
Experiment.com Gains Big Venture Backers To Bring Crowdfunding To Science - skndr
http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2014/02/05/experiment-com-gains-big-venture-backers-to-bring-crowdfunding-to-science-research/
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irollboozers
Microryza/Experiment founder here, we're excited to launch a new landing page
introducing the new name. [http://experiment.com](http://experiment.com)

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berberous
Love the new name! Microryza was very unwieldy.

Edit: I'm getting an error when trying to signup with FB:

"The change you wanted was rejected.

Maybe you tried to change something you didn't have access to."

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irollboozers
Thanks for pointing this out, we're looking into it right now!

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Blahah
This is excellent news. I really look forward to seeing Experiment grow. These
are two challenges I foresee...

1\. At the moment, the people posting projects are _mostly_ PhD students. This
is excellent for PhD students, but the real challenge is getting more
entrenched scientists to explore this new medium. I've seen a few professors,
but not many. I'd love to know how Experiment are planning to engage the
science community.

2\. Currently it's only open to US scientists. This really sucks for the rest
of us. A major potential benefit of this platform is to open up science to
those in places where science funding is _really_ bad, unlike the US where
it's just not as good as it used to be, but is still tens of billions per
year. Please fix this.

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jrkelly
Guessing you aren't seeing many professors since funding numbers are too low
right now. Looks like biggest projects getting funded are ~$10K. Presumably
that changes as it gets more popular.

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cowsandmilk
yeah, most of these grants won't even cover a grad student for more than 3
months. Most professors are going to spend their time on NSF and NIH grants
that will support multiple students for 5 years.

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Fomite
This is the big problem for me. Even a "hit" crowd funded project is a pretty
tiny slice of a real grant, and still takes time and energy.

It is on the other hand great to let a PhD student get some funding for their
work, pay for a field visit, etc. Crowd funding is a supplement to internal
grants and pilot grants at this point, not the NIH/NSF lifeblood of most labs.

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InquilineKea
Don't administrative fees and tuition suck up a huge percent of grant money?

Could crowdfunding get so much more bang for the buck, as compared with
traditional funding?

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rpedela
Yes they do, but I wonder if those still apply in this case or not. At the end
of the day, it is still money coming into the university.

Edit: To answer my own question, funds are currently not subject to university
overhead according to their FAQ.

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Fomite
The funds aren't currently subject to overhead according to the _funder_ , but
that seriously demotivates grant staff to shepherd a tiny little grant that
isn't particularly helping.

That's what I meant by more trouble than it's worth. A staff member going
"meh" can turn into a huge time sink.

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mrcactu5
Is it possible to Kickstarter to fund science or engineering projects?

Kickstarter seems geared towards the music, arts or engineering with clear
visual impact. Most science does not have elevator pitches -- they are hard to
explain or visualize, and they deal with unsexy issues.

Einstein said if you can't explain a theory to a 5 year old you don't
understand it. Is that even really true?

I doubt you can explain the technical details of web apps to the typical
5-year old. Perhaps that is just a defect of our current explanations?

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ajaymehta
Check out this (non-Kickstarter) campaign:
[https://pledge.immunityproject.org/the-free-hiv-aids-
vaccine](https://pledge.immunityproject.org/the-free-hiv-aids-vaccine)

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cindywu123
the team behind the immunity project is awesome!

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clavalle
I once spoke to a doctor that was trying to raise funding for a lab to develop
a drug that he'd been working on and take it to the next stage.

I asked "How much are you trying to raise?"

"Oh, about $300 million."

I had to rehinge my jaw.

Apparently physical labs are expensive.

This is just one second hand data point. Does anyone else have experience in
this space? Are setting up labs and development/manufacturing environments for
relatively early stage bio companies really this expensive?

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jrkelly
There are a places you can rent a wet lab biology bench for <$1K/month in both
Boston and SF. You still need to buy equipment and materials but you'll have
lab infrastructure/permitting OK. If you just need to do really bare bones
basic molecular biology (no major equip needs) I think you can get off the
ground for $50-100K per year for lab/materials. Once you get any real traction
will get more expensive.

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dekhn
labor costs are going to swamp this unless you're assuming volunteer/low cost.
And in that case, it's hard to get a good throughput because people are...
well, volunteering and that rarely works out well.

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jrkelly
yeah, founder salaries would be on top of that - I was just talking about
lab/materials. Fortunately if you are coming out of PhD program you're used to
working for low cost.

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SimHacker
Would developing an educational computer game about science (i.e. based on
SimCity but with special features to support using it in the classroom and
teaching topics like global warming, pollution, economics, etc) be within the
scope of this site?

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Blahah
Yes it would. Can I email you about this? I think we can help. Alternatively
please feel free to email me - see profile.

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SimHacker
Great, thanks!!

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svantana
Coincidentally, Lawrenceville Plasma Physics recently announced that they
would look to crowdfunding for financing their fusion reactor. I find it both
sad and hopeful that one of the most promising projects for solving humanity's
energy problem looks for funding this way.

[http://lawrencevilleplasmaphysics.com/index.php?option=com_l...](http://lawrencevilleplasmaphysics.com/index.php?option=com_lyftenbloggie&view=entry&year=2014&month=01&day=24&id=114%3A2014-kickoff-
report-looking-back-the-year-ahead&Itemid=90)

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judk
Sad because you prefer that the government somehow choose to fund this
worthwhile project? Because you don't trust the public to support worthwhile
projects?

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jenntoda
Awesome to see crowd funding getting leveraged for such great potential. The
team's been at this for a while and making good progress. Great to see the new
name!

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cindywu123
thanks jenn!

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lifeisstillgood
I am all in favour of funding more science (I seem to remember Brian Cox
quoting that the UK banking bailout was more than the cost of all science
funding globally, since the Renaissance.)

I would like to clarify a couple of instant worries

\- ethics committees ? Who runs the ethics committee? Is it public which ones
they reject ? UHauling dinos is one thing but bio-ethics will get messy fast.

\- peer reviewing - if I invest I want to know the output is a success - is
there a systemised approach for this? must they publish to get final drawdown?
it's not really an in estment as the usual measure that you did not stuff up
your last experiment is that a grant committee finds you again

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daemonk
Would the site be geared more towards projects with translational or immediate
impact value? Is there any room for basic research? I guess it depends on how
you sell it to people.

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cindywu123
all three

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Fomite
One of the bigger obstacles to me, besides the current level of crowd funding
being at the "student project" or "preliminary data" level, and thus still
needing to heavily compete for grants is institutional level resistance.

Every grants office I've talked to has essentially responded with "Wait,
what?", and the amounts are small enough that it's often not worth the
administrative hassle.

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kriro
Interesting. I was just thinking about how expensive it would be to quit my
job but still do science on the side. And I'm not in a field with expensive
experiments or anything just travelling to conferences etc. adds up to a lot.

Good luck, seems like a good idea :)

Edit: Found a typo: "research funded ourside of the traditional science
funding system" ... should (probably) be outside

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irollboozers
Thanks very much! We'd like to encourage people to think about 'indie science'
in the same way as independent film, music, and art when those first started.
Our researchers are both tenured professors in academia as well as citizen
scientists!

Thanks for pointing out the typo, should be fixed!

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jmount
Unfortunately seems like a great opportunity for wastes like free energy,
perpetual motion, homeopathy and a so on.

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cindywu123
we have a review process, and recently started bringing in the community to
help review

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wuster
Congrats to Denny & Cindy! They've come a long way in just one year.

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cindywu123
thanks!

