14 ms·

New RFS – Breakthrough Technologies

• dsugarman 13y ago
  SpaceX and Tesla were really possible because of the large amounts of money that Elon put into the companies, it is estimated that Elon invested $100MM into SpaceX. his extremely impressive resume was not enough to receive the level of funding to get the company off the ground (get it?) how can a first time entrepreneur actually receive substantial investment without putting in such a large personal investment?
  • devfeed 13y ago
    It would clearly be a different path than Elon's startups. But it's impressive that YC is willing to do the funding legwork for such an ambitious company, if they believe in it.
  • tlb 13y ago
    Many first-time entrepreneurs have raised more than $100M. They started with small amounts and showed great results at each stage.
    • phmagic 13y ago
      I think that doesn't apply to very long time horizon projects. You might not have anything to show investors as progress until 10 years down the road. You either need enough money upfront or personal money to put in along the way.
      • the_watcher 13y ago
        This is something that YC can help with, though. They have shown a willingness to be much less risk averse than the average VC, and are at least making an effort to seek out long shots that probably would have trouble raising funds for a 10 year horizon project (such as SpaceX) on their own. YC can help a non-Elon Musk get started in the right direction for some of these projects, put in some money (both through YC VC and as angels), and help introduce these teams to the right partners at the right VC's for raising the right funds at the right time. This doesn't make it a sure thing that this will lead to more Tesla/SpaceX successes, but it can only increase the odds. Bravo.
    • staunch 13y ago
      Tesla would not exist if Elon Musk hadn't bet his personal fortune. He showed terrible results at first so all his investors gave up on him. Your average YC founder would not have been in a position to pony up $40M to do the Series E himself.
      • toomuchtodo 13y ago
        People usually don't realize that Tesla was days from insolvency back in 2008: http://www.autotrends.org/2008/11/17/avoiding-insolvency-tesla-motors-borrows-40-million/ http://www.autotrends.org/2008/11/17/avoiding-insolvency-tes... Elon is an all-in kind of guy, but has his hands full. More Elons please.
        • crassus 13y ago
          What are all the filthy rich people in Silicon Valley not named "Musk" doing with their money?
    • dsugarman 13y ago
      I 100% agree when it comes to software, but if we are talking about long term ground breaking technology.. how can you start a spaceship company without a $100M initial investment? what results can you show at an early stage? it's an honest question and I think about this all the time. If you can solve the funding issue, I would bet a lot more people will choose the more ambitious projects. What can a spaceship company accomplish with $100k?
      • pg 13y ago
        By not starting with spaceships, but instead with something that can evolve into spaceships. Here's the first product of Boeing, which built the bottom stage of the Saturn V: http://www.boeing.com/boeing/history/boeing/bw.page http://www.boeing.com/boeing/history/boeing/bw.page
        • carpdiem 13y ago
          I feel like this is not a good comparison. Boeing took fifty years to go from the company that built that plane, to the company that helped build the Saturn V. I'm all for long time horizons, but I don't think that most startup founders envision spending fifty years on a company in order to finally, at the end of that, get to do what they wanted to do in the first place.
          • pw 13y ago
            I don't know about most startup founders, but I think YC might be okay with a fifty-year time horizon given that Sam said that they invest with an "infinite time horizon" and that needing to raise a billion dollars over the course of a company's lifetime is a "plus".
          • netcan 13y ago
            Boeing didn't take a straight path from A to B so the timescale is not all that relevant. It's just an example of how things that seem impossible from a cold start seem more possible when you think in steps. It's not step 1 - raise $250m , step 2 - build spaceship. Elon Musk seems like the counterexample because he started with so much capital and credibility. But he was very obviously thinking steps from the start. Each one risky. Build engine. Build high end car. Buildlower end cars. Maybe then build parts for other manufacturers. Most big goals are reached in steps. The more difficult and risky the goal the more steps there are and the bigger and riskier they are likely to be but they are still steps. If your goal is building spaceships you could start by doing something useful with satellites as a step 1. This could be a kickstart-able sized undertaking. https://www.google.ie/search?q=site:https://www.kickstarter.com/+satellite https://www.google.ie/search?q=site:https://www.kickstarter.... Obviously if you are trying to push the boundaries of what a cold start startup can possibly achieve, you are going to find yourself on the difficult-impossible border region but that's the point, isn't it?
  • deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  • Crito 13y ago
    Was Elon's resume impressive back in 2002 when he was starting SpaceX? That was before even Tesla, so as far as I can tell back in 2002 his resume had a BS in Economics, a BS in Physics, X.com, and Paypal. Normally that would be plenty impressive, but I don't think that is a particularly impressive resume for somebody looking to start a rocket company. The connection between Paypal and space exploration isn't exactly strong, even with an undergraduate degree in physics. I suppose he could also put "hassled Russians for a decommissioned ICBM" on his resume too though. ;)
    • svenkatesh 13y ago
      He had enrolled in, and dropped out of, a PhD program for Physics at Stanford by 2002.
    • mikeyouse 13y ago
      > Was Elon's resume impressive back in 2002 [..] and Paypal Paypal wasn't exactly some trivial event in his life, it IPOed in early 2002 and made him (and his investors) fabulously wealthy. It was also one of the first successful IPOs in the wake of the .com bubble bursting. Musk made ~$25M from shares that were sold in the IPO, and his remaining stake of the company (10 percent!) was worth somewhere near $150M.[1] I'd say that's a pretty impressive resume. It's a bit easier to start a rocket company when your net worth is in the 9-digit range and you just made a bunch of investors a ton of money in your first project. [1] - http://news.cnet.com/2100-1017-935360.html http://news.cnet.com/2100-1017-935360.html
    • boling11 13y ago
      He also had a successful exit in Zip2 (acquired for $300mm) before Paypal.
  • pbreit 13y ago
    But Tesla is a good example of starting reasonably. The Roadster was mostly a Lotus Elise and the batteries were off-the-shelf notebook batteries, for example.
    • skybrian 13y ago
      That's oversimplifying the problem. Even if you use some common parts, it's still designing a new car. Even if you use proven battery tech, it's using it at a different scale. It's only in hindsight that it was reasonable to start a car company in Silicon Valley at all.
    • mikeyouse 13y ago
      > But Tesla is a good example of starting reasonably. The Tesla Roadster was first shown to the public in July of 2006. By that time, Tesla had already raised (and spent) nearly $60M. Before they sold the first Roadster, they had raised $145M including $40M of Elon's own money. Plowing $150M into a car company before making a sale isn't remotely reasonable.
      • sillysaurus3 13y ago
        Plowing $150M into a car company before making a sale isn't remotely reasonable. Why not? After all, it resulted in Tesla.
        • snowwrestler 13y ago
          True, but Fisker took more than that, and then went bankrupt. Car companies can fail like any other startup. Tesla itself very nearly failed.
          • prawn 13y ago
            YC and VCs are used to that. Not every investment is made assuming it will be a homerun.
  • dchuk 13y ago
    You don't need to be a first time founder to apply to YC. You also can still benefit massively from the connections YC can afford you even if you're an experienced startup founder already.
• pchristensen 13y ago
  This list seems like YC is (publicly, at least) expanding their vision. Previous RFS lists seemed mostly like software ideas, while this list seems more focused on problems and markets, regardless of technology.
• lifeisstillgood 13y ago
  Any chance we can form an Ideas list please folks: My starter for ten: "The Internet lets people around the world coordinate action" HelpYourNeighbour.com Given certain amounts of basic training and oversight, social services could outsource small amounts of care to anyone willing to help - elderly person in need of trip to doctors, local park needs trees planting. All this is kind of sort of done on adhoc basis by charities - seems very inefficient and probably lacks the network effect lift that a single government approved point has.
• amirmc 13y ago
  I like the ambition but a lot of Startups like this will have their roots in basic research (read: University labs). That leads to interesting dynamics (and issues) with the founding teams. e.g. Profs who have been critical in developing tech but are not jumping ship into the startup lifestyle (although continued involvement is key). I've seen this play out with some ugly stories (people got screwed) and some enlightened ones (balance was struck). Does YC have any views/experience with this? Fwiw, I'm working on internet infrastructure (see profile)
• kyro 13y ago
  I feel like this is a big shift in focus for YC and for the industry if others follow suit. This will do a lot of good in changing the image of the typical startup, from who starts them to what their ambitions are, signaling to those in other industries that the valley isn't just about young code-slingers and iOS apps. I hope this encourages people in STEM with years of specialized domain experience to look at starting a company as a seriously viable option.
  • nawitus 13y ago
    It's a huge shift in terms of funding levels. Instead of getting $100k to build a focused software startup focusing essentially on a single "simple" problem, you usually need around $10-$100 million to get started on these big problems. On the other hand, one can start with $100k which is mainly used to secure the rest of the funding. This new "shift" is essentially what the Founders Fund is trying to do.
  • rayiner 13y ago
    Someone needs to show that you can actually make money with something like this. The problem with these sorts of ventures is that besides being capital-intensive and risky, it can be quite hard to capture the economic benefits of the development in a way that justifies the investment. There's also the issue of whether Silicon Valley has the requisite infrastructure to facilitate these sorts of projects. If you want to do projects in robotics, DARPA has both money to give you, deep connections with the universities developing the basic science, and a program manager to manage the project that typically has a PhD in the field. There's a lot of downsides to DARPA, namely that everything has to have some sort of military angle, but there's a wealth of technical expertise sloshing around there.
    • toomuchtodo 13y ago
      > If you want to do projects in robotics, DARPA has both money to give you, deep connections with the universities developing the basic science, and a program manager to manage the project that typically has a PhD in the field. The last head of DARPA now heads up Google X. SFBA has tens, if not hundreds, of billions of dollars available to it. Capability isn't the question. Its the will that matters. As an investor, are you willing to sacrifice returns for the equivalent of the laser or the transistor?
• rafeed 13y ago
  This is great news. Many colleges and universities have been focusing on these types of startups for the past 5-10 years for their own VC type competitions, and now YC is seeing the value in them too. Hopefully many others will follow suit. Rock Health has been doing this for a while and has been pretty successful in the biotech/healthcare scene.
• silverlake 13y ago
  my idea: a social network for startups who believe they are changing the world. It will be called ignoranceOfYouth.com. In all seriousness, fixing my local animal shelter's web site has a bigger impact on this planet than 99% of Silly Valley's app lottery.
• the_watcher 13y ago
  I thought it was interesting (and a bit funny) to see powered exoskeletons on an RFS so close to Elon Musk's companies, given the running joke about him being the real life Tony Stark.
• aroch 13y ago
  So my lab is working on treatment and vaccine candidates for early childhood infections -- some of which have severe health impacts in second and third world countries. We're primarily government funded (state and NIH), but we'd love more collaboration with our clinical counterparts, especially not in the US. Would YC back a company whose sole purpose is to interface between wetlab people and people people? I would like to setup a group that does this, but its seems infeasible without the right corporate connections.
• ph0rque 13y ago
  Please add this RFS to the dropdown on the application.
• tasty_freeze 13y ago
  "It used to be the case that governments funded a lot of development of breakthrough technologies. The bad news is that they have mostly stopped" That statement is very passive. There has been a shift in the past 30-35 years in public perception as to whether or not government is an agent of good (with noted problems) or if it is unfortunately necessary but the smaller it is the better we are all off. Unfortunately, in my view, those who believe in investing in basic research are losing out to those who believe the existing market structure is always superior. I'm highly doubtful that YC or other similar groups really have the stomach for the long term investment that is necessary to make up for that loss of government backing. If your model is that waving a couple hundred million dollars around will induce a eureka moment in somebody smart, it is bound to be a failure. Real breakthroughs typically seem like breakthroughs but actually were the result of spending decades and a lot of money searching dead ends and making incremental progress. At best it seems like YC can pick some slightly higher hanging fruit than the current model allows, but they can't afford to reach very high.
• djb_hackernews 13y ago
  Some ideas around transportation: - smart pothole patches. Currently patches barely make the road any more driveable and uneven road surfaces result in billions in economic loss due to accidents, repairs, and traffic. - drone machine equipment. Employ operators in the midwest in trailers while they control equipment all over the world. You'll get few accidents and utilize resources more efficiently. Put the operators in geographically advantageous locations and you can run the equipment 24/7. - Volunteer traffic shaping network. I figure all you need is 15-20 volunteer drivers to effectively eliminate rush hour stop and go traffic on one side of a highway by throttling throughput. Create an app to help coordinate and reward them.
  • johngalt 13y ago
    re: potholes You already have millions of internet connected (gps localized) accelerometers on the roads daily. If you could convince enough drivers to record/report that information you'd have a decent map of any rough spots.
    • svenkatesh 13y ago
      >If you could convince enough drivers Good luck with that. If you even tried to convince drivers to do that, they'd scream about a conspiracy to track everyone's movement (beyond the tracking that already exists).
    • djb_hackernews 13y ago
      That exists, it seems to be a popular civic hack-a-thon project[1]. I'm not too worried about identifying pot holes, I'm more interested in road construction that avoids them completely or makes them easier to fix in a better way, [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=pot+hole+detection+app https://www.google.com/search?q=pot+hole+detection+app
  • buckbova 13y ago
    On potholes, there is more recent technology called "infrared repair" that heats up existing asphalt instead of a cut and replace method. You have to get the government to adopt it. https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=infrared%20repair%20pothole#hl=en&q=infrared+pothole+repair&tbm=nws https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=infrared%20repai...
• mullingitover 13y ago
  > Throughout history, when the cost of energy has come down a lot (for example, with the steam engine) I'm going to have to review my physics textbook, but I could swear that steam engine consumes energy. edit: Can't believe I'm getting downvoted. I thought this place was full of pedantic engineers, like me? The steam engine turns energy into work. If anything, it probably increased the price of energy (at least temporarily, until the steam engine was put to work in the fossil fuels mining business).
  • marvy 13y ago
    I think you know what he meant. But just in case: the steam engine allowed people to harness energy that would have been impractical or even impossible to harness without it.
    • mullingitover 13y ago
      I totally know what he meant, but he's wrong--the steam engine likely increased the price of energy, at least in the short term, but creating increased demand for it.
      • jessaustin 13y ago
        "The price of energy" is kind of a confusing term when you're comparing fuel that may be burned to produce steam with fodder that may be fed to draft animals. Per unit of work produced, coal beats hay hands-down. It may be that the price of coal increased once it was used for more than heating and smelting, but that's the price of coal, not "the price of [mechanical] energy".
        • deleted 13y ago
          [deleted]
  • AnimalMuppet 13y ago
    Well, it consumes fuel. It turns (some fraction of) the fuel into useful work. Before the steam engine, there was the horse. The horse turned a much smaller fraction of the energy input into useful work. This means that the steam engine lowered the cost of useful work. We (over)simplify this, and say that the steam engine lowered the cost of energy. But I have a nagging feeling that I may be explaining the blindingly obvious to the deliberately obtuse...
• nakedrobot2 13y ago
  I hope someone is crazy enough for the Tall Tower project. It is the kind of project the Human Race needs to convince ourselves that we are still capable of getting Big Things done. If you don't know about it already, it is a project jump-started in part by Neal Stephenson, to build a 15km tall tower. http://hieroglyph.asu.edu/project/the-tall-tower/ http://hieroglyph.asu.edu/project/the-tall-tower/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TE0n_5qPmRM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TE0n_5qPmRM
  • justhw 13y ago
    Curious: How do you suggest funding to arrive? What is the net benefit to the stake holders?
    • mahyarm 13y ago
      Cheaper rocket launches.
      • Houshalter 13y ago
        Couldn't you just launch off the top of a mountain?
      • adwn 13y ago
        No. Getting into space (starting at 100 km) is relatively easy. Staying in space, i.e. reaching orbit, is the hard part, because you need a very high speed to do this. xkcd's what-if #58 sums it up pretty well. But even then, 15 km would only be ~5% of a typical low earth orbit (LEO) of 300 km, so ... yeah, not worth it at all. This tower seems like a truly useless project. [1] http://what-if.xkcd.com/58/ http://what-if.xkcd.com/58/
  • temuze 13y ago
    Cool! That reminds me of the 10,000 year clock: http://www.businessinsider.com/everything-you-need-to-know-about-jeff-bezos-amazing-10000-year-clock-2013-8 http://www.businessinsider.com/everything-you-need-to-know-a...
• cjoh 13y ago
  "Of particular interest to us are ways to use the Internet to fix government—for example, crowdfunding social services." Aren't all social services crowdfunded?
  • breadbox 13y ago
    Indeed. One could argue that government is the original crowdfunding. This is actually kind of a nice illustration of how backwards our ideas of social services have become.
    • crassus 13y ago
      Despite democratic propaganda, government is a particular institution within society with its own particular capabilities, faults, and goals. It is not an avatar of the will of the united people.
  • joelgrus 13y ago
    At least in the tech community, "crowdfunded" usually means "crowdfunded using voluntary contributions".
  • fspeech 13y ago
    Crowdfunding with non-coercive forces.
• rpicard 13y ago
  My ultimate goal is to work on a project like this. For now though, I have a hard enough time coming up with bad ideas. I can't imagine how I'll end up in a position where I know how to fix real problems.
• lifeisstillgood 13y ago
  "It used to be the case that governments funded a lot of development of breakthrough technologies. The bad news is that they have mostly stopped" I have to plug the newest BBC In Our Time podcast on absolute zero - where basic science research (hey let's see how cold we can make this gas? Cool! Now this one?) provided refrigeration, superconductivity, superfluids, MRI scanners and more. We cannot think VC can replace government long term funding but we can and should support VCs who are willing to go all in on long term funding and make it cool again. Politicians will go a long way on just standing next to billionaire investors for photoshoots.
• zoba 13y ago
  Am I the only one who doesn't know what RFS stands for? Its not clear from AcronymFinder either.
  • alexmic 13y ago
    Request for Startups: http://ycombinator.com/rfs.html http://ycombinator.com/rfs.html
  • deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  • josteink 13y ago
    Nope. I had to search the internet, article and finally this thread, trying to find out what it meant. As far as I can tell, the other answer on your comment seem to be the only place on the internet where this usage of this acronym is documented.
    • mcintyre1994 13y ago
      PG might have coined the term then, the others are here: http://ycombinator.com/rfs.html http://ycombinator.com/rfs.html
  • iamwil 13y ago
    It stands for Request for Startups, which is a wink and nod (reference) to documents that describe internet standards, which are called RFC. For example, the document that lays out the HTTP protocol is RFC2616 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616 What does RFC stand for? "Request for Comments". Presumably, because standards have to be reviewed by other people and get their feedback. I assume the spirit is same here.
• bfe 13y ago
  This sounds terrific, but it doesn't seem self-consistent between wanting companies with the scale of ambition of SpaceX and Tesla, but insisting on early momentum being critical and avoiding a big and expensive initial project. Tesla took four years to introduce their first product, the Roadster. When they went public two years later, they had gone through a net loss of around 300 million dollars, and were still two years away from introducing the Model S. Even then, it had a few near-death experiences. SpaceX took 200 million dollars of investment, and took four years to launch their first flight, which failed. Over the next two years, their second and third flights also failed. Neither company really showed momentum until seven to nine years after founding. It would be nice to see a clear path from a three-month-to-demo-day minimum viable product to a breakthrough company that overturns a capital-intensive industry, but it's hard to think of good examples of this so far. At the least, it would probably require substantial development before applying to YC, and/or starting with a very limited prototype.
  • garry 13y ago
    Both Thalmic Labs and the Meta project are examples of longer term projects that raise money through YC. There are a bunch more in the current batch that have a much longer time frame. While the three month demo is a constraint, it is not one that kills ambitious projects at YC.
    • kyro 13y ago
      Given that these more visionary, long-term, scientific startups will often require founders of a different demographic than what we're used to seeing (eg. older, more experienced in a given field, maybe with obligations like a spouse and kids), will you guys modify your approach to evaluating applications, more specifically the founding teams?
      • cbhl 13y ago
        > older, more experienced in a given field, maybe with obligations like a spouse and kids I'm not convinced that this describes the Thalmic guys at all.
• ilaksh 13y ago
  I have wanted to experiment with some ideas that would solve "real world" problems, but software has always been vastly more accessible. Maybe YC could also consider funding companies with consumer products aimed at making other fields more accessible at home. Sort of analogues to the cheap personal computer. Like the Personal Lab, Personal Biobrick Lab, Personal Fab Lab. Another idea is just any consumer focused startup in one of the areas he focused on. For example an inexpensive solar panel kit you could buy at Walmart. Or maybe advanced hydroponics kits for people to grow some of their own food. I believe the key to really taking advantage of new technologies in an efficient way is to get them widely distributed and into the hands of individuals and families. And I think that high tech solutions to a number of traditionally highly centralized or large organization-driven areas such as energy and food production can make better distribution of those things practical and will result in not only a more efficient but also more robust and secure future for families.
  • ph0rque 13y ago
    > advanced hydroponics kits We're working on it: http://automicrofarm.com/ http://automicrofarm.com/ (well, aquaponics, not hydroponics).
    • eitally 13y ago
      At some point can I come see your work? I live in Cary, too, , and am very interested in aquaponics.
      • ph0rque 13y ago
        Awesome! Another Cary-ite! Email me at andrew at automicrofarm, we'll get together.
• abdullahkhalids 13y ago
  A distinction between actual breakthrough companies and meta-breakthrough ones would be nice. Companies that enable others to magnify their efforts (such as https://experiment.com/ https://experiment.com/) are different from ones that create new tech (Tesla/SpaceX). Meta companies have fuzzier goals and have longer term goals than tech ones. They are also, perhaps, more software oriented than tech ones.
• calcsam 13y ago
  YC will need a change in their funding model if they want to fund these type of technologies. $14k to $20k is irrelevant if you need 3 years R&D and/or $5M capital to prototype; we need new metrics for funding businesses with high capital cost and/or long incubation time.
  • johnvschmitt 13y ago
    Yup. And, it can't be "idea to demo day" in 3 months for those hardware issues where iterations take weeks (or at least days) compared to hours/minutes for compile-time on software. I love the change in focus to be more bold, real, rather than just chasing easy things like software/apps/games. But, the model must change too. I think Sam & team are up for that challenge, & will adapt, so don't think of this as a permanent shortcoming in any way.
  • prawn 13y ago
    I was expecting the RFS to finish with announcing a more variable scale of funding/timeframe or a higher bracket for a different category of intake.
• 6thSigma 13y ago
  I would assume companies applying to this RFS would be mostly in their later stages and probably already have some type of funding. A lot of these seem to require significant costs up front. One thing that makes YC and other incubators so amazing is people who didn't grow up with a wealthy family and have financial obligations such as student loans can hack together a prototype over a weekend, apply to YC, and have almost as good of a chance of getting in as anyone else. I can totally see why YC would want to fund later stage companies though.
• deepinsand 13y ago
  I would imagine that these types of startups don't work with YC's traditional valuation and round sizes. I hope they start changing the terms, especially as they now have enough data to find a better "break even" number. For instance, I'm tackling energy economics, and doing business development alone in this industry dwarfs YC's round.
  • Q6T46nT668w6i3m 13y ago
    Agreed $20,000 for 2-10% of investment isn’t particularly attractive when you need to raise an enormous amount of money. Moreover, Y Combinator doesn’t have partners with relevant experience in most of these markets.
• infocollector 13y ago
  Another YC Advertisement?
  • mikeg8 13y ago
    If you don't like it, there is a simple solution. Stop visiting a YC run website.
• theuri 13y ago
  I can't help but feel there's a few major gaps on this list - helping reinvent financial services, and using technology to improve lives in developing economies
  • loganu 13y ago
    It's not an exhaustive list. Maybe it just shows that they feel they've funded enough realtime location-based social pizza-sharing apps.
• buro9 13y ago
  > Of particular interest to us are ways to use the Internet to fix government—for example, crowdfunding social services. I have an unannounced goal in my projects to achieve something bigger than this... to use the internet to change political systems, the structure of them and how populaces engage with them. I think it has to be fait accompli though, already done. It will take a generation to achieve fully and putting it in a pitch deck or advertising it before it's done is only going to allow people to attack it before it's taken root. I truly believe this is possible and achievable. But when I share the plan (in person, not on the internet) and get passionate about politics, a few are inspired and believe... and most think I'm off-the-planet crazy (though they don't think it's unachievable). Fait accompli... I need to get it done for it to be already done. I believe the company is going to be successful, make a huge return for investors, and change the lives of users (I've seen that first-hand already). But I also believe it can be a trojan horse for a set of ideas that can change societies and how we choose to be governed. I'd largely got to the point where I wasn't going to consider YC, but if they're serious about this one and can be more ambitious, I might be tempted to apply.
  • svenkatesh 13y ago
    Er... you think you're startup (microcosm), which is glorified forum software, will change "political systems, the structure of them and how populaces engage with them?"
    • buro9 13y ago
      Take an interest in anthropology and observe how communities interact and shape the environment (and systems of hierarchy and control) around them, and then consider how software can influence interactions. Not that I'd argue with you with where we're at today. The destination may be over the horizon, but the first milestone is right in front of us and looks like we've barely moved. Which is true.
      • ntoshev 13y ago
        The internet does rewire the fabric of society. Facebook has a big role in modern revolutions. I'm just skeptical that the forum format has the potential to bring further material advances.
• ThePhysicist 13y ago
  "Science. Science seems broken. The current funding models are broken and favor political skill over scientific genius. We need new business models for basic research. There are a lot of areas where scientific developments can have huge commercial applications — materials, neuroscience, climate engineering, and cheaper/better ways to get to space, just to name a few—and we’d love to figure out a way for it to happen. " I think he misunderstands the meaning of the term "basic research": "Basic research (also called pure research or fundamental research) is a systematic study directed toward greater knowledge or understanding of the fundamental aspects of phenomena without specific applications or products in mind." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_research http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_research) So the very idea of basic research is that there are no forseeable commercial applications (or indeed any practical applications). Personally, I think that private funding is NOT suited to finance fundamental research, since the time horizon there is way too long for most VC companies, and I doubt that many of them would finance something "just because it is interesting and we don't understand it yet".
  • irollboozers 13y ago
    Check out Experiment (http://experiment.com http://experiment.com). Even in 'research', there are different types and different motivations. I believe the Science that we see today is more a reflection of the past decades' focus on commercial innovation. As opposed to the previous few centuries, where science was the product of exploration and curiosity. How we do science today will not be the same as how we do science in 10 years.
    • ThePhysicist 13y ago
      Well that's an interesting website, but honestly I think it's not possible to fund fundamental research using crowdsourcing: For example, the last group I worked in consisted of about 6 full-time researchers, 4 PhD students and about 3-6 master students / interns. The salary and infrastructure costs there probably already amount to more than 1 M$ / year. In addition, expenditures for electricity and other required materials (in our case liquid helium) amount again to several 100k$ / year. And this is just what keeps the lights on, doing actual research projects typically requires again several million dollars per project over the course of 3-5 years. To raise that amount of money through crowdsourcing seems very unrealistic and would put the scientists at the "mercy of the masses", so with all due respect I think it's not a viable idea. There could be other interesting use cases for this kind of platform of course: I think in research education this could be a great tool to collect money for student projects at schools and universities, which in the long term will benefit science a lot by producing more scientists :) I just think that funding professional, institutionalized research is and should stay the job of the government.
• crassus 13y ago
  This is fantastic. Now I'd like to see the people with the capital to fund the series As and Bs of these companies make a similar commitment. Don't leave the future entirely in the hands of Musk and Thiel.
• d0m 13y ago
  We're dead serious about applying and getting in YC. We do RFS #8 (Ephemeralization Apps) and now, thanks to this post, we're also on the RFS "Improving healthcare". I have a request to existing founders, mentors or partners of YC: We have an amazing team and a real problem we're solving in healthcare. Hundreds of doctors are waiting to use our app. I'm wondering if you could help us by reviewing our application and sharing some feedback/advices. Please don't be shy, that would be really appreciated. Just ping me phzbox at gmail
  • kyro 13y ago
    I'm in medicine and interested in hearing about what you guys are making. Email is in my profile.
• larrys 13y ago
  Separately this messages needs to be carried front and center on the YC homepage and become part of an outbound marketing effort and materials as well as PR. If not how would someone who doesn't know about YC or follow it (or read this blog post on HN) know to apply if that is what they are contemplating doing? YC has for sure tons of applicants. But there are almost certainly a large number of people out there that don't know the ropes and don't know it even exists. There is really (afaik) no widespread farm team development that feeds into YC.
• porker 13y ago
  > "We are getting close to spending 20% of our GDP on healthcare; this is unsustainable." Really? Why should 20% be unsustainable?
  • kyro 13y ago
    Because there are other countries who are delivering high-quality healthcare for less, and our (USA) healthcare expenditure is outpacing GDP growth.
    • Someone 13y ago
      The second part, according to some economists, is absolutely fine. There is no economic law that says the distribution of your expenses over various expenditures must stay equal. If you think about it, there can't be such a law; if it held, since nobody spent anything on electronics/flight tickets/Big Macs/etc. a century ago, you shouldn't spent a cent on them, either. The richer we are, the less we need to spend on essentials such as food and shelter. That leaves a greater fraction of GDP for things such as healthcare. Most people will say they value health more than possessions, so what's strange about allocating more money to it?
    • _delirium 13y ago
      As the existence of such countries suggests, though, I'm skeptical that it's really a technology or innovation problem. We aren't delivering healthcare more cheaply in Europe because we have great healthcare startups or advanced preventative technology, but rather because the sector is structured entirely differently.
  • hershel 13y ago
    Healthcare costs grow faster than inflation, which is unsustainable.
    • porker 13y ago
      If you're like Europe, the population is ageing too - so it's natural that healthcare costs should go up in line with age, rather than inflation.
• deleted 13y ago
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• triptych 13y ago
  This feels like a response to the recent NASA "end of civilization" report. http://www.ryot.org/nasa-figured-civilization-end-gonna-your-lifetime/608677 http://www.ryot.org/nasa-figured-civilization-end-gonna-your...
• jonlemmon 13y ago
  "We're interested in ways to use the Internet to fix government" That's what Loomio is doing: http://boingboing.net/2014/03/19/loomio-democratic-decision-ma.html http://boingboing.net/2014/03/19/loomio-democratic-decision-... Building infrastructure for citizens to self-govern. Using the internet to enable large-scale decision-making, without the need of large government.
  • twic 13y ago
    Yes! This is heading in the right direction! Whereas, sadly, i was shaking my head at some of this list. How could any person with the faintest clue write both these things: > Healthcare. Healthcare in the United States is badly broken. > Education. If we can fix education, we can eventually do everything else on this list Healthcare in the United States is badly broken because your system of government is a complete mess. The solution is not healthcare startups, or some kind of breakthrough in education, it is to adopt the system every other civilised country on the planet uses, which is to make healthcare as whole a service, not a business. Oh, and how about: > Transportation and housing. About half of all energy is used on transportation We already have trains, trams, buses, and bicycles. These technologies solve the transport problem and are all at least a century old. But the government doesn't build infrastructure for these, it just keeps building physical and financial infrastructure for cars, which are probably the daftest invention in the history of civil transport. Don't get me wrong, cars are fantastic sporting and extreme environment vehicles, but by now it is abundantly clear that they have no place in everyday life. > And housing continues to get more expensive, partially due to difficulties in transportation. But mostly due to the fact that existing homeowners have no financial interest in increasing the supply of housing, but, because of the way the government's power over zoning and eminent domain is beholden to their interests, do have a stranglehold on it. But of course, fixing government is not something you can do with a startup, and it's not something Mr Altman could make much IRR off, so that's not what he's suggested.
    • deleted 13y ago
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    • namenotrequired 13y ago
• CodeMage 13y ago
  "It used to be the case that governments funded a lot of development of breakthrough technologies. The bad news is that they have mostly stopped; the good news is that the leverage of technology is such that now small startups can do what used to take the resources of nations." Honest question: if small startups can now do what used to take the resources of nations, isn't there something even cooler that the resources of a nation could do? I'm not knocking what small startups can and do achieve, but in the last few years I've started feeling like the humanity is sort of giving up on big ambitions and ideals of unity, of making big breakthroughs together.
  • lifeisstillgood 13y ago
    they are working on it - fusion.
  • marcosdumay 13y ago
    Maybe a few, or maybe not even one. Nations need to convince a lot of people about the viability and rationality of a project before putting many resources at it. Most great (and crackpot) ideas are lost on this process, the ones that survive are completely changed.
  • FD3SA 13y ago
    As is becoming abundantly clear, the world is run by politicians with little to no understanding or respect for science. These people, like most, believe in the "genius" theory, where an Einstein just magically appears and make a huge breakthrough once every hundred years. They don't understand that science is a slow, incremental process which happens over hundreds of years, and requires steady investment for progress to continue. As it stands, the politicians could care less if we entered another dark age. All they care about are votes, and power. I hope the best for this initiative at YC, but having known brilliant scientists, they are the furthest thing from entrepreneurs. They are intrinsically motivated, and don't care much for fame, money or prestige. As such, most are terrible at making sales pitches. Sam makes it abundantly clear that there won't be another Bell Labs. Sadly, that is precisely what we need. The real breakthroughs will require extremely slow, deep thinkers which have the autonomy and time to work on very hard problems without interruption in the form of sales pitches, VC meetings, demo days, and above all a constant scramble for funding. This [1] is the closest I've seen to a modern day Bell Labs. 1. http://janelia.org/ http://janelia.org/
• cscurmudgeon 13y ago
  Any possibility of extending the deadline due to the new RFS?
• jahewson 13y ago
  I can't help feeling that there's just too much in this RFS and that much of it lies beyond the expertise of YC. The lack of focus means that the only message I can take away is that YC wants fewer frivolous startups. SpaceX and Tesla are fine for inspiration but they have absolutely exceptional funding - no YC company is going to have access to those opportunities. I'm all for ambition but I don't see how this RFS is realistic.
  • apardes 13y ago
    I'm no expert, but I wouldn't say I've seen many YC startups that I would call frivolous. If a product fills a need, it isn't frivolous.
  • prawn 13y ago
    "The lack of focus means that the only message I can take away is that YC wants fewer frivolous startups." My interpretation is that with some serious runs on the board, YC is now in a better position to have a stronger crack at bolder, hardware-heavy ideas. Reading TechCrunch announcements for many recent YC inclusions has had me thinking "Really? That made it in?" This RFS had me quite excited for what submissions YC might encourage or nurture towards serious funding.
• laurenstill 13y ago
  Scrolled down to healthcare, and wow, clearly no domain experience. Spend another year researching and listening first.
• hooande 13y ago
  There's a new sheriff in town. Previously YC treated some of these things, especially "AI" (whatever that means) as third rails. They've funded an extremely broad range of companies, but if you go back and check their past investments most of the areas listed in this RFS are underrepresented. Infrastructure, food and water, biotech, robotics...YC could be reaching much higher in terms of ambition than it has in the past. This will also mean more failures, but sama is smart and tough enough to hold on through it. But realistically, how could YC get involved with early stage startups in most of these categories? Examples like SpaceX and Tesla don't have minimum viable products. You can't build part of an engine in three months and then show it off on demo day. Creating solutions for these problems at the most rudimentary level will require months if not years of effort and significant financial backing. It's hard for two guys in a garage to build a prototype 10X battery or come up with innovative biotechnology. In order to get in on these ideas early enough for it to make sense, YC might have to start throwing caution to the wind and accept founders who have only drawings and computer models. It's just so difficult for a small group of people to have a noticeable effect on problems on this scale. The best way to get involved with the next world changing idea might be to choose capable and intelligent people and say "I'm willing to bet on anything that you do, even if you're not sure what it is or if it changes completely tomorrow". I think YC already has a process for accepting single founders without concrete ideas and they could expand on that. Or start making changes to attract founders whose companies are farther along in their development. No matter what they do, setting big goals usually doesn't hurt. I hope that the YCombinator organization is willing to make some of the changes necessary to move closer to them.
  • pg 13y ago
    You can't build part of an engine in three months and then show it off on demo day. You can't build a database in three months and show it off on Demo Day either, but we've funded many database companies. You don't need to have shipped by Demo Day. You just need to have achieved enough to convince investors to give you more money. What "enough" means depends on what you're building. Experienced investors know how much they can reasonably expect from each type of company in 3 + n months. Incidentally, we have battery and AI companies in the current batch.
• joeblau 13y ago
  Finally! That "build something on Twitter" was irrelevant 3 years ago. Especially once Twitter implemented a system-wide ceiling which capped any new ideas user base to 100k users. I'm glad to see that you're focusing on products that aren't routed in social media. Bravo Sam.
• dtap 13y ago
  As an active investor in the energy space, I would love to hear how Sam/YC see their model working here. The MVP and concept of early sales is something that is very difficult in this and many of the other markets they mentioned. We try with all of our companies to partner with larger organizations and generate early, profitable revenue. But it is difficult in many industries and there is still a large capital need. That being said, would love to attend a YC non-software demo day.
• jedberg 13y ago
  Metacomment: I like how you are copying PGs use of footnotes, but please copy his html as well and make them link back and forth.
• iamwil 13y ago
  In any startup, there's broad categories of risk. One is whether it's a market risk (we have the tech to solve problems, but we don't know if anyone has this problem), or if it's a technology risk (we know this to be a problem, but we don't know if we can solve it with tech). For the last couple of years, we've been taking existing technologies, and applying them to different markets or creating new markets. AirBnb, Uber, Homejoy, Twitter are good examples of this. This can't last forever on any one existing tech, and so @sama's just calling for startups that are technology risks instead of market risks. Such startups may be more capital intensive, but not to the point where it's a non-starter unless you have 100 mil, like others are talking about.
• rpm33 13y ago
  My faith in humanity has been restored a little bit with this article. I hope more of Silicon Valley focuses on breakthrough technologies, since the rest of the world tries to rip off the valley anyway.
• sjg007 13y ago
  He has a very PGesque style of writing.
• ChuckFrank 13y ago
  This is an excellent example Brand expansion. Whether through product depth or diversification successful brands all have to do this. What's especially impressive to me is that Mr. Altman has seen that by expanding the incubator platform, to technologies that previously were not included as primary entrepreneurial drivers (AI / Urban), Mr. Altman has opened the doors to an incredible amount of work that has already been done at research institutions world wide and is ready for investor grooming. It will be interesting to see who responds, and what they can bring to the table. My guess is that it won't be the bounty that YC has seen in software, but that there will be some really interesting winners that fit the scale / mvp problem inherent in YC's process just right. Hopefully the other incubators will follow suit. The world needs more than disruptive / labor saving software. The world needs more and better technology all around.
• jonah 13y ago
  Relevant: Billionaires With Big Ideas Are Privatizing American Science http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/science/billionaires-with-big-ideas-are-privatizing-american-science.html http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/science/billionaires-with-... Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7406572 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7406572
• nabla9 13y ago
  Why should YC be involved in areas where it has no experience? The money YC gives is minimal, so the main benefit for YC involvement is experience. If YC has nobody who has expert knowledge in biotech, it would be waste of everyones time to get involved. Another thing is money. Most science startups need more than just people with PhD's willing to live with ramens. They need lab equipment, samples etc that cost tens and hundreds of thousands dollars.
  • jpwright 13y ago
    I agree. There are other incubators with domain expertise for hardware products (Bolt, Haxlr8r, Highway1, RGA), robotics (Grishin), biotech (Harlem Biospace). These places can also offer shared facilities and lab space, which is hugely important as YC's $20k investment would barely cover, for example, an electronics lab, which could also take months to set up. This is a noble goal and I'm glad that YC wants to invest in these sort of companies, but they need to do a lot more work to convince startups of this sort that the value proposition makes sense for them.
• chris_mahan 13y ago
  "We’re especially interested in preventative healthcare, as this is probably the highest-leverage way to improve health. " I think the best preventative healthcare is a population (I almost said cohort (yikes)) that is educated enough (with all that entails) to make better short term and long-term decisions for themselves, including developing the desire to become and stay healthy, to know how to weigh the risks of activities, to know how to find information for themselves and evaluate such information with a critical and logical mind. This would also go a long way in helping our political process. Is this a tall order? You bet. Beyond horizon, but desperately needed.
• raldi 13y ago
  > We’re interested in better ways for people to live somewhere nice, work together, and have easier commutes. > If a company needs to raise a billion dollars of funding over the course of its life, that doesn’t scare us—in fact, that’s a plus. San Francisco's city government is falling over themselves to legalize and encourage in-law units, whether they're built in basements, garages, wherever. The problem is that the permitting process is a byzantine nightmare, and working with the local construction industry is equally maddening and fraught with peril. Also, because of Prop 13, a lot of homeowners are sitting on property that's disproportionally valuable compared to their liquid assets, and so there are a lot of situations where people can't afford to build an in-law unit, even though (if they could) it would pay for itself very quickly. Therefore, I think someone needs to create the SolarCity of SF in-law units. The company takes care of all the paperwork and even pays for all the construction. In return, they get a cut of the rent for the next 20 years. If you take my idea and run with it, all I ask in return is that, once you hit your first billion in revenue, you put a bust of me in your headquarters' lobby.
  • malandrew 13y ago
    I would love to see someone create a "marketplace for rent control rights" in housing markets currently being fucked by rent control. The idea here would be that anyone with rent control for a certain unit would be able to put out an offer for conditions under which they would vacate the property. Once you have standing offers for all units in a building, a developer could make a bid to satisfy those rent control rights and buy the property from building owner. People with $800 rent control in say a studio might be willing to exchange their studio apartment for a 1 bedroom in a new building within 1-mile in the regions of a city, and this new unit would come with a contract for all the same rights as rent control, but that it would be limited to that tenant and that tenant alone (it can't be "passed" on by adding people to the contract). So lets say I'm a developer with a few properties under construction. When I see a building where all the tenants have made offers that I can meet in some way using units in my projects under construction. I crunch the numbers and make offers to each of those individuals. Once I get all the tenants to accept the offers I make, I then approach the property owner and make an offer on the property. Once I buy the property, I can then give each of those tenants a property in my other buildings and then demolish the original building and build something taller with more units. Even if I destroy the old building and build something newer with only marginally more units because of zoning laws, I would now have a new construction free of current rent control rights. The key here is to create legal mechanisms that make rent control rights a fungible commodity that can be traded. By making rent control rights fungible, you essentially decoupled the rent control from the physical structure, you create a way for the owners of the structures to be able to use the land under that structure for its highest and best use. Furthermore, this approach is much more amiable than Ellis Act evictions since it gives rent control renters an out that is comparable to their current situation. Even more, it gives them the opportunity to move to a larger unit in case they've outgrown their current rent control place and would like to stay in the city to raise a family (e.g. someone with a 1-bedroom can requests offers for a two bedroom place at a comparable rate relative to their current living situation).
• rmason 13y ago
  I'm personally very encouraged that YC is open to civic data startups. I think there's still a lot of low hanging fruit in government for hackers to solve.
• graycat 13y ago
  Big point: We want to start with what we have and get to what we want. So, how the heck to do that? Maybe what we are doing is just using computing to automate what we have long done manually. Then we know how the heck to do that and mostly just need to program it. Maybe we can think of a reasonably good way to do that using just intuitive heuristics and just need to program those. But, what else can we do? Here's an example: Suppose at a server farm we have a system and want to monitor it for any problems not seen before. Suppose the system can report 100 times a second numerical data on each of 12 variables. Suppose the server farm is relatively stable and we can collect such data for three months, let the data 'age', and be fairly sure that the system was operating 'normally' (correctly, without problems) during those three months. Now what? In real time, how do we monitor the system? AI 'expert systems'? Been there; done that; don't think so. And our customers are highly concerned about both detection rate and false alarm rate. The 12 variables used carefully seem to promise a good detection rate, but what the heck to do about keeping false alarm rate down? Intuitive heuristics? I don't think so. Something in 'machine learning'? I doubt it. Now what? Okay, it's a research problem in the applied mathematics of applied probability. Okay, what's the lesson here? The applied math now should be seen as the uniquely powerful crucial methodology for much of the progress we seek, say, in the RFS. Why? Because in a strong sense, math has by far the most powerful methodology in civilization. How? Why? Because applied math can take what we have, use that as hypotheses in mathematical/logical deductions and, with theorems and proofs, come up with mathematical consequences that are rock solid logically and give us what the heck we want, far beyond anything we ever did manually or could ever guess with intuitive heuristics. Net, the key methodology for much of the progress we want, that is, taking what we have and getting to what we want, is some applied math, with theorems and proofs, possibly in part or largely original, and sometimes with some advanced math prerequisites. Such math promises to be one of the most important pillars for the exploitation of computing in the future, assuming that we do get such exploitation. So far I have yet to see "applied math" mentioned on the Web site of any venture firm. Another example? Sure: Take the data we have and get to what we want in, say, ad targeting. So, sure, there are lots of techniques for ad targeting, but what are the more powerful techniques, say, that give much more effective ad targeting, and how do we find and confirm the power of such techniques? Well, in some cases, maybe most, the best methodology will be some math such as I described. VC, YC, SV, entrepreneurship, computing, etc. will have to take applied math quite seriously or miss out on a lot of what might have been and struggle for decades in nearly useless mud wrestling instead. You've been warned. Be warned. You neglect applied math and you can't win and must lose compared with what is possible, big time. Did I mention that the theorems and proofs of applied math form the most powerful methodology in civilization? Believe it.
• luka-birsa 13y ago
  I'd so love to work on nuclear energy, making Thorium approchable for the masses. Checklist: - find a superstar physics team - get 0.5B in funding. Seriously, Thorium rocks. Look it up.
• JimmyM 13y ago
  Bristol Space Planes fit this bill, have a talented team, and are actively seeking funding: http://bristolspaceplanes.com/ http://bristolspaceplanes.com/ They're trying to make space travel much cheaper with re-usable launches.
• midas007 13y ago
  To build a huge, breakthrough company requires people that have or can master the road to get there. Can't just jump to that without any experience and expect to execute well. As such, I see YC reaching out to folks that would otherwise consider GSB, HBS or Haas by working with teams that have more experience, eg, putting aside some of the valley ageism.
• carterschonwald 13y ago
  I can understand a) this will diversify their portfolio b) increase their risk negligibly c) increase their long term positive variance appreciably. But how on earth will participating in YC help? its not some damn webapp or incrementalizable b2c/b2b product. Some things also don't have a natural exit, even if the biz outcomes are grand and/or interesting. seriously, convince me its worth my time to apply even though I don't want investors. please. (I know many folks who did YC and are happy with it, I just don't see how it'd help in the domains I do work in.)