5 ms·

Money is among the least useful things YC gives. There are a lot of ways to get money; good advice and a strong community are very hard to find.

by sama 11y ago

jacquesm 11y ago
Advice on how to build a scaleable web company is not universally applicable on how to build biotech companies.
- sama 11y ago
  Advice about how to create a good startup turns out to be more generalizable that I originally thought. The hardest problems--mostly around people--are more similar than they seem.
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    > The hardest problems--mostly around people--are more similar than they seem. That's a good point and reflects my own experience. But I'd be hard pressed to generalize what I've learned in my career in IT/IT related start-ups and take that and apply it to say a company that creates a new medicine or one that tries to commercialize some new medical instrument. The sales avenues in that domain are radically different from 'just' IT based start-ups and just like I wouldn't see a bio-tech person run an IT firm the reverse probably holds true as well, ditto for advice to such management. I recently had a long and in-depth look at an organization that sells a lot of physical goods on-line and even in that case there was so much domain knowledge wrt to the retail portion of it that without a CEO with significant knowledge in that particular field they wouldn't have stood a chance. Anyway, you're doing pretty good so far, can't wait to see you prove me wrong :)
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - untilHellbanned 11y ago
    >The hardest problems--mostly around people-- Not quite. YC has been successful selling to people. Biotech isn't selling to people. The drug sells itself. It either works or it doesn't. Science doesn't care what we want.
- eitally 11y ago
  The more I read HN, the more I am convinced that the dearth of leadership & management experience among founders is the biggest reason (besides bad ideas) so many young companies fail. Seriously, reading some of the questions & answers here gives one the impression that the value YC and other incubators provide -- besides networking -- is just in keeping founders from making stupid business & management decisions.
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    That alone might make it well worth the investment. If I knew back in '95 what I know today (as in lessons learned the hard way, not 'invest in apple')... One thing I don't see happening in biotech is an end-run around the law such as AirBNB pulled off. That's going to get you into a lot of very hot water.
    - technotony 11y ago
      I'm not sure exactly what you mean by 'end-run' but there are massive opportunities in biotech for reading the letter of the law and understanding what you can do that other people don't realize. For instance my company (Glowing Plant, YC S14) is entirely predicated on such an understanding. We read the rules and realized that if we engineered a plant with a gene gun instead of agrobacterium it would not be regulated in the United States. This saves us millions of dollars in getting a product to market and means we can pursue an agile product development strategy. Game changer. I'm aware of another 4-5 such opportunities for syn bio products where you can get to market for low or zero regulatory permission.
      - OopsCriticality 11y ago
        With respect, there is a large gap between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law. Yours is a good example: using a gene gun may not be regulated in the US at present, but as was pointed out in a Nature piece covering the controversy around your company [0], that may not hold for the future [1]. My experiences with the FDA, and I have reason to believe they hold true at the USDA, lead me to conclude that regulators are fickle. What is the plan for when Monsanto, seeing your early success, copies your business plan and regulators respond to their terrified constituents in order to "fix the glitch"? Trying to move fast and break things in a regulated industry strikes me as producing fragile business plans, at best. [0] http://www.nature.com/news/glowing-plants-spark-debate-1.13131 http://www.nature.com/news/glowing-plants-spark-debate-1.131... [1] http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v475/n7356/full/475265b.html http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v475/n7356/full/475265b...
OopsCriticality 11y ago
Sure, but I was thinking more along the lines of the SBIR/STTR-based incubator ecosystems at major research universities. They too have good advice and a strong community, and also have more domain experience, rentable high-end lab equipment, proper wet lab space, clean rooms, contract personnel, regulatory consultants, industrial hygiene assistance, etc. I don't understand (but would like to) what the value proposition of YC is over a good university incubator---superior general business advice? (I could easily see that!) Apologies, my original post was incompletely expressed.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

Money is among the least useful things YC gives. There are a lot of ways to get money; good advice and a strong community are very hard to find.

by sama 11y ago

Money is among the least useful things YC gives. There are a lot of ways to get money; good advice and a strong community are very hard to find.

jacquesm 11y ago

Advice on how to build a scaleable web company is not universally applicable on how to build biotech companies.

sama 11y ago
Advice about how to create a good startup turns out to be more generalizable that I originally thought. The hardest problems--mostly around people--are more similar than they seem.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  > The hardest problems--mostly around people--are more similar than they seem. That's a good point and reflects my own experience. But I'd be hard pressed to generalize what I've learned in my career in IT/IT related start-ups and take that and apply it to say a company that creates a new medicine or one that tries to commercialize some new medical instrument. The sales avenues in that domain are radically different from 'just' IT based start-ups and just like I wouldn't see a bio-tech person run an IT firm the reverse probably holds true as well, ditto for advice to such management. I recently had a long and in-depth look at an organization that sells a lot of physical goods on-line and even in that case there was so much domain knowledge wrt to the retail portion of it that without a CEO with significant knowledge in that particular field they wouldn't have stood a chance. Anyway, you're doing pretty good so far, can't wait to see you prove me wrong :)
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- untilHellbanned 11y ago
  >The hardest problems--mostly around people-- Not quite. YC has been successful selling to people. Biotech isn't selling to people. The drug sells itself. It either works or it doesn't. Science doesn't care what we want.
eitally 11y ago
The more I read HN, the more I am convinced that the dearth of leadership & management experience among founders is the biggest reason (besides bad ideas) so many young companies fail. Seriously, reading some of the questions & answers here gives one the impression that the value YC and other incubators provide -- besides networking -- is just in keeping founders from making stupid business & management decisions.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  That alone might make it well worth the investment. If I knew back in '95 what I know today (as in lessons learned the hard way, not 'invest in apple')... One thing I don't see happening in biotech is an end-run around the law such as AirBNB pulled off. That's going to get you into a lot of very hot water.
  - technotony 11y ago
    I'm not sure exactly what you mean by 'end-run' but there are massive opportunities in biotech for reading the letter of the law and understanding what you can do that other people don't realize. For instance my company (Glowing Plant, YC S14) is entirely predicated on such an understanding. We read the rules and realized that if we engineered a plant with a gene gun instead of agrobacterium it would not be regulated in the United States. This saves us millions of dollars in getting a product to market and means we can pursue an agile product development strategy. Game changer. I'm aware of another 4-5 such opportunities for syn bio products where you can get to market for low or zero regulatory permission.
    - OopsCriticality 11y ago
      With respect, there is a large gap between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law. Yours is a good example: using a gene gun may not be regulated in the US at present, but as was pointed out in a Nature piece covering the controversy around your company [0], that may not hold for the future [1]. My experiences with the FDA, and I have reason to believe they hold true at the USDA, lead me to conclude that regulators are fickle. What is the plan for when Monsanto, seeing your early success, copies your business plan and regulators respond to their terrified constituents in order to "fix the glitch"? Trying to move fast and break things in a regulated industry strikes me as producing fragile business plans, at best. [0] http://www.nature.com/news/glowing-plants-spark-debate-1.13131 http://www.nature.com/news/glowing-plants-spark-debate-1.131... [1] http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v475/n7356/full/475265b.html http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v475/n7356/full/475265b...

OopsCriticality 11y ago

Sure, but I was thinking more along the lines of the SBIR/STTR-based incubator ecosystems at major research universities. They too have good advice and a strong community, and also have more domain experience, rentable high-end lab equipment, proper wet lab space, clean rooms, contract personnel, regulatory consultants, industrial hygiene assistance, etc. I don't understand (but would like to) what the value proposition of YC is over a good university incubator---superior general business advice? (I could easily see that!) Apologies, my original post was incompletely expressed.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]