
How Scientists Can Thrive in the Startup World - ISL
http://macro.ycombinator.com/articles/2015/11/science-startups/
======
ISL
Submitted because I really wanted to comment on this sentence: "For a startup,
work needs to be both faster and more rigorous than an academic lab."

In our academic lab, if we knew how to be faster, more rigorous, or both, we'd
be doing it.

The notion that a startup can do rigorous research faster than academia is
curious. The scientific journals are _not_ full of the output of startups.
Industry in general, and startups in particular, can't expend the resources on
covering corner cases and tidying loose ends. The profit is generally in
getting the gist of an idea, not in writing it down, vetting every detail, and
sharing it broadly for free.

~~~
rflrob
> "In our academic lab, if we knew how to be faster, more rigorous, or both,
> we'd be doing it."

There are some cases where it's obvious how to be faster (and occasionally
more rigorous): judiciously throw money at the problem. In academia, where
grant funding is pretty limited and equipment is expensive, you probably want
to only have enough infrastructure for, say, the 50th-90th percentile of load
(microscopes, thermocyclers, analysis compute power, what have you), and
accept that 10-50% of the time there will be a queue. If the difference
between being successful in the market and having your lunch eaten by someone
else truly is a matter of weeks, then it makes sense to you and your investors
to put some extra money into a widget that will sit idle for most of the time
but that helps when things are crunched.

That said, money can't fix everything---9 women can't produce a baby in one
month!

~~~
justlurkin
> 9 women can't produce a baby in one month!

> Then you're just not thinking hard enough!

\- My boss

~~~
guelo
You could have 9 women on a constant baby producing staggered cycle so one
baby gets produced every month. Then, when you need a baby you will be able to
get one in 15 days, +/-15 days.

~~~
return0
you would need 12 to be precise.

------
QuantumRoar
The title kind of misled me. It's about how scientists with a degree in
_biotechnology_ (or a related field) can move from academia to the startup
world, not about scientists in general.

For many academic fields there's no equivalent startup tech sector (which is
the actual problem for scientists here) since the most important aspect seems
to be the ability to become a horse with a horn. This means that before all
else, there needs to be a huge potential market.

As a scientist working on a very specific topic, I can assure you that my
market would be approximately five companies in the whole world. Although
every computer and smartphone user could ultimately benefit from advances in
my field of research, my customer would not be the end user, but the
manufacturers.

I assume that this applies to the vast majority of scientists so the picture
actually looks quite grim if you want to keep working in your profession. Many
scientists need to change to an unrelated or remotely related field in order
to get out of academia.

~~~
adenadel
I think that scientists in industry are usually desirable for their skill set
rather than knowledge in their specific field of study. I bet that you would
be able to find industry work in your general field, but, as you say, probably
not in the specific subfield that you've studied so far (this is obviously
somewhat unsatisfying for people who have dedicated years of their lives to
studying something). Out of curiosity, what are you working on?

~~~
QuantumRoar
Simulation of CMOS-Transistors by a semi-classical approach. A self-consistent
deterministic solver for the Poisson equation, Schrodinger equation and
Boltzmann equation including small signal analysis and noise characterization
of the device.

Basically you want to gauge the crude models of circuit designers. But
nanoscale transistors are hard to accurately understand. In particular,
there's currently no good way to get predictive small signal parameters and
noise characteristics of devices at such a scale.

So here I am, doing some of the first decent simulations for transistors at
current technology nodes.

Definitely not something a startup is looking for :)

~~~
adenadel
My focus is on biotech :) but what about Thermofisher working on their Ion
Torrent platform (although this isn't a startup). They use ISFETs for DNA
sequencing. Also there is Oxford Nanopore Technologies which sequence DNA by
measuring changes in current as DNA passes through a nanopore. ONT is a
startup :)

------
cryoshon
This article is interesting to me, but I have to take issue with the concept
of "thriving" for a scientist. I assume the conditions for thriving will be
different for different people, so what follows is my perspective only.

Can a biotechnology startup really provide a better standard of living than
academia? Almost certainly yes, from my experience; free lunch and swag are
fun, and the pay is much better, but still far out of proportion to the effort
put in, which is only slightly less than academia. Can a biotechnology startup
really remove the fun and wonder from science? Definitely yes, especially when
money questions are prioritized over science questions (always). Is it worth
trading the abject discomfort of academia for the semi-comfort of industry and
the fun of science for the humdrum of product pipelining? Only individuals can
answer that question, and I have not yet answered this question for myself. It
is true that industry feels like "selling out" and is seen as such by the
academics, however this may be caused by sour grapes style reasoning when
jealous.

I hate to say this, but most of the industry people I know are far less
intelligent and far less ambitious than the people I knew in academia. They're
far less cut-throat, and have far better teamwork, too. The office politics
are much friendlier, and non-science people aren't looked down upon in
industry in the way they are in academia. More efficient and profitable to
have the industry folks around, sure-- but not a single scientific idealist
around, and certainly no veritable philosophers of science, meaning that
experiments are at worst (either by ignorance or malice) exercises in
manufacturing the desired results, just like in academia. At best, I'd say the
quality of results are comparable between the two institutions. The emphasis
in industry is on production of cash rather than knowledge, which seems
fundamentally not science to me.

So, what is a scientist to do? Hard to weigh in on either side with
confidence. The trouble is that you can't simply leave academia to "try out" a
startup for a while-- it's heresy, and will be punished by refusal of reentry.
I guess this may be changing, but up to the present, that's how it's been for
people. There is a flow of people to industry from academia, but not in the
opposite direction. It's also no secret that industry can be the graveyard of
highly intelligent people who were rising stars in academia before
switching... sometimes they get lost in a dead-end department (recently, such
as many promising folks at Novartis' siRNA team, before it was shut down and
hit with layoffs) and other times they get stuck beneath an imperial-style
boss-- a similar trap in academia.

------
davidgerard
This is the style of thinking that leads to MetaMed. "Everything I don't know
the tawdry details of is simple because I am smart and radical and _more meta
than you_ in my thinking and know the One Weird Trick!" Perhaps you are and
do! But it’s overwhelmingly likely you aren’t and don’t.

------
borski
I'm getting S3 Access Denied errors.

------
mthomasb
Malformed URL here: <p>Jessica Richman, the co-founder and CEO of human
microbiome testing startup <a href="ttps://www.ubiome.com">uBiome</a>

------
Balgair
“Coming from academia, there’s a myth that it’s really risky to join a
startup, and in my experience that’s not true at all,”

Tell that to CS PhDs. Granted, this is mostly about bio, but even here there
is a lot of hope with the bioengineering applications and the disease
modeling. Generally, my anecdotal view is that folks don't want to go to
industry as they all see themselves as getting a tenure track job. Then the
2nd postdoc is not a startling success and they change tunes with only 3
months of funding to go.

Also, as other commenters have noted, Matt De Silva of Notable Labs may have
had a bad quote attributed to him.

“Think about what a ‘hacker’ was to traditional computer scientists. Startups
need the life sciences equivalent of that.” This, as most people looking at
bio from CS, is a laughable statement. I started out as a physicist and got
interested in neuro. I thought that it was just because the bio peeps were
lazy at learning the math, that a mathy person could sweep in and teach 'em
real good-like. Bio is a astoundingly complicated field. You have N
overlapping Gaussian curves describing just 2 variables and each interacting
in an unknown number of orthogonal (you hope) dimensions and variables. Just
take a look at the KNOWN pathways for mammalian mitochondria [0] at some
pressure, temperature, salinity, etc. Any variable can throw this off
incredibly so, or not, or maybe a little bit. Also, what about muscle cells
versus glia? But your study was on mice, not humans, or the humans'
mitochondria has a mutation in it's own DNA (yes mitos have their own DNA).
Oh, and this is just the people you could get samples from. Bio is soooo very
complex. Bio people are nothing but hackers. We have a very small idea of what
is actually going on, and we try to exploit that in any small way we can. Look
at Rita Levi-Montalcini's discovery of NGF for proof [1]. She is an admirable
person and a cherry picked outlier, but a hacker in the truest sense of any CS
person. She set up the lab in her bedroom after being fired for being a Jew in
WW2 Italy. Her dedication to knowledge for knowledge's sake is amazing. She
discovered there is a molecule that pre-destines daughter cells to be
neurological by playing with chicken eggs and viper venom in he closet. If
that is not a hacker, please define.

“The story of a business is about vision and progress: What are you going to
do, how far have you gone so far, and how are you going to make money.” This
is exactly how grants are written as well. They claim a difference, but there
really is none. You have to sell your grant just like you sell any pitch. Yes,
the grants are mostly on paper and not in front of a person, but the story
element is the same.

“In academia, there’s no wheeling and dealing around the grant process." Yes,
there are a lot less places to apply to than there are investors to find, but
there is a LOT of behind the scenes stuff happening here as well. If you have
a proven track record of getting grants and of getting out research, you get
the grants with a lot less questions asked. But, yes, I admit there are a lot
less rejections. A grant a month is typical. 2 a month is a little high.

Overall, the article was largely a PR piece. I think to help Ycombinator (the
site I am posting on) to drive people to them for investment. Not surprising
really. I could feel a bit of the "pick up artist's" technique of 'push-pull.'
You insult a little, then you back it off and repeat. I don't think that was
intentional though. I like the article, but I feel it had a lot of naivete.
Maybe a lot of VCs out there see biotech as a great space, as there is not
really a lot of people in it and the ground seems fertile. I would caution
against that. Biotech is very very hard to get going. FDA approval is
notoriously difficult and expensive. The flip side to that, however, is that
once you make it through, there is almost no competition and you essentially
have a monoploy (hooray patents).

[0][http://s437.photobucket.com/user/teriden/media/metabolism.jp...](http://s437.photobucket.com/user/teriden/media/metabolism.jpg.html)

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rita_Levi-
Montalcini](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rita_Levi-Montalcini)

------
markeroon
Maybe try for a little more rigor in your blog hosting.

