
How founding a company compares to graduate school - vo2maxer
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00219-w
======
streetcat1
It does not.

A Ph.D. goal is trying the go to the boundary of knowledge in a very specific
area (which takes around 4 years), and then extend by 1 inch(by publishing).
The main currency is status.

A startup goal is to create customers. The more boring the better, and the
faster the better. The main currency is money.

~~~
christiansakai
Can you define what boring here is? How does a boring startup be successful if
it is boring? Genuine question.

~~~
streetcat1
It's hard for me to find a startup that is NOT boring

(When did you hear about a startup that does a meaningful R&D?)

The easiest one are B2C:

1) Amazon - selling books.

2) Air B&B - renting rooms.

3) Uber - renting cars (advanced taxi).

4) Facebook - a database (My SQL) for Social Network.

But even "hard" tech startup:

1) Google - research done at Stanford.

2) Databricks - research done at Berkley.

3) Microsoft - No research at all, founders drop from college, Selling
interpreters.

5) AWS - Research done at Cornell. Selling VM

6) VMWare - research done at Stanford.

Only today, we see startups (e.g. Cruise) that are trying to tackle autonomous
driving, which is still an R&D problem, and see where they are.

As for being successful.

There are two risks in a startup - execution risk and market risk.

With boring, you take out execution risk.

For market risk, the main thing is timing (I.e. most of the market risk is
outside your control).

You must be in the right market, at exactly the right time.

Hence you must start the project 2 years in advance and hope that the market
will become "hot" when you finish.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
In fact doing meaningful research is an anti-pattern if you want to get
hyperscale growth.

R&D startups have proven that the only thing in their future is an acquisition
(using Cruise as your example).

~~~
EthanHeilman
Biotech or fusion energy startups generally require a serious R&D investment
whereas a social media webapp does not. MySpace isn't a good model to use for
the next Fairchild Semiconductor.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
I don't even place the former two in the same category of startup as software
startups.

Again, if we define startup as "Growing company in search of a business model"
then fusion energy falls completely outside of that.

You don't get "hyperscale" growth with science (biotech) or infrastructure
projects (fusion energy). I'm unaware of any biotech startups that have grown
to hyperscale. Genentech is the only giant biotech company I'm aware of and it
was started 40 years ago and acquired before any kind of hyperscaling like you
see with software startups.

~~~
fuzzfactor
I think the outcome for Packard & Hewlett would have been much different if
they had not put so much effort into meaningful R & D.

Once you get that much going on, nobody can launch it all anyway. If you
could, Thos Edison's lab or Bell Labs would have probably scaled most hyperly
themselves.

As a technology marketer, I think you should have much more technology that
you are not selling compared to what you are promising to deliver.

Even better if you can just keep the technology coming to delight customers
more so as you go along.

Sometimes a highly scaled startup seems to define itself as an unsolved
problem where there is exponential uptake begging for a solution. If someone
can figure it out.

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neonate
[https://web.archive.org/web/20200127190513/https://www.natur...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200127190513/https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00219-w)

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mistrial9
Rating - nothing to see here. This is a W.E.I.R.D. article... Western,
(highly) Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic.

So, you have a PhD from an Ivy school -- what next?! of course this applies to
.. who?

The most immediate response to the essay topic is .. the biggest difference
between Academic life and starting a business is that in the latter, you
potentially engage with about six or eight billion humans that do NOT have a
PhD from an Ivy school.. and who knows, maybe the living world, dirt, floods,
sales, and/or servitude.. the way a substantial portion of the rest of the
world is..

This is a fine subject and is applicable to some readers, but the "insider"
writing point of view, without self-examination.. leaves little to admire here
for anyone not in the seat described. Is this elaborate bragging on the part
of the individual author? even less to admire then..

~~~
mnky9800n
I feel like your criticisms might make sense if it was a random nytimes
article but this is in the career advices column of the academic journal
nature.

