That could work, although I see that as a somewhat different class from what this post is talking about. Academic spinoffs are one semi-established way of manag

That could work, although I see that as a somewhat different class from what this post is talking about. Academic spinoffs are one semi-established way of managing the issue of long lead times and research risk: you do the up-front risky research in academia, and then start up a company once you have something close to a prototype. That way your time-to-product in the company is not so huge, because you have a prototype or close to one at t=0. But I read this post as suggesting that YC wants to fund companies that are themselves doing new research, rather than looking for companies that are doing spinoff/commercialization of established research labs.