

Ask HN: Is it possible to do a Startup that's a Research Center? - arturventura

I was wondering this a few days ago, while reading about Microsoft Research. I pretty sure that is the answer is a negative, but I would like to know if someone already thought about this.<p>The basic idea is that a Research Center doesn&#x27;t output products but ideas that can be licensed or sold to third parties. Like a for profit SRI that sells time and access to PhD and equipment to do research.<p>Could something like this come out of venture funding?
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ladytron
My husband and I have been doing independent research in computer science
since about 2003. We have funded it all through it consulting work, mostly
with the state government.

It is possible, but up until this point it has not been profitable. But there
are other ways to measure fulfilling work, and independent research has been
enormously fulfilling. Having absolute freedom to set our own research goals
was what kept us from ever taking VC. It is not the life for everyone but it
is the life for us.

~~~
ScottBurson
Very cool! Have you published anything?

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idexicon
Short answer: No, except some granted patents.

Long answer: We have delved into so many areas, worked so hard in seclusion
for the past several years, almost existing in a parallel universe to Silicon
Valley. Our own private Idaho, if you will. New database structures,
encryption, automatic parallel programming, low power servers, basically
whatever suits our fancy. Now it is decentralized genomics. Who knows what
tomorrow may bring?

I figured out early on that we were so weird that PhD land, corporate
research, VC-istan, and federal contracting would think we were too "out of
the box". So we decided to go it alone. We are motivated by pushing science
forward purely, and the other groups have competing objectives that did not
suit us.

The tragedy is that many of our inventions and code may never be used by the
masses. We are so private the thought of sharing our work is excruciating. We
have amassed a large amount of work. I guess we will start sharing it soon,
but that would pull us away from the development, which would be terrible. :-)

~~~
S4M
That looks super interesting. Do you have links where you show your work?

~~~
ladytron
Nope. Not even a website. Until now we have kept it all to ourselves. I do
believe we will be sharing information with possible licensees in the near
future though.

That's the thing - in the research for hire business secrecy is pretty
important. You are trading your code, patents, and trade secrets for
compensation. It is prudent to stay private.

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wmf
That's how Intellectual Ventures started; when it didn't work they switched to
patent trolling.

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acomjean
Its based at a university, but MIT media lab takes sponsorship from a lot of
corporate entities.

[http://www.media.mit.edu/sponsorship/sponsor-
list](http://www.media.mit.edu/sponsorship/sponsor-list)

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afafsd
Sure, it's possible, but good luck getting funding.

Doing research for profit is very tricky, which is why it almost inevitably
winds up being done at a loss. The world is full of entities (such as
universities and government labs) which would love to be able to do research
at a profit, but they succeed only sporadically despite the advantages of lots
of smart people and equipment.

The sort of research that can turn a profit is usually fairly incremental
stuff (e.g. let's formulate a new kind of paint), and is done within large
companies' own research labs with deep domain expertise and trade secrets you
won't be able to get your hands on. You can try to invent an improved paint
and licence it to DuPont if you like, but if they want it they'll probably
have got there before you.

Bluer-sky stuff, on the other hand, takes really long timescales and large
numbers of people, with low probability of success. You'll be competing
against university researchers in the same field who aren't even patenting
their work.

There _is_ money to be made in the last mile -- taking technologies from the
point where they're almost ready to hit the market, doing that little bit of
extra research to bring them to market, patenting your method and watching the
bucks roll in. But opportunities like that are rare and heavily sought after,
and even _then_ it usually involves a crapload of money and risk. You can
build a startup around just one of these ideas if you can find one, but nobody
will give you money to go around looking for them in general, just like nobody
will invest in your gold mine until you've actually found some gold.

~~~
PaulHoule
A lot of companies get SBIR grants from the government to do stuff like this.

You get what amounts to a seed round and a series A with no dilution, few
strings, and you own to IP you come out with.

[http://www.nsf.gov/eng/iip/sbir/](http://www.nsf.gov/eng/iip/sbir/)

