9 ms·

Bill Gates: We need crazy energy entrepreneurs

88 points by suprgeek 15y ago

nchuhoai 15y ago
This is in line with what Peter Thiel is saying: IT has been taking a lot of attention and talent from the "hard" sciences and it is certainly arguable that major scientific breakthroughs have been getting more rare. During the cold war it was cool to be an astronaut, now it is being the CEO of the next mobile social local photo sharing startup.
- phatbyte 15y ago
  Damn, you nailed it. This is exactly what I think, we are wasting so much brain power into stupid and superficial things it's a shame.
  - hobin 15y ago
    It's only stupid and superficial if no one wants it.
    - kamjam 15y ago
      Stupid and superficial is very relative and means very different things to different people. Facebook, Amazon, iTunes, iPads etc etc... all very stupid and superficial when you don't know where your next meal is coming from. But the West will happily preach on to the less developed nations to use inefficient methods of power generation which are still very expensive tech when they themselves have not been able to solve the problems associated with cheaply mass producing power using that same technology. It's going to be interesting to see how all these technology develops, no doubt at least some of it will filter done to mass produced consumer goods. Hopefully some of the profits will go towards helping the poorer nations develop their tech.
    - eligottlieb 15y ago
      "Stupid and superficial" is a good description of today's low-need, low-investment, small-problem start-up environment.
- skrebbel 15y ago
  During the cold war it was cool to be an astronaut, now it is being the CEO of the next mobile social local photo sharing startup , in Silicon Valley. Believe me, it's a very local cultural thing. If you live there and read HN, which is basically projecting said culture into the world and attracting the few outliers elsewhere who feel the same, it's easy to think that the whole world is like this. It isn't. Or, at least, where I live, nobody thinks it's cool to be the CEO of the next mobile social local photo sharing startup.
  - rbanffy 15y ago
    > where I live, nobody thinks it's cool to be the CEO of the next mobile social local photo sharing startup. And I still would love to be an astronaut. Just in case someone is hiring around here ;-) I'd change careers in a blink.
  - nchuhoai 15y ago
    I wouldn't neccessarily say that. Starting your own startup has definitely gained "street-cred" over the years. Then again, I go to college in Boston
- larsberg 15y ago
  I disagree. It's a lack of research job opportunities that pushes people from hard sciences and into, especially finance IT. At the risk of sounding like NDT, funding for research labs (and yes, NASA) would suck up the hard sciences people like nothing. And until you have the basic research figured out, it's pretty hard to just "entrepreneur" your way through these problems. There are plenty of people who pursue degrees in the hard sciences --- PhDs in physics, chemistry, etc. Then, somewhere around their third year, they all realize that: 1) To get a faculty job, you have to be beyond brilliant. I'm not. Research labs? Also barely scraping by. Be prepared to, at best, be on soft money and have to apply for grants every 2-3 years, most of which run between a 10-20% acceptance rate. 2) There are some industry labs. They pay decently, but it's basically carrying out others experiments in line with short-term goals. Where can XX find / extract more oil? Is it any surprise they wake up and shift, particularly to finance IT, where they can at least get paid well? Spend a month learning stochastic calculus and you're good to go. Yes, I oversimplify, but not by too much (at least, for the hard sciences people I've talked with here at the UofC and in the post-graduation Chicago finance shops).
  - alexchamberlain 15y ago
    I'm in my 4th year at Warwick doing a Maths degree. I could have done a PhD for £14000 a year, or get a job in Financial Software Development at £40000. Furthermore, I'm more employable after the 4 years of work than the PhD. I didn't even have to learn any Stochastic Analysis!
  - speg 15y ago
    Agreed. I was a physics major for three years, but here I am doing webdev as a fulltime gig.
  - nchuhoai 15y ago
    but dont you think when kids are in high school or college, they think about what they wanna be? I doubt people look into NASA funding to decide whether to go into the hard sciences or just stick with computers
    - 15y ago
suprgeek 15y ago
Loved this line... He’s also a limited partner in Khosla Ventures, Vinod Khosla’s fund, and Gates jokingly referred to Khosla as “the pay master of crazy people — some of whom we’ll declare sane,” in the future
mseebach 15y ago
Most effort on the climate change front seems to be going towards linear solutions to essentially exponential problems: A few percent solar/wind in the grid mix, smart meters that allows utilization of those to go up a few percent, more expensive gas to discourage driving, incentives to buy more efficient vehicles. Encouraging better insulation of buildings. But it's obvious that you can't fight an exponential battle with linear weapons. Making cars run on an available non-fossil source of energy seems to be where the biggest win is - but it's much bigger task than inventing a good battery, electricity is still expensive, fossil in many places and the grids have nowhere near to capacity to sustain a large population of chargeable electrics. Bio-fuel tech is here, but we don't have the bio-mass to make it from. Etc. The only area in this field that is ready for one-point disruption as far as I can tell is liquid bio-fuels. There is a world-wide mature infrastructure, and the market is hungering for a lower-cost alternative. I read about a bio-start-up that's developing an algae-catalysed process that converts sunlight and atmospheric carbon dioxide into a sort of crude oil that can be directly refined just like crude oil.
- shingen 15y ago
  Electricity isn't expensive, we have a government that tends to make everything extraordinarily expensive. Obama's trillion dollar stimulus shot could have built a hundred nuclear power plants in America. Or 50 plants, plus transmission to carry the juice. Except the runway from here to there is a minefield filled with lobbyist groups, endless regulatory hurdles, congressional reviews, lawsuits, etc. All of which are government failures tied to tort reform, lobbying reform, and bad regulations and bad processes related to regulation. The rest of the world thinks America is a joke when it comes to energy. Canada understands energy; China understands energy; Japan understands energy. We can't even build a simple pipeline - until the next week, when Obama goes from claiming he's a protector of the environment, to bragging he has built enough pipeline to circle the world. Canada and China look at this and laugh. http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/03/22/450397/obama-worst-speech-ever-weve-added-enough-new-oil-and-gas-pipeline-to-encircle-the-earth/?mobile=nc http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/03/22/450397/obama-worst-... I think it can easily be argued that America has the most ineffectual government among major economies. We spend the most, for the least results (which blankets most segments, including education).
visava 15y ago
With all the wind in bay area a wind mill in every house can solve major part of energy problem. But HOA rules are the roadblock in their widespread installation
- grep2 15y ago
  And, from the experiences in Germany, I can tell you: Wind mills suffer badly from "not in my backyard" syndrome, since they destroy the scenery and make noise.
  - uptown 15y ago
    Am I the only person that finds these things beautiful to look at? They're captivating to me.
    - tudorizer 15y ago
      I love windturbines too, for some very strange reason. I could stare at them for hours. Especially fields of them.
      - bdr 15y ago
        FYI it can be a sign of being somewhere on the autism spectrum. A lot of programmers are.
aklemm 15y ago
Would love to have seen some energy-industry ideas in pg's essay on Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas http://www.paulgraham.com/ambitious.html http://www.paulgraham.com/ambitious.html
oskarth 15y ago
Quote from HN user shingen, someone who has been hellbanned. I thought it was a valuable contribution to the discussion, so I reposted it here for people who don't have showdead on (or would like to save their eyes): Electricity isn't expensive, we have a government that tends to make everything extraordinarily expensive. Obama's trillion dollar stimulus shot could have built a hundred nuclear power plants in America. Or 50 plants, plus transmission to carry the juice. Except the runway from here to there is a minefield filled with lobbyist groups, endless regulatory hurdles, congressional reviews, lawsuits, etc. All of which are government failures tied to tort reform, lobbying reform, and bad regulations and bad processes related to regulation. The rest of the world thinks America is a joke when it comes to energy. Canada understands energy; China understands energy; Japan understands energy. We can't even build a simple pipeline - until the next week, when Obama goes from claiming he's a protector of the environment, to bragging he has built enough pipeline to circle the world. Canada and China look at this and laugh. http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/03/22/450397/obama-worst-.. http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/03/22/450397/obama-worst-.... I think it can easily be argued that America has the most ineffectual government among major economies. We spend the most, for the least results (which blankets most segments, including education).
- onemoreact 15y ago
  You can't store electricity so it's mostly pointless to build extra power plants beyond what we are actually using. So, if we don't need more power now what should we be spending that trillion on? IMO, R&D would have a much better ROI both in terms of economic development and climate change. However, for various reasons, the Bush / Obama stimulus plans focused on protecting bankers in the short term vs. long term economic growth.
rbanffy 15y ago
Just let's not forget we also need ethical ones too. In fact, I'd trade a crazy unethical one for a sane and ethical one without thinking twice.
blueprint 15y ago
The world may need such people but the majority of the scientific population is very quick to ridicule them, and existing industries like oil do their best to prevent them from executing. So not only must the entrepreneur have a unique viewpoint on the problems but they must be very courageous too. I'm glad someone like Bill Gates is standing up and saying this but I'm anxious that it's too late, and that it won't be possible without big changes to the way our society is structured.
- pradocchia 15y ago
  Right, energy is awfully political. Between the technical challenges and the political challenges, I recon the political ones are the harder of the two. Get the politics right, and the technology will sort it self out. Don't get the politics right, and the technology doesn't have a chance. I'm also glad Gates has turned his attention to energy. 'Tis good to have someone of his resources and temperament focused on the problem.
alexeiz 15y ago
If Bill Gates need energy miracles why doesn't he spend his own money on that? Stay away from taxpayer money!

88 points by suprgeek 15y ago

This is in line with what Peter Thiel is saying: IT has been taking a lot of attention and talent from the "hard" sciences and it is certainly arguable that major scientific breakthroughs have been getting more rare. During the cold war it was cool to be an astronaut, now it is being the CEO of the next mobile social local photo sharing startup.

phatbyte 15y ago
Damn, you nailed it. This is exactly what I think, we are wasting so much brain power into stupid and superficial things it's a shame.
- hobin 15y ago
  It's only stupid and superficial if no one wants it.
  - kamjam 15y ago
    Stupid and superficial is very relative and means very different things to different people. Facebook, Amazon, iTunes, iPads etc etc... all very stupid and superficial when you don't know where your next meal is coming from. But the West will happily preach on to the less developed nations to use inefficient methods of power generation which are still very expensive tech when they themselves have not been able to solve the problems associated with cheaply mass producing power using that same technology. It's going to be interesting to see how all these technology develops, no doubt at least some of it will filter done to mass produced consumer goods. Hopefully some of the profits will go towards helping the poorer nations develop their tech.
  - eligottlieb 15y ago
    "Stupid and superficial" is a good description of today's low-need, low-investment, small-problem start-up environment.
skrebbel 15y ago
During the cold war it was cool to be an astronaut, now it is being the CEO of the next mobile social local photo sharing startup , in Silicon Valley. Believe me, it's a very local cultural thing. If you live there and read HN, which is basically projecting said culture into the world and attracting the few outliers elsewhere who feel the same, it's easy to think that the whole world is like this. It isn't. Or, at least, where I live, nobody thinks it's cool to be the CEO of the next mobile social local photo sharing startup.
- rbanffy 15y ago
  > where I live, nobody thinks it's cool to be the CEO of the next mobile social local photo sharing startup. And I still would love to be an astronaut. Just in case someone is hiring around here ;-) I'd change careers in a blink.
- nchuhoai 15y ago
  I wouldn't neccessarily say that. Starting your own startup has definitely gained "street-cred" over the years. Then again, I go to college in Boston
larsberg 15y ago
I disagree. It's a lack of research job opportunities that pushes people from hard sciences and into, especially finance IT. At the risk of sounding like NDT, funding for research labs (and yes, NASA) would suck up the hard sciences people like nothing. And until you have the basic research figured out, it's pretty hard to just "entrepreneur" your way through these problems. There are plenty of people who pursue degrees in the hard sciences --- PhDs in physics, chemistry, etc. Then, somewhere around their third year, they all realize that: 1) To get a faculty job, you have to be beyond brilliant. I'm not. Research labs? Also barely scraping by. Be prepared to, at best, be on soft money and have to apply for grants every 2-3 years, most of which run between a 10-20% acceptance rate. 2) There are some industry labs. They pay decently, but it's basically carrying out others experiments in line with short-term goals. Where can XX find / extract more oil? Is it any surprise they wake up and shift, particularly to finance IT, where they can at least get paid well? Spend a month learning stochastic calculus and you're good to go. Yes, I oversimplify, but not by too much (at least, for the hard sciences people I've talked with here at the UofC and in the post-graduation Chicago finance shops).
- alexchamberlain 15y ago
  I'm in my 4th year at Warwick doing a Maths degree. I could have done a PhD for £14000 a year, or get a job in Financial Software Development at £40000. Furthermore, I'm more employable after the 4 years of work than the PhD. I didn't even have to learn any Stochastic Analysis!
- speg 15y ago
  Agreed. I was a physics major for three years, but here I am doing webdev as a fulltime gig.
- nchuhoai 15y ago
  but dont you think when kids are in high school or college, they think about what they wanna be? I doubt people look into NASA funding to decide whether to go into the hard sciences or just stick with computers
  - 15y ago

suprgeek 15y ago

Loved this line... He’s also a limited partner in Khosla Ventures, Vinod Khosla’s fund, and Gates jokingly referred to Khosla as “the pay master of crazy people — some of whom we’ll declare sane,” in the future

mseebach 15y ago

Most effort on the climate change front seems to be going towards linear solutions to essentially exponential problems: A few percent solar/wind in the grid mix, smart meters that allows utilization of those to go up a few percent, more expensive gas to discourage driving, incentives to buy more efficient vehicles. Encouraging better insulation of buildings. But it's obvious that you can't fight an exponential battle with linear weapons. Making cars run on an available non-fossil source of energy seems to be where the biggest win is - but it's much bigger task than inventing a good battery, electricity is still expensive, fossil in many places and the grids have nowhere near to capacity to sustain a large population of chargeable electrics. Bio-fuel tech is here, but we don't have the bio-mass to make it from. Etc. The only area in this field that is ready for one-point disruption as far as I can tell is liquid bio-fuels. There is a world-wide mature infrastructure, and the market is hungering for a lower-cost alternative. I read about a bio-start-up that's developing an algae-catalysed process that converts sunlight and atmospheric carbon dioxide into a sort of crude oil that can be directly refined just like crude oil.

shingen 15y ago
Electricity isn't expensive, we have a government that tends to make everything extraordinarily expensive. Obama's trillion dollar stimulus shot could have built a hundred nuclear power plants in America. Or 50 plants, plus transmission to carry the juice. Except the runway from here to there is a minefield filled with lobbyist groups, endless regulatory hurdles, congressional reviews, lawsuits, etc. All of which are government failures tied to tort reform, lobbying reform, and bad regulations and bad processes related to regulation. The rest of the world thinks America is a joke when it comes to energy. Canada understands energy; China understands energy; Japan understands energy. We can't even build a simple pipeline - until the next week, when Obama goes from claiming he's a protector of the environment, to bragging he has built enough pipeline to circle the world. Canada and China look at this and laugh. http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/03/22/450397/obama-worst-speech-ever-weve-added-enough-new-oil-and-gas-pipeline-to-encircle-the-earth/?mobile=nc http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/03/22/450397/obama-worst-... I think it can easily be argued that America has the most ineffectual government among major economies. We spend the most, for the least results (which blankets most segments, including education).

visava 15y ago

With all the wind in bay area a wind mill in every house can solve major part of energy problem. But HOA rules are the roadblock in their widespread installation

grep2 15y ago
And, from the experiences in Germany, I can tell you: Wind mills suffer badly from "not in my backyard" syndrome, since they destroy the scenery and make noise.
- uptown 15y ago
  Am I the only person that finds these things beautiful to look at? They're captivating to me.
  - tudorizer 15y ago
    I love windturbines too, for some very strange reason. I could stare at them for hours. Especially fields of them.
    - bdr 15y ago
      FYI it can be a sign of being somewhere on the autism spectrum. A lot of programmers are.

aklemm 15y ago

Would love to have seen some energy-industry ideas in pg's essay on Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas http://www.paulgraham.com/ambitious.html http://www.paulgraham.com/ambitious.html

oskarth 15y ago

Quote from HN user shingen, someone who has been hellbanned. I thought it was a valuable contribution to the discussion, so I reposted it here for people who don't have showdead on (or would like to save their eyes): Electricity isn't expensive, we have a government that tends to make everything extraordinarily expensive. Obama's trillion dollar stimulus shot could have built a hundred nuclear power plants in America. Or 50 plants, plus transmission to carry the juice. Except the runway from here to there is a minefield filled with lobbyist groups, endless regulatory hurdles, congressional reviews, lawsuits, etc. All of which are government failures tied to tort reform, lobbying reform, and bad regulations and bad processes related to regulation. The rest of the world thinks America is a joke when it comes to energy. Canada understands energy; China understands energy; Japan understands energy. We can't even build a simple pipeline - until the next week, when Obama goes from claiming he's a protector of the environment, to bragging he has built enough pipeline to circle the world. Canada and China look at this and laugh. http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/03/22/450397/obama-worst-.. http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/03/22/450397/obama-worst-.... I think it can easily be argued that America has the most ineffectual government among major economies. We spend the most, for the least results (which blankets most segments, including education).

onemoreact 15y ago
You can't store electricity so it's mostly pointless to build extra power plants beyond what we are actually using. So, if we don't need more power now what should we be spending that trillion on? IMO, R&D would have a much better ROI both in terms of economic development and climate change. However, for various reasons, the Bush / Obama stimulus plans focused on protecting bankers in the short term vs. long term economic growth.

rbanffy 15y ago

Just let's not forget we also need ethical ones too. In fact, I'd trade a crazy unethical one for a sane and ethical one without thinking twice.

blueprint 15y ago

The world may need such people but the majority of the scientific population is very quick to ridicule them, and existing industries like oil do their best to prevent them from executing. So not only must the entrepreneur have a unique viewpoint on the problems but they must be very courageous too. I'm glad someone like Bill Gates is standing up and saying this but I'm anxious that it's too late, and that it won't be possible without big changes to the way our society is structured.

pradocchia 15y ago
Right, energy is awfully political. Between the technical challenges and the political challenges, I recon the political ones are the harder of the two. Get the politics right, and the technology will sort it self out. Don't get the politics right, and the technology doesn't have a chance. I'm also glad Gates has turned his attention to energy. 'Tis good to have someone of his resources and temperament focused on the problem.

alexeiz 15y ago

If Bill Gates need energy miracles why doesn't he spend his own money on that? Stay away from taxpayer money!