14 ms·
Joining a Different YC
- netrus 11y agoWow, the American attitude is strong with you ;). Looking forward to see what the SN-ratio of all these strong statements is! edit: As I am beeing downvoted: "you'll use many of these in your home or neighborhood within the next 12 months" -> I doubt I have used "many" yc-products from the total last batch in the past 12 months. "Over the next year, you’ll see us introduce several features that make YC the best place in the world for people who want to make something new. Over the next decade, you’ll see some of these entrepreneurs create companies at YC that rival Airbnb’s social (and financial) impact." -> That's very nice, but it has nothing substantial to back it up! All I want to say is: yc does not need to sell hot air.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- ekanes 11y ago> I doubt I have used "many" yc-products from the total last batch in the past 12 months. I think you're conflating YC with Kickstarter. YC increasingly works with companies that are later-stage; there's no reason they couldn't be almost shipping when they do YC.
- davis_m 11y agoI don't think it is an issue of shipping, but an issue of any one person having a need for most of the companies that come through YC.
- eloff 11y agoYou would rather they make statements with a neutral tone, promising nothing? What's wrong with expressing a little excitement and optimism?
- liseman 11y agoWhile I have no idea how many you specifically will choose to purchase, a majority of the hardware startups in our current batch will have product for sale via Amazon and other channels by summer 2016. This sounds strong given the history of hardware companies, but our current batch is not comprised of average hardware companies;)
- logicallee 11y ago> a majority of the hardware startups in our current batch will have product for sale via Amazon and other channels by summer 2016. This sounds strong given the history of hardware companies... with all due respect, it sounds weak in the history of hardware companies, because no hardware company worth $10 billion - and there are many - had any point in its past when it could go from a standing start to shipping product for millions of people's homes in 12 months. You might think this means that your companies are above-average. I disagree. I think it means that you pass on most $10 billion plays in order to fill a stable with people who have picked something they are ready to ship within a few months. More power to them, and they have real companies with real traction. But to say it sounds strong given the history of hardware companies is to ignore both history and the power law. I have the utmost respect for the support YC gives to these hardware companies, but would never apply with a historically ambitious one. This is very unlikely to change any time soon. Still I hugely support the push toward supporting hardware companies!
- shahryc 11y ago"Why give half of the money you raise to your university when you can rent lab space for hundreds of dollars a month?" --- very good point!
- DaveWalk 11y agoI don't completely understand this quote -- is money to the university grant money? Like, for a tenure-track professor? Paying with federal grants? Rent is not usually the motivator in that instance... Or is it simply due to paying rent costs? Lab-space-for-hire is not a new concept, if anyone was wondering, though it often exists only in life science hub areas (e.g., LabCentral: http://labcentral.org/ http://labcentral.org/).
- owensmp 11y agoA couple others include QB3 (CA) http://qb3.org/startups/incubators http://qb3.org/startups/incubators, Indie Bio (SF) http://indie.bio http://indie.bio, Harlem Biospace (NYC) http://harlembiospace.com http://harlembiospace.com, Science Center Port (Philly)https://www.sciencecenter.org/programs/port-business-incubators https://www.sciencecenter.org/programs/port-business-incubat..., Jansen Labs (4 sites) http://jlabs.jnjinnovation.com/ http://jlabs.jnjinnovation.com/
- omginternets 11y agoRespectfully, it's a terrible point. In practice, it doesn't work this way, and universities are much, much more than a monetary resource: - unrestricted access to cross-disciplinary expertise - access to a huge recruitment pool - access to SBIR/STTR grants (with far fewer strings attached as compared to VC funding) - scientific/technical credibility and legitimacy - access to bleeding-edge equipment that cannot be purchased While it's true that scientists often know little about entrepreneurship, this is a prime example of VCs knowing little about science. Reasoning in terms of cheaper lab space is penny wise and pound foolish.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- OopsCriticality 11y agoFor biotech, I'm interested in understanding why YC would be a better choice than the SBIR/STTR route.
- w1ntermute 11y agoThey don't have the domain expertise, so it's comparatively easier to trick them with some startup buzzwords and a slick "vision".
- jerf 11y agoThis type of domain expertise may not be perfectly purchaseable, but it is purchaseable, and given the money involved, I'm sure they will. (And partially have already.) Also, gaining the relevant knowledge to filter nonsense from sense here isn't necessarily as hard as you might think. And some of the filtering can be done with information theory, basic economics, probing deeper until you find the "and them some magic happens!" step, and some other non-biological tools that apply everywhere. I'm not saying it's easy, it's still months of work potentially, but it's only months. You don't actually need a PhD for nonsense filtering.
- thearn4 11y agoI am imagining that what they're going for will be biotech problems that can be addressed as software problems in disguise (since they would most certainly be in the right place and connected to the right people for that). Those connections may be worth more than the $2M or from SBIR (assuming they reached phase II), for companies that are fundamentally software shops. Otherwise, I'm very curious what their strategy is for breaking into the bioscience and technology space in a broader sense, and if that would lead them to opening shop in other metro areas outside of the bay area.
- thecosas 11y agoSan Diego would be a nice place to have a base of operations for getting more involved in biotech.
- thecosas 11y agoInterested to see changes around how quickly the "regulatory and logistical differences" can be overcome specifically in the biotech industry.
- seddona 11y agocongrats Luke!
- habitue 11y ago> Over the next decade, you’ll see some of these entrepreneurs create companies at YC that rival Airbnb’s social (and financial) impact. I think this sentence is interesting. It kind of hints that they use the term "AirBnB" internally as a short-hand way of saying "Our most successful company". He doesn't mention AirBnB anywhere else in the post, and this sentence expects the listener to understand the implied context.
- zajd 11y agoI find it odd that AirBnB is consitently pointed at as a resounding success when, alongside Uber/Lyft/TaskRabbit/the now shutdown maid service, it simply relies on literally breaking the law and hoping that you'll make enough money to change the laws. Granted, AirBnB doesn't have the same "fuck the worker" mindset as the others, but I still feel like the "sharing econony" is far from an established sure thing. Then again, if you own stock in AirBnB I doubt it matters at this point.
- staunch 11y agoAirbnb has the "fuck the neighbors" mindset. Interesting way to think of the inherent evilness of different companies. Google and Facebook have the "fuck user privacy" mindset. Microsoft has a "fuck competitors up" mindset. This is fun.
- zajd 11y agoI think the analogy breaks down when you consider what sharing economy companies do is explicitly illegal, especially in the places they operate. Granted, there's been differing levels of enforcement from various agencies, but Hillary has been mentioning addressing it from the federal level. Point being, there are probably changes/regulations coming to the current free for all that is the sharing economy.
- reitzensteinm 11y agoI recently went travelling and used it. An old woman opened the door to the apartment building for me when the lock was giving me trouble, then was then confused then concerned that she didn't recognize me. I used it once before, in Barcelona, staying in the flat of a wonderful couple who we got along well with and it was like visiting relatives. This time, it felt like we were saving a buck, and the owner making a buck, by scaring old ladies. I guess it's back to hotels and hostels.
- eldude 11y agoI may be naive/ignorant (I do have an Electrical Engineering B.S.), but hardware really seems like it would benefit from an experience / innovation sharing like this. It seems like hardware is at an inflection point w.r.t. large portions of it being backed by shareable / FOS software (e.g., 3D-printing blueprints; hardware/software platforms like Tessel, Beaglebone, Arduino; etc...), and adding a little fuel to the fire like this really seems like a potentially huge payoff. Pardon the connotation, but it's like domesticating a rare, but extremely useful wild flora, and growing it in mass while disseminating the process so others can grow it as well. Very exciting. Would anyone with recent hardware prototyping experience care to comment on whether the above reflects their own experience?
- tlb 11y agoIt does. Hardware startups need more experience than software startups, because there are more moving parts (contract manufacturers, component makers, distributors, standards bodies) and because mistakes are harder to fix. It helps a lot to have one guy (Luke) spend half his time keeping current with everything, and half his time disseminating this to startups as they need it. Another factor is that when dealing with big companies (like most contract manufacturers and component vendors,) a single early-stage startup has no leverage to negotiate good deals, but a community of startups does.
- lexcorvus 11y agoCould someone explain the title? If this is a "different" YC, what was the original?
- roymurdock 11y agoThe YC you know created a new model for funding early stage startups. The YC I joined is creating a new model for innovation. If I had to guess, the original focused on software whereas the new YC will be open to more long term, hardware-oriented companies. But it's not entirely clear.
- acomjean 11y agoI woek in a uniersity lab.. But I'm here less than a year. In some ways investing in science is a good thing. But there is a big difference between "industry" where some of our post docs go to work on for profit medicine and the academic labs. Why give money to a university? Well some pays for overhead you are going to have anyway. For all its problems, the fact that a lot data is published (pubchem and pubmed) is good for society as a whole. The for profit side doesn't do that to the same degree. The equipment side of things I think is where hopefully YC can help. Right now overpriced equipment, "robots" with software that barely works (Microscopes that use proprietary image formats....). I even saw a USB dongle for software access of the really expensive microscope. welcome to the 90s.
- jonlucc 11y ago> For all its problems, the fact that a lot data is published (pubchem and pubmed) is good for society as a whole. The for profit side doesn't do that to the same degree. I work in a pharma lab, and I can tell you that a great deal of the work we do relies heavily on work done by university labs to point toward the right pathways to target.
- sharash2 11y ago>> My job is to help our companies make hardware people want faster and better than ever before. Wha?? Your job should be to go back to school to learn how to write down your thoughts faster and better than ever before ;)
- bbgm 11y agoTo date YC has not shown a good understanding of the life sciences. It's not just about a regulatory burden, but the premise of breaking away from academia, of somehow finding a magic bullet and commercializing it, and assuming that biology is somehow like software is flawed. Sure the barriers to entry may be lower, but most science is a slog. There are very few home runs. Next-gen sequencing was a huge breakthrough and happened very fast by life science standards. The drivers came both from academia and industry and by all means it worked really well and remains highly innovative. I completely buy that a different model of funding will help and could be successful. I just don't have a good understanding of whether there is a good understanding of the real scientific challenges and the implications.
- hermanmerman 11y agoYC operates like a startup would: they have a bold hypothesis, something that must be challenged ("most science is a slog"). There is very little chance that they could be right, but in case they are, and they execute well, the benefits could be huge. Speeding up life sciences development cycles the way development cycles in software engineering have been sped up is the goal, but the way to do it is hard and complex and uncertain. It requires funding, perseverance, trial and error, incremental improvements as much as breakthroughs. YC has proven they're good at all of this.
- DaveWalk 11y agoWell said. Maybe there is an analogy to software development decades ago -- slow and academic as the norm.
- DaveWalk 11y agoI share your thoughts exactly, and why YC talks about biotech I just can't picture it. I don't doubt their efforts, but I can't picture it. However, I've always thought that with the right network and influence one could make major shifts in a whole industry if the timing is right. As history has shown us, all we need is one breakthrough way of doing things and previously closed doors are busted open. If YC convinces enough people along the biotech foodchain, they can at least get a good crack at it. I'd love to see a post specifically about what they have in mind for biotech.
- OJFord 11y agoI like the cheeky "Luke Iseman upvoted this post" at the bottom
- biot 11y ago> My job is to help our companies make hardware people > want faster and better than ever before. That took me a few seconds to parse correctly. So you're making "hardware people" want faster and better what? Oh, it's hardware that people want...
- sixdimensional 11y agoI'd personally like to see a startup at YC trying to figure out how to spread the YC model/ethos beyond Silicon Valley.
- chris-at 11y agoScience needs to happen for the sake of science. If you do science for the money you will soon run out of fish.
- jonlucc 11y agoIn the US, life science is done both for science and for money. Any non-human research or basic research are done with funding avenues outside of corporations. All drug discovery and the vast majority of scientific instrumentation and tools are produced by for-profit institutions.
- snake117 11y agoI know he emphasized biotech in the blog post, but I got the impression that he would assist general startups that incorporate some kind of hardware in their product. So it could be biotech or something like Anki or the Myo armband by Thalmic.
- dgudkov 11y agoIf YC keeps going this way one day it might become a new kind of university.