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This is a great post on a topic that is quite close to our hearts since we are a science-startup as well. I think that this situation is a symptom of the mental

by jayzee 14y ago

This is a great post on a topic that is quite close to our hearts since we are a science-startup as well. I think that this situation is a symptom of the mentality, 'You can't be fired for buying IBM.' It is so much easier to give money to a research group at Harvard etc than 2 guys starting out from an apartment. Especially in a bureaucratic setting where your job is to make decisions that do not look bad, and not to actually make good decisions! Adam and I were once on a call with an academic consortium that had received ~$15M in funding from ARAA. The objective of this group was quite similar to what we are doing with our startup. This group reached out to us too see if there was a way we could work together. During the conference call it was Adam and me on our side and at least 10 researchers from institutions all over the US on the other side! Those were the early days of our startup and we thought that we would be obliterated by them with their vast resources. It turns out that with 1/10th their funding we have done more than 10x of what they did. And they are floundering while we are just warming up.

cantankerous 14y ago
I'm curious, does your science startup do applied research or does it sell a product related to the support of scientific research?
- jayzee 14y ago
  the later... support scientific research
  - alberich 14y ago
    supporting scientific research is considered applied scientific research?
    - jayzee 14y ago
      the post discusses funding for science-related startups broadly... including examples referring to academia.edu etc. i am responding to the contents of the post not just the title.
mbreese 14y ago
On the other hand, during grad school, I developed a LIMS system and order tracking system (about 2004-2005). It was very similar to Quartzy, actually. It was done on the side to support my own research. My university decided in its infinite wisdom to license the tech out to a startup that had very little experience. The idea was that they would take over the system to add the next features that was needed and I could get me back into lab. They were trying to get SBIR funding. The last time I checked, the company folded and my lab never got the new features back. Worst of all, the code is now locked away, never to be seen from again. Even the code that I wrote can't be used outside of that original install. So, I agree that academic centers are usually not very skilled at developing software that can survive, at least the projects that do succeed are generally available to the research community. Unfortunately, it's next to impossible to get tenure working on such projects, so anyone that is skilled at projects of this scale leave academia pretty quickly.

by jayzee 14y ago

cantankerous 14y ago

I'm curious, does your science startup do applied research or does it sell a product related to the support of scientific research?

jayzee 14y ago
the later... support scientific research
- alberich 14y ago
  supporting scientific research is considered applied scientific research?
  - jayzee 14y ago
    the post discusses funding for science-related startups broadly... including examples referring to academia.edu etc. i am responding to the contents of the post not just the title.

mbreese 14y ago

On the other hand, during grad school, I developed a LIMS system and order tracking system (about 2004-2005). It was very similar to Quartzy, actually. It was done on the side to support my own research. My university decided in its infinite wisdom to license the tech out to a startup that had very little experience. The idea was that they would take over the system to add the next features that was needed and I could get me back into lab. They were trying to get SBIR funding. The last time I checked, the company folded and my lab never got the new features back. Worst of all, the code is now locked away, never to be seen from again. Even the code that I wrote can't be used outside of that original install. So, I agree that academic centers are usually not very skilled at developing software that can survive, at least the projects that do succeed are generally available to the research community. Unfortunately, it's next to impossible to get tenure working on such projects, so anyone that is skilled at projects of this scale leave academia pretty quickly.