snowmaker

13 ms·

61.
by snowmaker 6y ago
I agree that no one insight in this essay is especially surprising. But I think the right way to think about this is Paul Graham's framework http://www.paulgraham.com/sun.html . Paul points out that if you are talkin
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by snowmaker 6y ago
This is the article you meant: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/01/opinion/coronavirus-viral...
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by snowmaker 6y ago
Demo day is never mandatory, and for this summer batch it will be fully online.
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by snowmaker 6y ago
Thanks, I'll update that.
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by snowmaker 6y ago
You should apply. Whether there are companies we've already funded doing something similar is not a factor in our decisions.
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by snowmaker 6y ago
I'm not sure where that belief would come from. YC only takes online applications, rather than getting introductions to founders like most investors do. When we're reading an application, we wouldn't even know if the founde
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by snowmaker 6y ago
No, this is a smaller and more technical change. YC's standard deal ($150K for 7%) isn't changing. This is about how we handle pro rata investments.
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by snowmaker 6y ago
(I work at YC) There are a couple of things in this comment that aren't true, and I want to respond to make sure that people reading it don't come away misinformed. YC does not distribute lists of "top companies" to inve
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by snowmaker 6y ago
A few points here that might help: 1) It's not quite accurate to say that YC is running out of money, though I could see how the article could read that way. YC is fortunate to be well-funded. However, we saw that if we continued ou
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by snowmaker 6y ago
You're right that that is a theoretical possibility, but I think it's very unlikely in practice. In the VC world, term sheets are only technically non-binding; breaking a signed term sheet is considered a Big Deal.
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by snowmaker 6y ago
If you enjoyed this, I recommend Lyn's more recent article, post-covid: https://www.lynalden.com/great-depression/
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by snowmaker 7y ago
Actually, the testing rate is leveling off because we have ran out of the necessary supplies to increase it, not because we have satisfied demand. It is still being rationed everywhere in the US.
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by snowmaker 7y ago
Sorry! We had a glitch :)
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by snowmaker 7y ago
Yes, and there are companies working on exactly this. Abcellera is furthest along: https://www.fiercebiotech.com/biotech/lilly-taps-abcellera-t...
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by snowmaker 7y ago
It's the opposite. The PCR tests are more specific (99%) than sensitive (perhaps 90%, we're not really sure).
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by snowmaker 7y ago
We're going to do professional recordings ourselves; founders won't have to worry about video production.
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by snowmaker 7y ago
I think the idea of startups offering perks as a way to compete with big companies is a good one. Being more flexible on how employees work and offering things most big companies don't (fully remote, for example), is one of the things
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by snowmaker 7y ago
Thank you for introducing me to Duverger's Law! I had been looking for that concept for a long time but never knew how what it was called or how to search for it.
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by snowmaker 7y ago
Are there any real world applications that are built on Cyc's knowledge base and actually in regular use? Is Cyc critical to those applications or could they have been more easily built some other way?
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by snowmaker 7y ago
We kept the intent but changed the structure. After trying it both ways, we learned that it worked better when we didn't break bio out separately. So we're still super interested in funding bio companies (hence the Ginkgo partne
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by snowmaker 7y ago
We have a similar partnership with Atomwise: https://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-partners-with-atomwise-to-fu...
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by snowmaker 7y ago
As an American I found this list funny at first, and then it made me realize how difficult it must be for people who learned English in other countries to come here. While this may have been intended as a joke, it may actually be useful to
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by snowmaker 7y ago
This is still one of my favorite pieces of writing. I try to re-read it at least once a year.
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by snowmaker 7y ago
What's the name / link for the group? I'm interested in learning more about this.
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by snowmaker 7y ago
I think you answered this very well yourself: "In biology its not at all a good assumption that if it makes sense in your head, then it will work in a human being, because no single person (not even a mythical House MD) has a full ment
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by snowmaker 7y ago
Thanks for reading the Shasqi paper and for the detailed comment! It seems if I can paraphrase your argument that it boils down to: "Just because your drug works in a mouse doesn't mean it will work in a human. So even if it work
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by snowmaker 7y ago
That's fair. I updated the text about OpenTrons. I didn't mean to suggest that all experiments could be automated. Today, as I understand it, it only really pays to automate workflows that you want to do many times.
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How Biotech Startup Funding Will Change in the Next 10 Years(blog.ycombinator.com)
150 points by snowmaker 7y ago|53 comments
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by snowmaker 7y ago
No. That's not the way investments work.
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by snowmaker 7y ago
Some of the companies presenting are hard tech companies like you mentioned. For example, Athelas (blood diagnostics), Inokyo / Standard Cognition (stores with cashierless checkout), volans-i (delivery service via drones). Those comp

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