campus, go to conferences, etc.