
SigOpt (YC W15) Helps Customers Optimize Everything from Ads to Shaving Cream - g_h
http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/12/sigopt-launch/
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Zephyr314
I'm one of the founders of SigOpt. Let me know if you have any questions about
what we do, how we do it, or the math behind SigOpt. We'll be in the thread
all night and are happy to answer any questions.

~~~
ipsum2
> Even more intriguingly, SigOpt helps you optimize physical experiments. For
> example, Clark said one of his initial customers is using SigOpt to test
> different chemical combinations in creating shaving creams. It shouldn’t
> matter what you’re testing — Clark said SigOpt’s technology just uses your
> data and “builds up this model of what it thinks the world looks like. …
> It’s designed to be a very general system.”

This is really vague, can you give some more technical details on what's
actually happening?

~~~
Zephyr314
Great question. We build off of research in Design of Experiments [1] in
general and Optimal Learning [2] in particular. Our algorithms attempt to make
the tradeoff between exploration (learning more about the space we are
optimizing in) and exploitation (using the information we have to achieve the
best values) to find optimal parameter configurations for experiments as
quickly and efficiently as possible.

This has been an active field in academia for the last few decades, and the
seminal paper behind some of our algorithms was published in 1998 [3]. There
have been many successful applications in different fields from drug discovery
[4] to nanotechnology experiments [5].

We wrap these powerful techniques behind an API and web interface to let
anyone start running optimal experiments and leverage this research right away
for any experiment they are trying to optimize. We have some more examples and
a use case on our site [6].

[1]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_of_experiments](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_of_experiments)

[2]:
[http://optimallearning.princeton.edu](http://optimallearning.princeton.edu)

[3]:
[http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1008306431147#pag...](http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1008306431147#page-1)

[4]:
[http://people.orie.cornell.edu/pfrazier/Presentations/2014.1...](http://people.orie.cornell.edu/pfrazier/Presentations/2014.10.CAM-
web.pdf)

[5]:
[http://optimallearning.princeton.edu/tutorialsciences.htm](http://optimallearning.princeton.edu/tutorialsciences.htm)

[6]:
[https://sigopt.com/cases/physical_experiment](https://sigopt.com/cases/physical_experiment)

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onion2k
A very minor point, but your FAQs state you get 3 experiments in the free tier
([https://sigopt.com/faq#How-much-does-SigOpt-
cost](https://sigopt.com/faq#How-much-does-SigOpt-cost)) while the pricing
page says you get just 1
([https://sigopt.com/pricing](https://sigopt.com/pricing)).

~~~
pfhayes
Oops! Thanks for the heads up. We'll make sure that gets fixed.

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dkarapetyan
A mathematician at the helm. This is cool.

~~~
Zephyr314
Thanks! Let me know if you have any questions about SigOpt or the math behind
it. I'm happy to explain things or provide references!

~~~
dkarapetyan
Will do. The list of references in the other comments is enough to digest for
now.

