
YC Research - sama
http://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-research
======
aresant
I love this idea.

Not sure if this is driving your thinking but this would open a desperately
needed alternative to Academia if you can scale this idea as successfully as
you've scaled startups.

I've watched my genius brother-in-law (PhD Materials Science & Chemistry /
Biomimicry) be consumed by a very broken UC system over the past decade.

Started with an exceptionally bright, curious, and inventive man who created
breakthrough science in self-healing materials for the "benefit of the world"

10 years of grant fights, personnel struggles, under-served licensing
resources, conflicting lab-vs-student priorities, etc has put him out the
other end hopeless and disenfranchised.

The world will probably lose one of their best "public" researchers to the
bowels of commercial science as a result.

Go for it Sam, good luck and excited to see what your first projects are.

~~~
biswaroop
Seconded. This is brilliant. As a physics PhD student at MIT who's leaving to
build a startup, I'm finding it a relief to leave a broken system.

The academic community is fraught with politics, mismanagement, and
inefficiency. Researchers are driven by a need to get published and get grant
funding, not to expand the frontiers of human knowledge.

Impact is currently measured by citation pagerank, and broader impact is
undervalued. Outreach efforts (blogging, education) are consistently
stigmatized [1]. This needs to change.

I would love to see more transparency and accountability in research. I've
seen Nature papers continue to be cited despite completely wrong conclusions
(the 'erratum' was published as a separate paper in PRL). The arXiv was a
great first step at opening up access to papers, but the large publishers
continue to hold cartel-levels of control over scientific knowledge.

I'm super excited about YC research. Would love to see a quantum computation
division!

[1]
[http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2011/03/30/...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2011/03/30/how-
to-get-tenure-at-a-major-research-university/)

~~~
matheweis
Wow, I knew things were bad, but the education system must be well and truly
broken when the students at one of the world's top research universities are
leaving to build startups, and calling it a broken system on their way out.
(No sarcasm intended; I couldn't find a way to say this better).

~~~
hugh4
In fairness, all systems are broken, academia isn't much more broken than
anything else involving large numbers of mortals.

The basic problem is that we need to rank one researcher's merit against
everyone else's, and there's no perfect way to do this because nobody can
familiarise themselves with every individual's research. Rely on peers'
opinions to measure merit and you just reward back-scratching. Rely on
objective measures like citation counts and h-index and you incentivise people
to focus on these instead of research quality.

The thing is that macro-scale works pretty well. As an overall system,
academic science produces new knowledge at an astounding rate, and in terms of
dollars in to research produced I'd say it works pretty efficiently. The
measures we use are correlated with research quality even if they don't
measure it perfectly.

It's only at the detailed scale where it looks badly flawed.

edit: and of course whenever I spend a long time writing a thoughtful comment
I get the "you're submitting too fast, please slow down" message. Time to
leave this comment to sit for an hour before pressing reply again...

~~~
amelius
> Rely on peers' opinions to measure merit and you just reward back-
> scratching. Rely on objective measures like citation counts and h-index and
> you incentivise people to focus on these instead of research quality.

In the meantime, Google seems to have developed a pretty good ranking system
that is difficult to game.

~~~
grkvlt
Don't citation indexes work pretty much _exactly_ like Google's PageRank, with
cites taking the place of href links? A parent comment seems to suggest the
same thing, so it looks like the ranking _is_ gameable.

In practice I understand this happens via citation-swapping (similar to link
swapping, or paid links in blogs) and poor-quality journals accepting articles
for a fee, or without review (much like paid content, or content farms) and
papers that cite other articles just for the increase in rankings (similar to
link farms) so the analogy to SEO (in its various hats) seems to fit.

This would suggest that the only way to fix the 'broken' citation ranking
system is the same as Google, and bolt on empirically determined heuristics
above the pure mathematical model of PageRank, and black-list or penalise
certain journals or types of citation?

~~~
amelius
> and bolt on empirically determined heuristics above the pure mathematical
> model of PageRank

The impact of Google doing this is, in financial terms, probably much larger
than if the same type of approach would be applied in the academic situation.
So if Google is allowed to do this, why can't we allow the same approach for
research? Apparently, the system works quite well.

~~~
tonypace
Honestly, funding a research team to develop a science ranking engine that was
both being continually developed to thwart gaming and effectively independent
of university and science-funding politics would be a truly excellent use of
YCombinator's money.

------
sama
I was hoping to answer questions here for awhile but I'm getting pulled into a
crisis so I have to go.

I'm going to do an AMA on HN later this week (mostly to answer questions about
applying to YC) and would be happy to answer more questions about YCR then.

~~~
j2kun
My only question is where do I sign up? (as a young researcher who wants to
work on important problems)

~~~
onekiloparsec
Same question here. But I guess sign up page will arrive on due time. What a
fantastic initiative anyway!

------
pavornyoh
It takes a special person to donate $10 million to a new project. You don't
get enough credit Sam Altman. Good job and a very good idea.

EDIT: Why am getting down votes for this comment? You must know that in this
world not everyone is willing to part with their money and are not that
giving. So relax before you down vote me promptly:)

~~~
MrBra
I downvoted by mistake! I wanted to upvote.

~~~
pavornyoh
It will cost you a buck buddy:). I was about to weep after losing my hard
earned karma point. (Just kidding).

~~~
rsync
Stop it. Don't discuss the scoring system or your downvotes or "not sure why
downvoted, but ...".

Don't interrupt the real discussion to meta-discuss the scoring system.

~~~
pavornyoh
We are not discussing the scoring system if you pay close attention. I made an
initial comment and if it is misunderstood hence the edit of the original
comment. Clarifying my comment does not take from the original discussion.
Does it?

------
markbao
Reminds me in some way of this tweet from PG last year:

 _> Paul Graham (@pg) — Markets are usually quite clever but one place they
break is in encouraging treatments rather than vaccines. Subscription
revenue._

[https://twitter.com/paulg/status/498875418527543297](https://twitter.com/paulg/status/498875418527543297)

~~~
mdpopescu
As someone else already replied, that's an incentive problem. If you change
the incentives to "pay $X a month while healthy, pay nothing when sick" then
the profit would be in the cure.

Unfortunately, we switched from that a while ago (my understanding is that we
used to do "pay while healthy" around the 1900s) and now the current way seems
"normal".

~~~
Fomite
Except that tweet isn't really accurate - vaccine research is pretty active,
and modern, new vaccines have made their makers a fair bit of money.

Beyond that, vaccines _are_ a "Pay $X per month while healthy" treatment - you
have to treat _everyone_ whether they're sick or not, and as long as humans
keep breeding, you have a replenishing customer base unless we manage the
(rare) feat of eradication.

The problem is that modern vaccine targets are _hard_. Multiple strains,
dangerous responses from partial immunity (Dengue), very rapid viral evolution
(HIV, flu), etc.

~~~
maxerickson
What about stuff that isn't very transmissible person to person?

(like Lyme disease, which had a vaccine pulled, I'm under the impression that
it was not pulled for great reasons)

~~~
Fomite
One of my examples, dengue, is vector born, like Lyme. That's no promise the
vaccine will be easy to develop. In the case of Lyme, I'd assert there's very
few drug development paradigms that are robust to anti-scientific hysterics
(says the person at a conference that regularly gets chronic Lyme picketers).

------
myth_buster
This thread [0] from couple of days back on Alan Kay's views on recreating
Xerox PARC seems relevant.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10322929](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10322929)

~~~
sama
We talked to Alan at great lengths in the process of putting this together. He
is the most insightful person I've ever met on how to structure an
organization for great research.

~~~
myth_buster
Glad to hear that! Some of his thoughts really resonated with me although they
run counter to the current corporate research culture.

I think Google managed to recreate something similar with their 20% projects

~~~
shas3
> "recreate"

Other companies have had the 15% / 20% culture, etc. long before Google.
Example,
[http://archive.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/1998/01/9858](http://archive.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/1998/01/9858)

~~~
myth_buster
I'm not saying Google came up with 15/20% culture, all I'm saying is that they
got some benefit from it just like Xerox got.

------
waterlesscloud
TIL that Sam Altman has considerably more personal wealth than I would have
guessed, if I'd ever been inclined to guess.

Anyway, this is very cool. Exactly the sort of thing that needs to happen to
push the world forward in deeper ways. I'll be very curious to see what sort
of teams they put together and just how fundamental and long term and
heretical they go with their research.

~~~
seiji
If every poster here had their net worth attached to their username, you'd
probably cry.

We all realize founders maintain "a lot more" equity than employees, but it's
almost like our brains aren't wired to recognize, remember, or rationalize how
some people get really really rewarded more than others. With Sam being grand
poobah of YC, he's on a life track to being a liquid-capable multibillionaire
within 5-10 years after the current unicornpalooza goes through a few rounds
of lofty exits.

My propositions for SF to require all equity-exited techies to tattoo their
net worth on their foreheads keeps getting shot down by anonymous "concerned
citizens."

------
jxm262
> We’ll especially welcome outsiders working on slightly heretical ideas (just
> like we do for the startups we fund) and we’ll try to keep things small—we
> believe small groups can do far more than most people think.

What's the process for an outsider to get involved? This sounds like a really
cool and much needed movement. Will more information be coming soon on how to
apply/join/contribute?

~~~
sama
We'll have more info on this in a month or so!

------
hbhakhra
I like the idea of YC funding research. Bias free and politics free research
can go a long way. A couple of questions though for @sama:

1\. Where will the research be based? Is YC providing space to setup lab?

2\. One of the problems I see with this is lack of fellow researches present
on site making casual collaboration harder (compared to a research university
campus). Have you thought of that?

3\. Are you planning on funding researches with track records or people with
high risk/high reward ideas that are relatively new?

~~~
sama
1\. SF for now.

2\. Yes, eventually we'd like to have multiple groups in the same space just
for this reason--I always think the interdisciplinary stuff is underrated.

3\. Some of both, probably, but mostly we want to support people that the
existing system does not support (e.g. people that are not yet famous)

~~~
gone35
FWIW, two (partially self-serving) suggestions:

1\. Try set up a lab in Cambridge at some point down the road.

2\. Pay particular attention to CS theory: it's (arguably) high-impact and
very cost effective --you can practically fund an entire generation of
researchers in a subfield for a fraction of the cost of, say, a major
interdisciplinary initiative. See for instance what the Simons foundation is
doing at Berkeley[1].

Best of luck with what you're doing. You can end up _actually_ changing the
world in this way.

[1] [https://simons.berkeley.edu](https://simons.berkeley.edu)

~~~
lightcatcher
Serious question: In what ways is CS theory high-impact?

I'm particularly interested in any arguments that complexity theory is high-
impact (beyond the very useful insight that there are some problems for which
no polynomial time algorithm is known). I have a pretty good idea of the
impact of cryptography and randomized linear algebra (sometimes considered CS
theory), but am also interested in hearing about other fields considered CS
theory with useful applications.

~~~
swordswinger12
Graph theory is a good example of this - the asymptotically fastest minimum
spanning tree algorithm was made possible by Hopcroft and Karp just drawing
weird data structures on a chalkboard until union-find popped out, which gives
you near-linear time MST.

------
napoleoncomplex
This is fantastic. Addresses the completely broken aspects of doing research
in academia, gives researchers access to top developers through the YC
network, gives you a much better environment stress and pay-wise than if
you're a researcher, and focuses on meaningful innovation. And the research
will be free to use. Nailed it in so many aspects.

@sama - since you mention that startups aren't good at solving certain types
of problems, is this something you've always believed, or is it a realisation
through your work at YC?

Also was it inspired by the Shuttleworh Fundation in any way?

------
dewitt
> "To start off, I’m going to personally donate $10 million..."

Holy cow. That's real money. Sincerely very impressed by the commitment.

~~~
aroch
I don't want to minimize the awesomeness of the YCR proposal, but $10m isn't
really very much in the scheme of research. NIH alone funds to order of $25bil
a year in science research. Public-private funding schemes probably fund an
order of magnitude more every year.

$10m is pretty much just enough to fund one reasonably sized group, doing
advanced research, for about a year to a year and half. Seems to me that Sam
is hedging so YCR can do its first round in about a year and get a bigger ask
by pointing to the starting groups achievements.

~~~
Amorymeltzer
>$10m isn't really very much in the scheme of research. NIH alone funds to
order of $25bil a year in science research

Sure, but the NIH is funding near to 50,000 competitive grants a year. Some
googling online gives median/average grant size at $300k/$350k. Even $25bil
over 50,000 projects is $500k a project a year. An academic institution will
take 50% or more straight off the top, so you're looking closer to $150k to
$250k a year.

$10 million is a lot of money. Science can be expensive but that $10 million
can last a long time.

~~~
jrochkind1
I agree it's real money, enough to do some real stuff.

But:

> An academic institution will take 50% or more straight off the top, so
> you're looking closer to $150k to $250k a year.

Well, that 'overhead' is paying for things like lab space, electricity, health
insurance (at least for the faculty, good luck grad students), liability
insurance, etc. Not to mention the actual salary of the PI and/or other
researchers -- which universities in STEM schools increasingly expect to be
covered by grants too. The academic institutions would argue all the
'overhead' they take is legit funding of things necessary for the research to
take place, but even if you think they are spending it inefficiently or
'stealing' money for unrelated things...

I think as a rough napkin calculation, the $500K is probably still closer to
that same $500K when YC Research spends it too, not twice as much.

~~~
Amorymeltzer
Maybe, maybe not. I debated bringing it up, and honestly YCR is likely to have
a large, up-front facilities cost (regulations, certifications, etc.). It
would make sense to start easy - don't start off with infectious diseases of
humans - and build from there. But still, I'd wager that YCR will run far more
efficiently than your average university. Someone above brought up the UC
system: management-level positions have grown over 200% the last few decades
([http://universityprobe.org/2011/03/new-data-on-management-
gr...](http://universityprobe.org/2011/03/new-data-on-management-growth-at-
uc/)). Even if we limit the scope to department administrators and staff, YCR
won't need nearly the same sort of personnel infrastructure.

~~~
jrochkind1
More efficiently, I'm sure.

For starters, I'm prejudiced to think any smaller org will run more
efficiently than a larger one (even though I realize this is literally the
opposite of conventional/mainstream assumptions!).

But TWICE as efficient?

Also, I think all those administrator salaries are probably being funded by
tuition (that is, by government subsidized student loans that the students
will be paying back for most of the rest of their lives), rather than research
grants. :)

Or actually you didn't even suggest twice as efficient, you suggested
virtually ZERO costs other than direct research costs -- would we call that
INFINITELY more efficient with a zero in the denominator? :) (Not even
including salaries? Aren't those also funded in part by the 'overhead'?)

~~~
Amorymeltzer
It was a point of comparison. The NIH pool is large but spread very thin and,
we can both agree, less efficiently than YCR is likely to be. Twice? Infinite?
No of course note, but it's a point of interest in the "$10 million isn't so
much" discussion.

And no, researcher's salaries (postdocs, tech, grad students, etc.) are not
included. The indirect costs go to the university to pay for
department/college-level utilities, facilities, infrastructure, and
administrator salaries (which, admittedly, the lab does benefit from).

~~~
jrochkind1
Well, salaries obviously WOULD have to be included in the YC case, there's no
other pool of money for them to come from! So that would actually be a
significant cost that the NIH grants _don't_ have to include (if it's not
included in the overhead), but the YC Research seed money WOULD have to.

But I understand that research faculty in science and biomed are increasingly
expected to bring in grant funding as a condition of employment/tenure. It
sounds to me like the institution expects to help pay their salaries with it.

And with institutions hiring faculty _to_ do research, not caring about
teaching really, evaluated solely on research, they are basically there to do
research... it actually doesn't sound that unreasonable to consider a portion
of their salary overhead. The research couldn't get done if they weren't
getting the salary, after all.

But anyway, yeah, like I said, I do agree with your original point that this
is real money that is enough to fund real research.

~~~
Amorymeltzer
Point of clarification: Researcher salaries aren't included in the indirect
costs aka overhead, they come out of the lab's funding. So 50% indirect costs
of a $300k project means $100k to overhead/indirect costs, and $200k to
research; researcher salaries, grad student stipends, healthcare, etc. all
come out of that $200k. Then what's left of that $200k funds the lab.

------
urs2102
@sama - are the members of these groups going to be selected by YC or will
there be an application process similar to YC?

This is awesome to see, maybe YCR could be the next Bell Labs or something
(although Google probably has a hold on that now).

~~~
sama
For now they are going to be hand-selected by me (the area we are starting
with requires pretty specific domain expertise). Not sure what we'll do in the
future.

~~~
rsync
"For now they are going to be hand-selected by me (the area we are starting
with requires pretty specific domain expertise). Not sure what we'll do in the
future."

Two words: baseband processor.

The world really, really needs a fully open baseband processor.

~~~
cambion
It's true that we need an open baseband processor, but I wonder if this
qualifies as the sort of blue-sky research that I'm guessing they'll want to
focus on?

My feeling is that the software to accomplish this is already largely there,
but the hard part of getting a design to the fab and actually getting anyone
to adopt it isn't.

I think there would also be a number of regulatory hurdles to cross, since
this would end up being essentially an SDR, and the FCC (for example) already
seems to fear wide public availability for those.

~~~
Natsu
They only care if you can make it work on channels it shouldn't, they don't
care whether the code that controls it is open or not.

But yes, an open processor could help with a lot of open networking problems,
even though it seems more like an engineering matter than research per se.

------
moinnadeem
Hi. Seventeen-year old high schooler here, I love this idea. (@sama, anyone
else behind YCR):

All my life I had wanted to go into industry, follow that classic Steve Jobs,
Elon Musk, Peter Thiel dream that many CS High Schoolers go into.

But recently, I got into research. The CollegeBoard opened up a class called
AP Research I am now in, and I spent my last summer researching Machine
Learning at my local private university. I was surprised by how much I loved
it, the math behind it fascinates me (context: am currently taking Adv. Diff
Eq and Linear Algebra my Senior Year.)

I am now trying my own Deep Learning algorithms and working on my paper. I
have always been conflicted between industry and academia, since all of my
fellow HS CS friends just want to found companies in industry. Things such as
YCR make research a bigger dream for youth, whom I would currently argue are
too under-exposed to it. It just doesn't seem as glamorous to them.

Thank you for YCR, it reminds me of the cool things research can do. I can't
wait to hopefully apply one day.

~~~
FD3SA
If you're into any field of applied AI such as Machine Learning, you'll have
no trouble transitioning from industry to research and vice versa. It is a
very flexible skill set and there is a lot of demand for it.

Just go the best university you can and take as many ML and AI courses
possible, there really isn't much you can do wrong.

Good luck.

------
rjurney
This is the biggest news since YC started. The YC model works, but it isn't
churning out disruptions like Xerox PARC did... ethernet, the laser printer,
the PC. It tends to produce Reddits. This could fill that gap. Bravo...

------
silverlake
> We think research institutions can be better than they are today.

I hope you'll expand on this. Is there something that YCR can do that academic
research can't do? You might have more impact if you use that money to
influence US and EU gov't to invest more in basic research. A 1% increase in
annual gov't funding will be vastly larger than YCR's total budget.

The Gates Foundation is tackling difficult health issues that aren't
profitable for companies and neglected by poor governments. They've found an
underserved gap. What's the gap that YCR is uniquely suited to tackle?

~~~
omnisci
To answer your first question, 1\. they can move much faster than academic
research. More money in basic research isn't going to fix the antiquated
process in which academics live. It's also not going to help researchers learn
how to budget properly, or learn to manage people. So that alone is a value
add. A 1% increase in gov spending simply adds money without fixing a problem
that currently exists....not really going to make a difference in my
opinion(PhD research scientist)

~~~
silverlake
I agree that academic science has problems, but YCR isn't going to have any
impact on academic research, funding nor publications. My guess is that YCR
will attempt to be a mini-Xerox PARC: 20 people working on interdisciplinary
stuff in CS. It'll be fun, but it'll be small.

~~~
omnisci
How exactly are you so sure about this? And if it's small, that doesn't mean
it can't have an impact. Also, perhaps I'm missing something, but it doesn't
see like we have any real info about this, if you have more, I'd love to read
it.

It takes someone/something with some ability to make something happen. Are
they going to change how all academic science is done? Probably not, but could
they have an impact and begin a process in which academic science begins to
respond/change? Yes, that is probable. Between YC and Google life science,
things are happening...and it's going to take us (I'm assuming you are a
scientist) to support this change.

------
mrdrozdov
This article seems to have relevance. The Recurse Center is a YC company that
recently began pursuing programming language research.
[https://www.recurse.com/blog/83-michael-nielsen-joins-the-
re...](https://www.recurse.com/blog/83-michael-nielsen-joins-the-recurse-
center-to-help-build-a-research-lab)

------
antognini
Very interesting! But exactly how fundamental is this research meant to be?
Will there be any mathematicians working on projects not at all related to
cryptography or physicists working on projects entirely unrelated to fusion?

As an astrophysicist in the thick of applications for jobs in both industry
and academia, I strongly identify with the points raised in the article. While
I consider my research slightly heretical with the potential to solve many big
problems in astrophysics, I don't have any illusions that it will really lead
to any practical developments. So is this initiative meant to keep scientists
like me working on the problems we're working on, or is it meant to prevent
computer scientists working on a new way for cars to drive themselves from
jumping ship and joining Google or Uber?

~~~
freyr
> _YC has a very high problem flux at this point_

From this statement and, more generally, YC's focus on creating high-growth
businesses, I'm guessing they'll be focused on long-term research with
potential to disrupt markets and have practical impact.

> _So is this initiative meant to keep scientists like me working on the
> problems we 're working on, or is it meant to prevent computer scientists
> working on a new way for cars to drive themselves from jumping ship and
> joining Google or Uber?_

Are these the only options? You sound dismissive of scientists (computer or
otherwise) working on solving practical problems.

~~~
antognini
> You sound dismissive of scientists (computer or otherwise) working on
> solving practical problems.

I don't mean to be dismissive of those working on solving practical problems!
There's a good chance that will be me in the near future! I suppose my concern
is more that people working on those sorts of things already have many more
options and resources available to them. I just mean to state that if one
grants that research without immediate practical application has some (perhaps
qualitative) value for society, then the relative impact could be larger if it
were focused more towards that kind of research. But of course the downside to
that is that the resulting research...has no immediate practical application.

None of this should be taken as criticism exactly since both strategies have
their advantages (and it's not my money anyway), it's just not quite clear
from the post what sort of research is going to be funded.

------
ascendantlogic
YC Research, meet Megalith: [http://progrium.com/blog/2015/10/05/the-
next-10-years-megali...](http://progrium.com/blog/2015/10/05/the-
next-10-years-megalith/)

~~~
rubidium
The trick is to create a Bell Labs and not an Institute for Advanced Study.
For programming related things (assuming that's the domain?), that's a hard
line to draw. Getting regular interactions with the ycombinator classes would
be one way to combat it.

If you're wondering about the criticism of IAS, see this quote:

"When I was at Princeton in the 1940s I could see what happened to those great
minds at the Institute for Advanced Study, who had been specially selected for
their tremendous brains and were now given this opportunity to sit in this
lovely house by the woods there, with no classes to teach, with no obligations
whatsoever. These poor bastards could now sit and think clearly all by
themselves, OK? So they don't get any ideas for a while: They have every
opportunity to do something, and they're not getting any ideas. I believe that
in a situation like this a kind of guilt or depression worms inside of you,
and you begin to worry about not getting any ideas. And nothing happens. Still
no ideas come. Nothing happens because there's not enough real activity and
challenge: You're not in contact with the experimental guys. You don't have to
think how to answer questions from the students. Nothing!"

------
pcmaffey
"heretical" "dangerous" "free to everyone"

Strong language. Especially coming from an organization that generally touts
"ideas as useless." Well here's a model based exponentially upon the promise
of "ideas." I sincerely hope you disrupt the current models, which have been
severely hijacked by interest groups, short-term thinking, and governance.

So yes Sam, you have some bold ideas (you're not yet sharing). Put $10m down
to validate them and bring them to the world. You've earned the chance. And if
you succeed, you'll create a new model that touts the power of ideas, takes
responsibility for them, but does not own them.

Whatever we can do to help.

~~~
tlb
No one at YC thinks that ideas are useless.

Perhaps you're thinking of this [PG, 2005]: _Actually, startup ideas are not
million dollar ideas, and here 's an experiment you can try to prove it: just
try to sell one. Nothing evolves faster than markets. The fact that there's no
market for startup ideas suggests there's no demand. Which means, in the
narrow sense of the word, that startup ideas are worthless._

This is specific to startup business ideas, not scientific ideas. And
worthless != useless. Worthless (in the narrow sense) means you can't sell it
for a lot of money.

------
go1979
Will scientists at YC Research continue the common pattern of academic
research/publications? Or are there some grander plans to disrupt traditional
research?

~~~
gdb
(I'm working with Sam on YCR.)

It's pretty important that YCR groups have strong ties with the existing
research communities — research collaborations tend to have a multiplicative
effect.

So I'd expect to see papers coming out of YCR. However, I'd also expect to see
many other forms of communication (e.g. blog posts, code releases, etc). In
general, we'll tune our efforts to achieve the best research results and
impact, rather than to fit the existing incentive systems.

~~~
pramodliv1
I love the accessibility and content of blog posts by members of Recurse
Center. It would be amazing if scientists from YCR publish informal, yet
rigorous posts for newbies.

~~~
go1979
I was at SOSP until earlier today. During the Q&A of the Chaos graph
processing system, there was discussion of a previous exchange between Frank
McSherry and the authors of the work ... what was REALLY cool was that parts
of the original exchange happened on Twitter and via blog posts and we were
hearing about it at the conference some time later :)

------
mrdrozdov
@sama is this targeted towards pre-PhDs who are deciding between pursuing
their PhD or working in industry, as well as post-PhDs who are full-time
researchers?

~~~
sama
Both.

~~~
mrdrozdov
Sweet!

------
simonebrunozzi
Sam Altman is personally donating $10 Million to YCR. This is one of the
greatest thing he could do to show some honest generosity towards the world.
Bravo.

------
vickychijwani
Surely I'm missing something here. Won't giving YC equity to these researchers
(who are working not-for-profit and releasing IP freely) incentivize research
that benefits YC startups directly and hence increases the value of the equity
held? Can someone explain why not? Honest question.

~~~
coffeemug
_> Won't giving YC equity to these researchers (who are working not-for-profit
and releasing IP freely) incentivize research that benefits YC startups
directly and hence increases the value of the equity held?_

That's equivalent to saying "won't paying in U.S. dollars to these researchers
(who are working not-for-profit and releasing IP freely) incentivize research
that benefits the U.S. Federal Reserve directly and hence increases the value
of the U.S. dollars held?"

Obviously not the same scale, but you get where I'm going with this. Indirect
incentives don't quite work that way.

~~~
vickychijwani
The difference in scale is 4-5 orders of magnitude here, probably more. And at
such different scales, I don't see how the same rules apply.

For instance, trying to increase the value of USD with your work when billions
of people on the planet are doing the same is basically impossible and
unpredictable even if you're a great researcher / business leader / whatever,
to say the least. The same is not the case with YC equity, where you can
expect, with a fairly high probability, a significant increase in your equity
if your research contributes hundreds of millions of dollars worth to a YC
startup.

I'm not trying to be poke holes in the idea or anything like that, just
genuinely wondering -- and the analogy to USD doesn't seem like the right
answer.

------
geebee
It's easier to comment on something specific when you disagree than when you
agree but that leaves a very critical trail after a while. Since I've been
critical of Sam's airbnb position and expressed a lot of concern over the
amount of power a VC would have in the "founder visa" posts in the past, I
would like to chime in to say that YC Research is an intriguing and exciting
development with a lot of money behind it. This has the potential to be pretty
great.

------
andyjohnson0
First, this is really great. I'm looking forward to seeing how it works in
practice.

 _" We plan to do this for a long time. If some of these projects take 25
years, that’s perfectly fine with us. "_

Building an _institution_ that supports this kind of long-term commitment is
going to be a challenge. While there are plenty of organisations that work
over those timescales, very long-term _projects_ seem to me to be unusual -
and not just because results are increasingly expected in the short-term, but
because 25 years is about half of a long career and few people (imo) have the
commitment and self-belief to embark on such a project. I can think of some,
like SETI [1] and Mass Observation [2], but they tend to be highly
distributed. The danger might be that you end-up with something like the
Institute for Advanced Study [3] with its debatable productivity record.

Nevertheless, this is a massively positive announcement from YC. We need more
stuff like this.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_for_extraterrestrial_in...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_for_extraterrestrial_intelligence)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass-
Observation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass-Observation)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Advanced_Study#C...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Advanced_Study#Criticism)

~~~
emanuelev
J Strother Moore would disagree with you, the development of ACL [1] is going
on from 40 years!

[1]
[http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/moore/acl2/acl2-doc.html](http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/moore/acl2/acl2-doc.html)

~~~
andyjohnson0
An interesting project - thanks for pointing it out.

I'm not saying that such long-term projects are impossible, just that they are
rare due to institutional and human reasons. And because they are rare, we
don't have much experience with how to design successful support institutions.

~~~
emanuelev
Yes I do agree with you. ACL is just an example of as the devotion of one or
two persons can bring unexpectedly successful results. Achieving the same in
bigger organisation is a much harder challenge.

------
_pius
This looks amazing ... a modern Bell Labs or Xerox PARC.

~~~
dreamdu5t
Bell Labs had an annual budget of over 3 billion since the 80s.

~~~
sama
Clearly if it seems promising we're going to up the funding significantly.

~~~
suyash
That is great news Sam! This is really exciting to see an incubator starting
it's own research lab and on top of that, keeping it totally in the open
source. I'm fascinated by Research work folks have done at Parc and Disney,
you should have a look here and perhaps speak with someone at Disney as well:
[http://www.disneyresearch.com](http://www.disneyresearch.com)

------
S4M
That's great! Two questions:

\- Will the researchers need to be based in the Bay Area - AFAIK: not the best
place to raise a family?

\- In the short term, how many researchers do you plan to hire?

~~~
sama
Yes, but we're coming in on the very high end of the comp scale. We're also
considering doing things like YC guaranteeing 100% mortgages for the
researchers--housing prices in the bay area are a joke.

We're starting relatively small (on the order of 10) and grow from there at a
reasonable rate.

~~~
Fomite
While I'm somewhat skeptical of the idea (I'll admit I'm an academic
researcher) this seems like a very good step - the Bay Area is becoming cost
prohibitive.

------
CPLX
> YC has a very high problem flux at this point

What does this phrase mean in English?

~~~
ihsw
A significant amount of proposals are too pie-in-the-sky to take seriously
_but still warrant attention_.

Honestly I'd like to see Kickstarter take a stab at this too, providing the
general populace with an outlet to support research projects.

~~~
koopuluri
[https://experiment.com/](https://experiment.com/) \- Not sure what their
numbers are though.

------
staunch
This is the kind of thing Silicon Valley should be doing all the time. I hope
Sam's guts is replicated rather than just admired by other investors. Even if
it's not, this is a great thing.

------
imajes
@sama: is one of the intentions for this group to acquire patents, so that you
may be able to use them in defense for YC companies?

~~~
sama
No--all IP developed is free to the world, so we wouldn't be able to use it
defensively.

~~~
mehrdada
It is possible to structure it as "patent granted to everyone, but expires the
moment they bring up a lawsuit against us or any of our licensees" to do
doubly good for the world.

~~~
eCa
Then it would no longer be free.

~~~
mehrdada
It's not public domain, for sure, but it is free, for some definition of
'free', similar to GNU GPL.

------
mehrdada
This is great. I am hoping things like this will shake the dynamics of
publication-oriented credentialing and ultimately the value proposition of
academia/academic research.

------
choppaface
There are a few YC technical founders who were fired by their non-tech co-
founders for rather flimsy culture reasons. So far YC was pretty hands-off.
What makes YC think it can be effective at managing researchers? Wouldn't that
be much more a function of the YC director(s) of research than the program?

~~~
zt
The culture that exists between companies and founders in YC seems a better
measurement of YC's success than the culture that exists inside any one of
those companies. They run YC after all, not the companies themselves.

I have seen some difficult divorces between founders (with various
combinations of technical and non-technical), and although some might suggest
that YC should arbitrate those disputes more proactively, I think their policy
of being willing to talk things through but not vote their shares is the right
balance for their relationship with the companies.

But YC's success at fostering a positive, supportive culture between companies
makes me quite optimistic that they can create a great environment when it's
their responsibility.

------
netcan
Wow! This seems cool and potentially very useful.

A lot of "how do we fix academia" discussions might be (kind of) asking the
wrong questions. Academia is a very wide cover over a lot of varied things.
That cover is an institution. It has values, rules and ways of doing things.
There might not be anything wrong with the institution per se, rather its
success has brought to many things under its cover. For people, idea or
pursuits that don't really belong there, it seems broken.

Take publishing. Publishing is a great practice and a lot of the conventions
around it are really useful. But, it's not the only way to make information
available, accessible, trustworthy, etc. There are other ways that might make
more sense for some other project.

------
curiousfiddler
I just passively started looking around for a change. My criteria is exactly
what's described here: "work that requires a very long time horizon, seeks to
answer very open-ended questions, or develops technology that shouldn’t be
owned by any one company." [1]. I have been unable to find very many places
that will take non PHDs and let them participate in projects with these
characteristics. I really do hope YCR relaxes the PHD constraint a bit. Look
forward to it.

1\. [https://ycr.org/](https://ycr.org/)

------
thanatropism
Is this more targeted at semi-cofounders/early-employees that fall by the
wayside (like Aaron Swartz, poor soul) or is the plan hiring top researchers
(the way Google got Hal Varian and Peter Norvig)?

------
interknot
This sounds like a great idea, and I can't help but think of this as a very
"Valley" take on Renaissance-style patronage.

Here's hoping this effort has similarly transformative results!

------
abalone
DARPA, the publicly funded agency that generates most of the core tech that
sustains Silicon Valley, has an annual budget of $3B. The National Science
Foundation, which funds a large chunk of core science research, is $7B.

Where would YC Research fit in this landscape? Would it be seeking government
funds, and just offer a different institutional model than universities for
hosting the research? Or would it be primarily based in private funding
somehow (and how?)

------
buro9
I'd love to see research on shaking up governments and the existing political
process with technology.

Now, there are flaws to the use of electronic voting systems and the level of
transparency required, but that is not what I mean.

What I mean is that every time I have run a large community the social
structure that naturally emerges is _not_ the one that we all allow ourselves
to be governed by.

I'd like to research how tech could be used to empower lay citizens to shape
their society in the way that they imagine it should be.

For example; I was interested in Google's internal experiment with voting
transparency and delegation, and how it allows for a different kind of
inclusive democratic process that isn't reflected in our existing systems.

One of the moonshot goals of the forum/community startup I created was to
start to provide tools to support communities that shaped their own political
and social structures, with an express goal of training them in the
possibilities of being engaged in their society and then letting them use the
tools to shape the real world in the same way that they shaped online
societies.

Simply, I'd love to see research and later innovation into how societies and
democratic functions could be.

When we talk about changing the world, I really mean it.

------
trevmckendrick
This is a logical step in YC's path as the "new" university. It's a great
experiment to run, and I can't think of better people to do it.

------
hpvic03
This is great.

I always considered getting a PhD and becoming a researcher, but decided to
remain an engineer for the time being because I've heard so much about how the
academic research system is broken, both with politics and low pay.

If this model works, it might not only help existing researchers be more
productive, but it might motivate other people considering this career to
actually do it instead of other careers.

------
anigbrowl
_We’ll especially welcome outsiders working on slightly heretical ideas_

Are you going to require qualifications, or just sufficiently intriguing
proposals?

------
arrel
> We’re not doing this with the goal of helping YC’s startups succeed or
> adding to our bottom line.

Helping YC startups succeed might not be the primary goal, but it's silly to
say the project isn't also aimed to help YC startups. Having access to a top
quality research team can absolutely help startups succeed, so this is either
disingenuous or surprisingly unimaginative.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
How about "We’re not doing this with the goal of helping _existing_ YC’s
startups succeed". If this solves some big problem, and there are no new YC
startups that come out of it, would indeed be unimaginative.

------
jondubois
I agree, making the world a better place doesn't pay well. Screwing the world
over pays really well.

I remember when I was in school people would often say that to get money, you
have to find something you love doing and the money would come by itself. I
don't know if that used to be true, but that is certainly no longer the case.

In general, doing good is at odds with earning money.

------
Fede_V
I think this is absolutely amazing.

sama has written multiple times about the 'distractions' that pull founders
away from building beautiful products. Things like attending conferences,
networking, fundraising, etc...

Conservatively, the academic equivalent of those things takes up at least 80%+
of the time of a professor's time - and the more successful you become, the
less time you actually dedicate to research. In the life sciences, it's not
uncommon to have PIs with 30+ people in their groups, and they might be barely
aware of the kind of research that's being done in their lab.

I cannot emphasize enough how thrilled I am by this. One tiny concern: it's
currently much easier to get H1B visas for researchers working in educational
institutions than it is for people working in private for profit companies. Is
there any way YC can spin this research into a legal status that would allow
it to recruit researchers through the 'easier' academic H1B pipeline?

------
kfitchard
It's an interesting point about fundamental research. The old industrial labs
are dead and while academic institutions can do a lot someone in the private
sector has to pick up the research mantle. Google X is a good example, but I
think smaller efforts like this are much more interesting. If it's done right
that is...

------
Geekette
Interesting. I am curious though, as to why YCR researchers will also receive
equity in Y Combinator as part of their compensation? Especially given that
both are organized separately and YCR discoveries won't be funneled through or
used in YC. I am also assuming that YCR will pay market rate salaries.

~~~
sama
Above market salaries and also equity.

We want to get the best people in the world, and I think YC equity is a pretty
compelling thing to get. We're competing against e.g. Google, and Google stock
is also a pretty compelling thing to get!

~~~
siong1987
How liquid YC equity is?

I assume that by getting google stock, someone can sell them easily in the
public market. But how does it work with YC equity?

~~~
_sentient
Probably somewhat less liquid with far greater alpha.

------
alecco
Way to put your money where your mouth is! Kudos to Sam. You are a good man.
Hope this delivers amazing results.

------
BinaryIdiot
I like this idea; it's pretty novel. Since there is just one group starting
this off, which makes a ton of sense from a funding perspective, is this an
MVP or a long term bet with regards to this specific group? Meaning if this
group has trouble getting their idea off the ground in the next 1-2 months, do
they get scrapped or are they going to have years to conduct their research?

An idea for future research may be to do almost like a round of start-ups
where a bunch of groups come to SF for 3 months but unlike start-ups you find
the promising ones and keep them all and drop any that do not look promising.
Basically thinking of ways to not put all your eggs in one basic. Naturally
this becomes quite problematic if you're researching something highly complex
that won't show signs of promise for a decade!

------
kevinalexbrown
To be honest, the freedom to fail alone would make a huge difference. On one
hand there's a lot of freedom for intellectual growth in academia - in the
last few months I've used deep learning, assembled hardware under a
microscope, performed neurosurgery and genetic engineering (this is somewhat
standard for my field). On the other hand, I make less than I did as a new
cable guy, won't make more for 10 years, and every postdoc and phd student in
my lab works 7 days / week standard. And if I fail, I will probably be done
career-wise. LOTS of talented people leave because they see startups as the
'safer' bet - at least if your startup fails you're not doomed.

------
HorizonXP
This sounds interesting. I'm curious to see what areas the research will be
focused on.

Are there plans to provide laboratory space for areas that require it? Would
researchers be housed in some space in MV, or would they work out of their own
space like YC startups?

~~~
sama
The first group will be in SF. TBD on other groups. But unlike startups we
fund, these people work for a YC organization, so we will provide space etc.

~~~
Schwolop
As I keep chiming in whenever YC and location come up - please seriously
consider Australia's East Coast. Like the valley, there is a big supply of
world class universities and their graduates, and there's also great weather
and quality of life that keeps people from wanting to leave. What's missing is
an American style risk tolerance amongst the holders of capital. That's
changing, but it's something YC could change even faster with an organisation
like YCR.

Our government has historically underfunded research, and even more often one
side funds it then the other gets into power and cuts it again. As a result,
there are lots of ex-academics looking for more interesting ways of earning a
living!

------
skoocda
Phenomenal undertaking! When you say "Shouldn't be owned by any one company"
does that imply that these releases will all be open-source? Do you have plans
to develop a new form of IP licensing to go along with the research?

------
j0e1
Great job Sam! YC isn't any more only about starting new companies and making
them profitable. But about improving lives for everyone on the planet. And to
do that >'YCR is a non-profit.' Just brilliant!

------
koopuluri
There's repeated mention of academia being broken due to issues such as
politics, and mis-aligned interests between researchers and their departments.
What have been the changes over time in Academia that led to this?

~~~
kd0amg
One of the big ones is that funding has not grown with the number of
researchers, so researchers must spend a larger and larger portion of their
work time on competing to get the work funded (or a longer portion of their
professional life waiting for their chance at actual research-focused
employment).

------
mpweiher
Great idea!

I decided not to go into academia many, many years ago, because a short look
revealed that it seems to destroy the love of the subject matter more quickly
than just about anything.

Now that I am partly back working on my PhD, I am still glad I didn't make it
my main source of income, because now I have the freedom to do _real_
research, rather than gaming the system of academia with minimal viable papers
and incremental research re-gurgitating old insights. ("Doing X in Smalltalk"
10 years later: "Doing X in Java" 10 years after that: "Doing X in JavaScript"
Sigh).

------
earlyadapter
After the collapse of Bell Labs and the inefficiencies at the University
level, this is an effort that can truly impact change.

True fundamental innovation takes 15+years... stable ecosystems (govt
policies, strong economies etc) are needed to foster this type innovation. YC
is definitely a stable environment to foster fundamental inno.

Fundamental innovation also creates new methodologies in two or three areas,
whether it be technology, market or implementation. Everything else is
incremental innovation (new tech enhancing products in a known market), this
can be achieved in 1 to 3 years. Kudos YC!

------
anonbiocoward
Would you be willing to let someone just participate? I have multiple lines of
research and my physics background allows me to reach further into biology and
computation than most biology types. And for a variety of reasons I don't
quite have the same funding problems most people have, but I would _really_
like to work with the groups you are able to put together. I would be happy to
fill out the same application.

Your log files should be able to unmask me but for additional reasons I'd
rather not publicly associate my claims above with my identity.

------
markhelo
I love this idea. However I am not too surprised that YC is doing this. YC is
a different kind of corporation. Instead of hiring engineers, they hire
startups. And just like any well established company, they are now investing
in R&D. Make no mistake, there will be a commercial bent to the R&D that YC
does and there is nothing wrong about that. R&D should not be just about
publishing papers but advancing new ideas in the market too. So overall I hope
this takes off and they bring ground-breaking research out of this venture.

------
zoba
This sounds fantastic; I'm so glad to see it.

I'm curious what areas of research will be chosen, and how. I wonder if there
is any room for a voting style 'the community would like to see resources put
behind this idea' decision making process. (On the other hand, its not the
community's money, so do what you will :)).

I'm guessing all of this will be in the Bay Area?

It'd be great if there was a way for regular folks to help out with this. It
seems to be something genuinely intended to help people and I'd love to
contribute in some way.

------
SalmoShalazar
As a researcher, this is very exciting news. I can't wait to see what areas of
research YC will be directing their efforts towards. I hope the world of
genomics/genetics gets a nod!

------
superfx
Will this be structured in a way where there are groups headed by "PIs" that
set the research agenda, and researchers working under them, or will you be
pursuing a different model?

------
guelo
This seems weird. They'll fund open ended research and then what? Are there
any metrics to guide the outcomes? Why would the average super rich guy want
to put any money into this?

------
glxc
DE Shaw gave away his hedge fund empire to start DE Shaw Research. He
similarly used his own money to start a privately funded research lab. He is
their Chief Scientist.

------
lfx
Well I always wanted to be in Y funded startup. Now my dreams become bigger -
now I want get to YCR.

Congrats Y team! I'm can't wait to see what you come up for next announcement!

------
AndyKelley
This is extremely exciting and I will apply as soon as the application process
is announced. I would love to get funded to work on this open source digital
audio workstation I've been working on[1]. Its goals are perhaps a little
_too_ ambitious and 25 years is not an unreasonable timeline for realizing
them.

[1]: [http://genesisdaw.org/](http://genesisdaw.org/)

------
PabloOsinaga
@sama: how are you thinking about evaluating progress of the groups? it seems
all the bureaucracy in the current research ecosystem derives from the fact
that it is really hard to evaluate progress in research/science. So you form a
committee of experts to evaluate if a given researcher is doing well, and that
eventually leads to politics and bureucracy. what are you thoughts on
evaluation?

------
alexchamberlain
Absolutely fantastic! It's nice to see Sam et al putting their money to good
use.

I really hope that we see some development of new types of programming
languages. We seem to be stuck in a rut with procedural/OO/mostly-functional
languages. Some research around flow based programming, especially related to
machine learning. I can't help thinking we're missing something here...

------
liedra
I hope there will be an independent ethics review committee or similar.

The modern concept and frameworks of Responsible Research and Innovation might
be a helpful starting point.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsible_Research_and_Innov...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsible_Research_and_Innovation)

------
subrat_rout
Would love to know which fields/areas YC will be focusing for research. Is it
for only Computer Science? or Physics? Biomedical Science or behavioral
economics? or combinations of few fields?

And what kind of ideas/research will be given priority? Will it be
bench/desktop based research projects or applied to people lives directly?

------
jrmo
My academic friends and I are constantly talking about how we need startups to
counter/disintermediate the constantly growing administrative overhead at
universities. Without viable alternatives there is just no pressure to keep
administrative costs from balooning. This is a great start and I hope to see
more like it.

------
rw2
Why not give YC a 7% ownership of the IP and YC the other 93%. That would
definitely drive the more entrepreneurial scientists to work there and also
allow YC to monetize products out it's own research.

I have some ideas on technologies that are harder to create and takes time,
but actually want to own the IP at the end.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Why not give YC a 7% ownership of the IP and YC the other 93%.

I suspect that one of these "YCs" is supposed to be someone other than YC, but
its not clear which one.

------
evanwarfel
Sweet! We'll need more things like this if we want to see our share of
societal progress. I have faith that more programs like this will blossom in
the coming years.

@sama -is this only for severely resource intense research projects? And do
you envision this turning into an alternative to graduate school too?

------
lacerta
How do we search and see if the area where I currently do research in is
something that YC Research would focus on in the near future? I am finishing
up a MS in ChBE with a focus on designing materials using computational
methods (eg. DFT) and would like to continue with similar projects.

------
aswanson
"You can't fall in love with the one thing being the hub for all things to
come." Agree, now tell that to the dev responsible for tracking everything I
do on my PC outside of Internet Explorer to be tracked in its search history,
forcing me to revert to an older version.

------
fasouto
Awesome news. It's interesting to see new ways to fund research.

BTW the "Read more" at [https://ycr.org/](https://ycr.org/) point to the Y
Combinator blog not to the post permalink. It will became confusing once you
write a new post.

~~~
gdb
(I put together [https://ycr.org.](https://ycr.org.))

Yep, I'm planning on swapping in the permalink in a day or two, but just want
to avoid making changes during this launch.

------
graycat
Hope YCR works. Suggestion: Get a board of advisors who have had a lot of
experience managing research, and let them occasionally advise you on
opportunities and pit falls.

I got an applied math Ph.D., just to improve the good career I already had
going in applied math and computing, had no intention of being a professor,
but for a while, having to do with my wife in her long illness, I was a
professor.

The biggest problem I had in research was just getting the mathematical word
processing done. The typing was much more difficult than the research! I
published some papers in some good journals and never had a paper rejected or
needing significant revision. I could have done a lot more in research, but I
was really interested just in making money.

For research in academics, that is, the STEM fields, I have long had a
suggestion: Borrow from research in medicine!

Why, how, in what respects? Sure: Research in medicine also has a clinical
side, and a lot of the research, applied research intended to connect with
applications, very much needs the clinical side.

E.g., instead of all the seminars being professors and students presenting
solutions still looking for applications, have about half the seminars with
people from the _real world_ outside academics present problems looking for
solutions. Have professors with their students attack such problems. That way
could get some problems to work on, simple, medium, and really difficult and
important, e.g., P versus NP just from applications of optimization to, say,
vehicle scheduling or communications network design. E.g., I was working on
something applied and rediscovered k-D trees -- a few years earlier and I
would have been the inventor of k-D trees. And there are other examples of
starting with a real problem from the real world and getting good results for
that problem, getting a good research problem, and getting some good research
progress.

Besides, such research already has one application and, thus, is much more
likely to have two or many more than two.

Have an expectation that a professor pursuing applications is a professional
and needs to practice their profession. And the students need to be there also
as apprentices.

Also, have codes of ethics, standards on how revenue is to be distributed, and
professional peer review of the clinical practice.

For more, it would help if the venture capital community were ready, willing,
and able to evaluate original research intended as the crucial core of
startups.

------
softwarerocks
As long as the people hired in are more hands-on and not the Sheldon Cooper
types then it's a wonderful idea, especially that the good stuff will be made
free for everyone. It's also quite endearing that you are putting so much of
your own money into the idea.

------
humility
Congratulations on this great endeavour! I've frequently mulled setting up
website like patreon to help support and accelerate crucial research, which is
seeing less and less progress these days. I'm glad YCombinator took note of
this problem too!

------
bholdr
I wrote a blog post awhile back, I wonder whether YC is after a similar
thing... [http://yansh.github.io/articles/phd-
distruption/](http://yansh.github.io/articles/phd-distruption/)

------
ralucam
This is such an insanely great idea. This (alongside with the YC Fellowship
and the classic YC program) makes us really have no excuse for not doing
something great, that matters for us and for the world. Wow, YC, well played.

------
pow_pp_-1_v
This is really cool! I wonder, though, if YCR will accept donations? It will
be nice if I could personally contribute to a research project. [Loong time
lurker here. Couldn't help myself from commenting on this one.]

------
dschiptsov
Is there any way to participate remotely?

I am not applicable for any visa in so-called "developed" countries - too old
and without higher education (lack of which does not imply much in some cases,
as one might see).

------
eachro
Will YC Research only focus on applied research ideas? Specifically, I'd like
to know about whether or not researchers in pure math, theoretic cs,
theoretical physics, etc will have a place at YC Research.

------
tacos
Interesting comments by pg 1322 days ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3622545](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3622545)

------
mortdeus
What is the patent policy?

------
quantum_state
This is simply brilliant n fundamentally good ... as a former Bell Lab
researcher in fundamental physics, I hope this will allow people with profound
ideas to pursue the ideas ...

------
Dowwie
Are there plans for peer review and highly rigorous verification of results
prior to publication?

Hopefully YCR busts some of the myths perpetuated by industry.

------
mizzao
Great news! Probably the only other non-university lab at the moment with this
type of long-term basic research goal is Microsoft Research.

------
vtlynch
Love the epic lack of perspective in this thread

------
rokhayakebe
Ideas: Free Global Health Care, Free Global Education, Government Management
Software (A to Z), or Private Secondary Government.

------
pitchups
Amazing! This may have far greater impact than all of YC's billion dollar
unicorns in terms of making the world better!

------
pboutros
This is awesome. I'm really excited to see what groups are announced - this is
going to gather some great minds!

------
micheljansen
I get really excited about this. I left academia for the bureaucracy, and
found R&D to often be too short sighted.

Best of luck!

------
bra-ket
this is great, I'd love to see something similar to the Kavli Foundation
growing from this:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kavli_Foundation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kavli_Foundation)

------
dtournemille
Can't view the ycr.org site. Flagged as malware by OpenDNS.
[https://malware.opendns.com/controller.php?url=ycr.org&serve...](https://malware.opendns.com/controller.php?url=ycr.org&server=yvr15&prefs=&tagging=&nref=)

------
chm
Wow, YC is realizing a dream of mine. Congratulations, it is a great idea!

------
ratsimihah
Hey there! Can I apply to YC Research for my AGI research project? :)

------
it_learnses
this is awesome. I'm just finishing my masters, and would love to do phd in
the same area, but the TA grant is measly. no way I can do that right now.

------
djabatt
YC is being brave and smart ... again. Keep it up.

------
Ind007
Thanks for making me feel good in the morning.

------
tefo-mohapi
Sounds good. Would love to see what comes out.

------
hoorayimhelping
This is amazing. Where do I sign up to help?

------
amelius
Can we vote for projects somewhere?

------
ramon
Nice, good luck! Good funding :)

------
pjf
How to apply?

------
pw
> I’m going to personally donate $10 million

Statements like this always turn me off. I guess it's because it breaks the
illusion that Sam and everyone else at YC are normal people like most of us.
They're not. They're INSANELY wealthy by any reasonable standard.

~~~
Imscaredofsama
The whole sama thing doesn't compute for me and has negatively impacted my
otherwise stellar view of YC.

He dropped out of Stanford, founded Loopt (which raised $30 million and then
acqui-sold for $43 -- and I'm sure Sequoia got the bulk of it), was then made
a YC partner and finally appointed president. His Wikipedia page says he's
made some angel investments in successful companies like AirBNB, but my
question is: "With what money?" Maybe he sold some private shares of these
companies at some point. There's nothing wrong with that. But again where did
the _original_ money come from? Family?

I just don't get it. Please explain to me how dropping out of college and
having your only startup fail leads to (a) being handed one of the most
prestigious and influential positions in SV and (b) having so much money you
can donate $10 million dollars like it's chump change. How does that make any
sense in this universe?

pg started YC and deserves all the credit for basically inventing the
accelerator archetype. He can do whatever he wants and I guess he thought sama
was the best guy for the job. Maybe he is. Heck, I'll even admit that I think
he's done a good job so far, although I also think plenty of people would be
equally adept at watching a golden goose lay eggs.

I think SV -- and YC especially -- perpetrate a few huge myths which cause
people to have unrealistic expectations of their lives and ventures. ("There
aren't enough engineers!", for example. Just last week, sama was saying how
easy it is to live in SV if you work at Facebook, make a $150k+ salary and got
a $75k signing bonus... a situation he was pawning off as "average" but is
actually highly above average.) These lofty, then unfulfilled expectations
then cause depression in vast amounts of people, both inside the Valley and
out.

To me, sama is a colossal SV myth, incarnate. "Look! If you're smart enough,
you can rocket to the moon! Even if you drop out of school and your only
startup fails!"

I don't understand the full story, apparently, but I just hope people aren't
fooled. There is more than meets the eye, here.

~~~
sama
This is worth answering.

I made single-digit millions from the Loopt acquisition. Almost all the money
I've made has been as an investor. I got lucky in that the first few
investments I made in 2009 (very small dollar amounts) were really good, so I
was able to raise capital to keep investing at a much larger scale with other
peoples' money. I didn't have much liquidity until last year.

Takeaway 1: the easiest, lowest-risk way in the world to make a lot of money
is to get fees for investing other peoples' money.

Takeaway 2: if you make money that way I think you should give a lot of it
away.

Takeaway 3: FWIW this is a lot of money for me, but it's what I most want to
support.

As a side note, I was pointing out that living in SV is becoming possible only
if you get a job like that one, and that that's really a problem.

~~~
Imscaredofsama
I respect the fact that you took a moment to add some clarity. Obviously you
have a good sense for politics -- you know this is something people need to
understand.

But hot damn! If you've been so successful people are _literally_ having a
hard time believing it's true... that's... that's... I don't even know.

------
zatkin
I want some evidence that you're actually a PhD student at MIT before I start
believing that the education system there is broken.

~~~
arjunnarayan
I mean, I didn't go to MIT, but I just finished a PhD in CS from UPenn, and
I'll attest that he's not wrong. Perhaps excessively pessimistic on it, but
like, what he's expressed is not an uncommon sentiment. Like you'd hear the
same thing from like a third of the grad students I personally know (across
the entire spectrum of top-20 CS departments). I myself was fairly ambivalent
on my own PhD, but ended up finishing it because

1) I had some strong publications early on in my grad career (first 2 years)
so it made it much easier to get to the eventual finish line without much
hassle.

2) I'm not a US citizen, and graduating means that the immigration pathway
gets a lot easier (EB-1 green card application instead of EB-2, for instance,
and since I'm from India that's a huge difference).

3) My advisor let me study/work on what the hell I wanted in my final 2 years
(essentially some macroecon + finance research at the Wharton school, and
spending a bunch of time reading up and working on large scale graph
computation) so the opportunity cost was low to "finish up" the main line of
thesis work, with the understanding that any future academic career was out of
the question.

~~~
puredemo
Why was any future academic career out of the question?

