3 ms·

can vc money just fund basic research? im slowly getting confused on what founding a company even is. i am in grad school right now. a lot of funding and oppor

can vc money just fund basic research? im slowly getting confused on what founding a company even is. i am in grad school right now. a lot of funding and opportunities come from guys who are like "we need you to innovate we need you to act like a startup." its honestly kinda annoying. i just want to do basic research. i dont want to sell anything. i just want to build things. but the way this article frames it- is founding a company just getting funding for a research project? but using different words? could i just pull up with a list of my research interests, convince people its a sellable product, and score funding? obviously id need to deal with financial overhead myself (a pain) but hypothetically. lets say i complete my degree, maybe spend a year or three in industry networking and better understanding the problem space. then pitch myself to vcs with hope of funding whatever topics im interested and have my company function like a research group except instead of publishing papers we build products? like no profit no big deal, i never intended to profit. which, is this not what openai is doing? unethical to lie about my intents (i want to do research not start a company) but i feel the end goal (more funding for research) could be worth it.

sillysaurusx 1mo ago
> im slowly getting confused on what founding a company even is. > i dont want to sell anything. i just want to build things. These are incompatible. If you start a company, whether you're CTO or CEO, you'll need to sell things. Both founders have to focus on the product, since it's being sold to people. And people refuse what they don't like. Which means your most valuable feedback mechanism comes from trying to sell something and then doing something different in response, until people buy it. > could i just pull up with a list of my research interests, convince people its a sellable product, and score funding? You can, but your company will eventually die because you won't be able to raise more money. VCs want signs that a company is growing. So if you raise money and then ask for more without strong sales, they won't give you more. > then pitch myself to vcs with hope of funding whatever topics im interested and have my company function like a research group except instead of publishing papers we build products? like no profit no big deal, i never intended to profit. which, is this not what openai is doing? That's not what OpenAI is doing. They're so focused on selling that they were even willing to sacrifice some of their research culture just to get everyone on the same page of "we have to make money, otherwise research can't happen." Sam explained to everyone that money comes from sales, not research, and money is a requirement for research. Thus they had to focus on selling.
- nixonaddiction 1mo ago
  well. to an extent. one always has to sell themselves. view selling as "convincing people to give me money." that i feel is pretty similar regardless of if i am applying for academic grants or applying for vc funding or running political fundraisers. (the latter being my area of experience.) theres kinda no way to avoid "selling" when you have an novel idea you want executed. what i mean is less the goal being making money, more the goal being getting money to fund research. theres no way to avoid "selling" in life. (alas.) what i would be selling would be my research topic to venture capitalists, instead of a product to people. (obviously making some mentions of "well um this could be a sellable product one day" and like, a halfassed marketing campaign in order to better sell my idea to vcs.) company failing isnt incompatible with the goal of doing research. if i can get a few years of funding by at least putting up the illusion of a sellable product it could be worth it. maybe i'd even get lucky and end up with an actual product that makes money. but uh, comfort in failure. the process of learning over the promise of success. sorry i sound so evil and scammy rn ahhhhh promise im not trying to be on forbes 30 under 30. just considering vc funding as an alternate route to academia with regard to getting funding for research. (i will need to dance for dollars either way. but vc funding is seeming like it has less uh, annoying interpersonal academic hoops to jump through.) but id need a few years working under people and gaining experience before i would try at this lol.
  - tolerance 1mo ago
    I don't know man. It sounds like you just want to work at a startup.
  - antonvs 1mo ago
    > what i would be selling would be my research topic to venture capitalists, instead of a product to people. (obviously making some mentions of "well um this could be a sellable product one day" and like, a halfassed marketing campaign in order to better sell my idea to vcs.) "Well um this could be a sellable product one day" is not likely to go over well as a sales pitch. VCs review hundreds or thousands of business ideas. If your idea is "if we do enough basic research it might turn into something," they're likely to say "come back when you have a business plan." To reuse the nuclear fusion example I gave in another comment, those companies didn't go to investors saying "we need more money for basic fusion research." Instead, they typically presented a business plan with a very clear end goal - commercially viable fusion reactors - along with a development plan with milestone dates by which certain critical stages would be completed, ending up with a projected date for bringing a commercial fusion reactor online. But then they went away and started doing the research, because for sure nothing is going to happen without that. If all this makes you think "ok so writing a business plan is like writing a grant proposal with extra steps," just keep in mind that you'd be going into a relationship with misaligned goals - investors are going to want to hold you to account, see progress towards the goals you've defined, etc. Part of the reason you're hearing so much about this approach is because the investors are trying to make money, and they need fresh blood who's going to do the hard work of making it for them. In most cases they're not going to sit around letting you do research in peace.
antonvs 1mo ago
What you’re running into is the trend away from investing in basic research, in which almost everything (in the US) is now centered around a supposed path to profitability. As a result, in a sense, founding a company can be getting funding for a research project. A good example is nuclear fusion. There’s no nuclear fusion company, or research institute for that matter, that’s within even 50 years of having a commercially viable end product. There’s no strong evidence that that’s even possible. In other words, the entire field is still very much in the research phase, with no clear path to a commercial outcome. Yet there are something like 50 - 80 funded nuclear fusion companies, collectively funded to the tune of at least about $14 billion. They’re all essentially doing research, which includes building prototypes and testing. Of course, in order to get that funding, most of these companies have announced milestone dates of various kinds, including dates by which they’ll have a saleable product. All of those dates are ridiculously optimistic, and any investor who’s done due diligence should know that. Which leads one to wonder what these investors are thinking. Some of them are explicitly indulging in moonshots: funding something desirable that may not work. They’re essentially funding research, and they know it. There are several other categories though, including people that are hedging - betting on a possible payoff. There are also presumably some people who actually believe the target dates (who also presumably have not done good due diligence.) Is what these fusion companies are doing unethical? A case can be made that it is, particularly when it comes to that last category of investor I mentioned. On the other hand, in an environment where basic research is discouraged, “life will find a way,” and you get these weird distortions of what a funded company is. > could i just pull up with a list of my research interests, convince people its a sellable product, and score funding? If you can pull off the middle part about convincing people, the answer is definitely yes. That’s ultimately what the situation you described is about.
- tyre 1mo ago
  > There’s no nuclear fusion company, or research institute for that matter, that’s within even 50 years of having a commercially viable end product. How could anyone know that? I’m guessing the same could have been said about what LLMs can do today, 20 years ago. If you’d asked scientists in 1925 how close the world was to a nuclear bomb, almost zero would have any idea what you were talking about (in the sense of how to go about building one.) Predicting innovation is inaccurate enough to be silly. Investors are betting that someone figures it out on a shorter time horizon.

sillysaurusx 1mo ago

> im slowly getting confused on what founding a company even is. > i dont want to sell anything. i just want to build things. These are incompatible. If you start a company, whether you're CTO or CEO, you'll need to sell things. Both founders have to focus on the product, since it's being sold to people. And people refuse what they don't like. Which means your most valuable feedback mechanism comes from trying to sell something and then doing something different in response, until people buy it. > could i just pull up with a list of my research interests, convince people its a sellable product, and score funding? You can, but your company will eventually die because you won't be able to raise more money. VCs want signs that a company is growing. So if you raise money and then ask for more without strong sales, they won't give you more. > then pitch myself to vcs with hope of funding whatever topics im interested and have my company function like a research group except instead of publishing papers we build products? like no profit no big deal, i never intended to profit. which, is this not what openai is doing? That's not what OpenAI is doing. They're so focused on selling that they were even willing to sacrifice some of their research culture just to get everyone on the same page of "we have to make money, otherwise research can't happen." Sam explained to everyone that money comes from sales, not research, and money is a requirement for research. Thus they had to focus on selling.

nixonaddiction 1mo ago
well. to an extent. one always has to sell themselves. view selling as "convincing people to give me money." that i feel is pretty similar regardless of if i am applying for academic grants or applying for vc funding or running political fundraisers. (the latter being my area of experience.) theres kinda no way to avoid "selling" when you have an novel idea you want executed. what i mean is less the goal being making money, more the goal being getting money to fund research. theres no way to avoid "selling" in life. (alas.) what i would be selling would be my research topic to venture capitalists, instead of a product to people. (obviously making some mentions of "well um this could be a sellable product one day" and like, a halfassed marketing campaign in order to better sell my idea to vcs.) company failing isnt incompatible with the goal of doing research. if i can get a few years of funding by at least putting up the illusion of a sellable product it could be worth it. maybe i'd even get lucky and end up with an actual product that makes money. but uh, comfort in failure. the process of learning over the promise of success. sorry i sound so evil and scammy rn ahhhhh promise im not trying to be on forbes 30 under 30. just considering vc funding as an alternate route to academia with regard to getting funding for research. (i will need to dance for dollars either way. but vc funding is seeming like it has less uh, annoying interpersonal academic hoops to jump through.) but id need a few years working under people and gaining experience before i would try at this lol.
- tolerance 1mo ago
  I don't know man. It sounds like you just want to work at a startup.
- antonvs 1mo ago
  > what i would be selling would be my research topic to venture capitalists, instead of a product to people. (obviously making some mentions of "well um this could be a sellable product one day" and like, a halfassed marketing campaign in order to better sell my idea to vcs.) "Well um this could be a sellable product one day" is not likely to go over well as a sales pitch. VCs review hundreds or thousands of business ideas. If your idea is "if we do enough basic research it might turn into something," they're likely to say "come back when you have a business plan." To reuse the nuclear fusion example I gave in another comment, those companies didn't go to investors saying "we need more money for basic fusion research." Instead, they typically presented a business plan with a very clear end goal - commercially viable fusion reactors - along with a development plan with milestone dates by which certain critical stages would be completed, ending up with a projected date for bringing a commercial fusion reactor online. But then they went away and started doing the research, because for sure nothing is going to happen without that. If all this makes you think "ok so writing a business plan is like writing a grant proposal with extra steps," just keep in mind that you'd be going into a relationship with misaligned goals - investors are going to want to hold you to account, see progress towards the goals you've defined, etc. Part of the reason you're hearing so much about this approach is because the investors are trying to make money, and they need fresh blood who's going to do the hard work of making it for them. In most cases they're not going to sit around letting you do research in peace.

antonvs 1mo ago

What you’re running into is the trend away from investing in basic research, in which almost everything (in the US) is now centered around a supposed path to profitability. As a result, in a sense, founding a company can be getting funding for a research project. A good example is nuclear fusion. There’s no nuclear fusion company, or research institute for that matter, that’s within even 50 years of having a commercially viable end product. There’s no strong evidence that that’s even possible. In other words, the entire field is still very much in the research phase, with no clear path to a commercial outcome. Yet there are something like 50 - 80 funded nuclear fusion companies, collectively funded to the tune of at least about $14 billion. They’re all essentially doing research, which includes building prototypes and testing. Of course, in order to get that funding, most of these companies have announced milestone dates of various kinds, including dates by which they’ll have a saleable product. All of those dates are ridiculously optimistic, and any investor who’s done due diligence should know that. Which leads one to wonder what these investors are thinking. Some of them are explicitly indulging in moonshots: funding something desirable that may not work. They’re essentially funding research, and they know it. There are several other categories though, including people that are hedging - betting on a possible payoff. There are also presumably some people who actually believe the target dates (who also presumably have not done good due diligence.) Is what these fusion companies are doing unethical? A case can be made that it is, particularly when it comes to that last category of investor I mentioned. On the other hand, in an environment where basic research is discouraged, “life will find a way,” and you get these weird distortions of what a funded company is. > could i just pull up with a list of my research interests, convince people its a sellable product, and score funding? If you can pull off the middle part about convincing people, the answer is definitely yes. That’s ultimately what the situation you described is about.

tyre 1mo ago
> There’s no nuclear fusion company, or research institute for that matter, that’s within even 50 years of having a commercially viable end product. How could anyone know that? I’m guessing the same could have been said about what LLMs can do today, 20 years ago. If you’d asked scientists in 1925 how close the world was to a nuclear bomb, almost zero would have any idea what you were talking about (in the sense of how to go about building one.) Predicting innovation is inaccurate enough to be silly. Investors are betting that someone figures it out on a shorter time horizon.