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I think your observation that "social, search and cloud" as you point out, are extremely over-saturated is especially relevant. One of my main draws to program

I think your observation that "social, search and cloud" as you point out, are extremely over-saturated is especially relevant. One of my main draws to programming was the extremely law barrier to entry -- a weekend spent with a Python compsci text and Google was enough to get me started on Django. But even though I have interest in biology, genetics and related fields, I don't see how someone in my position with more time and motivation than money could "break" into the startup world.

FD3SA 15y ago
Indeed. High capital fields such as medicine are the great entrepreneurial challenges of our time. Everyone on HN knows of the decaying behemoth that is academic research. It is an unsustainable system built upon a terrible incentive architecture. Graduate students and postdocs are used as cheap labor in a Ponzi scheme, while Principal Investigators have no incentive to engage in difficult, high risk research due to salary caps and tenure. The market failure of academic research is the primary reason for the grinding pace of progress in fields such as medicine. Again, there are individuals such as Craig Venter who are changing this paradigm, but the sheer magnitude of funding being dumped into the academic research black hole is unfathomable. Our collective tax money is in the government's hands, and as such, only they have the power to dismantle such terribly broken schemes. I'm not holding my breath.