I think you might have not been down voted as much if you had written less sarcastically and with more practical solutions (versus ideological). The solutions you are offering are so general that by following this high-level point of view we can solve world peace, world energy and world poverty and still make the evening tea.
You see HN is mostly a community of "doers", and though the ideas you presented might have merit among circles of people who.. discuss big ideas (for the lack of a better description), a community of doers says and does things they can actually attempt doing today, tomorrow, or in a week with a reasonable probability of success. I am not attacking you, just trying to explain why I think you're being down-voted.
> The solutions you are offering are so general that by following this high-level point of view we can solve world peace, world energy and world poverty and still make the evening tea.
Nonsense. I'm talking applied research. There's rock solid, highly developed, high quality education for that called a Ph.D. in applied physics, applied science, applied math, the mathematical sciences, and many fields of engineering. The education is for 'doing' and is fully 'practical'. The shelves of the research libraries are stuffed with peer-reviewed journals of original research with 'applied' and synonyms in the titles. These journals state strongly that they like papers with actual applications. There is nothing too "general" about what I described.
It is true that the HN community and Silicon Valley are short on Ph.D. holders in applied physics, applied science, applied math, engineering, etc. But, as I stated up front, YC is unusually well qualified in these directions.
My post made some rock solid points but was written in a way to raise 'attention' although attacked no one. Instead, I was attacked. Likely the attackers were mostly just HN mods. I've seen such before at HN: There are some strong, secret PC norms sometimes enforced here. Thus HN is nothing like free and open discussion of IDEAS.
PG's essay raised some questions about some pressing issues, and I gave some rock solid answers, and was, thus, attacked. Piss poor.
If my project is successful, I will be a billionaire, many times over. I have no desire to do that, and really don't want the down side of being that wealthy, and didn't try to pick a project that would make so darned much money, but that's just the way my project looks.
I picked a project using my Steps 1 and 2. So, in Step 1 I picked a big unsolved problem, one that nearly every Internet user, desktop to mobile, wants to have solved and that so far is at best poorly solved. Then I executed my Step 2 and drew from my background in pure and applied math, had some new ideas, wrote out some new theorems and proofs, as my education taught me very well how to do, and then wrote the corresponding software.
At this point what is left to do is not very much quite routine Web site construction and some initial data collection. The rest of the software is ready for at least initial production. I've written successful production software before and for this project had no desire to write 'prototype' software.
But what's crucial about my project is the research, just the research, or Step 2 in my post. All the rest is routine.
The main business risk is, will users like my solution. Why is there a question? Mostly because the UI and UX are different. The UI is much easier to use than anything in, say, Office, but there is still a little for users to do.
Can the solution 'scale'? Apparently. From how my software works, my software timings, and some fairly simple estimating, it appears that my software could serve the world from just 2000 square feet of standard rack space in a room of, say, 20,000 square feet. So, my software is relatively efficient. The needed scaling techniques are just the simplest ones -- lots of parallelism and redundancy and processing mostly read only data with good locality of reference.
For 'needing' Paul, really I'm not trying: I've never applied to a YC 'class' and wouldn't want to be part of one. E.g., I don't have a Mac laptop! And I'm building on Microsoft instead of Linux. And I'm writing in Visual Basic .NET instead of C#! So, my software writing doesn't 'fit in' with the YC or HN 'norms'! And, more importantly, I'm not writing just demo or prototype software. Also, I'm a one-person effort: As founder, I insist on knowing all the early software, and the way for me do to that is just to write it. Besides, I enjoy writing software.
The 'business idea', the research, and the corresponding software were all fast, fun, and easy for me. But learning enough about .NET and SQL Server administration has been a self inflicted root canal procedure bottleneck -- that maybe by now I'm mostly through.
When I get some revenue or equity funding, for more obscure details about Microsoft's software, e.g., when I get to be a big uses of Windows Server and SQL Server, I will just pick up a phone, call a Microsoft expert, and pay. My patience working through MSDN Web pages is drawing to a close. Similarly for boxes I get from Cisco.
So far I am 100% owner. Some venture funding would have helped me a little mostly just because I could have called Microsoft instead of worked through thousands of MSDN Web pages. Also a LOT of venture funding would have let me hire people for all the routine software. Net, so far being 100% owner has likely been for the best.
But in the future there may be a role for some venture funding. But it looks like the 'window' will be short: By the time I qualify for such funding, I should be close to no longer needing or willing to accept it.
But YC doesn't really do venture funding. So, I would not be looking to YC for venture funding. So, my post was not to try to get YC funding.
Instead my post was to try to help Paul with the struggles in project evaluation in his essay. Also, since SV has similar struggles, I was writing to help SV. If someone in SV wants to discuss venture funding soon, then okay, but I doubt they will.
For SV funding my project, from all I can tell there will be no problem if and only if my project is nearly far enough along that I no longer need or will accept funding!
My guess, from contacts with VCs I have had, is that to fund my project now, VCs would have to evaluate my research, which they won't do and would have a tough time doing, and then violate some rules from their limited partners.
So, really my post was to tell PG, YC, SV, VCs, and the LPs that for the few "big wins" they want, they should learn to evaluate research and, then, should do that.
Of course, the SV answer, should they ever actually think that far, would be, if the rest of the software is just a little, routine Web site construction, then that is not too much to ask before looking for equity funding. My response would be, okay, but then you risk trying to get on my airplane after it has already left the ground.
Net, then, my post was really to try to shock SV enough to get them to pay enough attention that maybe I could do them some good on one of their worst problems and not really to get funding for my project.
But I should be worth about $500 million: I helped start FedEx and saved it twice. My offer letter said I'd get stock. Later Fred Smith told me, with Mike Basch, that the amount would be $500,000, and that would be worth ballpark $500 million now. That FedEx wouldn't do what they promised in my offer letter is my loss but their shame. Ah, what the heck: If my project works, then I'll be worth more than Fred Smith anyway.
This is more venting, or a manic episode (I am not being facetious, I am reading it that way) without any sort of specifics besides the merits you are expounding about applied research without specifics in an attack like style of writing. It's very interesting for me to read as a stream of conscious, but not practical in any aspect, nor open to any debate.
Your "doing them some good" had nothing specific to merit attention towards fixing a... valuation or funding problem?
My point is clear, simple, rock solid, quite explicit, and very well supported: Again, yet again, this time just for you, my point from DoD research is that DoD research shows that research can find powerful solutions to important practical problems. Examples include a long list of astounding military technology from the atomic bomb, the hydrogen bomb, sonar in all its forms, radar, now a deep and astounding field, laser guided bombs, GPS, stealth, high bypass turbo-fan engines, e.g., first for the C5-A, carbon fiber materials, CAD, originally heavily for aerospace, etc.
What is "practical" is the unique power of research to find powerful solutions to important real problems.
I omitted all my peer-reviewed, published research results. But if you want some examples of research, try the shelves of any research library.
My post, if actually read, directly addressed the main problem in PG's essay, how to evaluate projects. My solution was my three steps. That is, start with an important problem and do some research to get a powerful solution. That solution addressed PG's issue.
For how to evaluate some routine application of software for a simple case of some social, sharing, mobile app, my solution is don't try and, instead, go with projects that use original research to get powerful solutions for important problems.
If you want to know what research is, get a Ph.D. in a technical field from a good research university. If you want to know how DoD does research and applies it, then get a job in a DoD laboratory that does such work -- the DC area is surrounded by such labs from NRL, NSRDC, JHU/APL, and many more, and there are many more such labs all across the US.
Come on bird brains, cough up what passes for thinking in your flock of losers.
"Losers"? Sure: As the limited partners know all too well, the returns over the past 10 years from the 'information technology' venture capital 'asset class', in highly technical terminology, just SUCK. And PG's essay provides more evidence of the struggles to make money.
Bluntly, on average, even including the big winners, the HN flock is losing. So how to pick winners is a pressing issue with good answers not yet widely implemented or known.
So, I give some answers with rock solid foundations, and you HN bird brain chickens attack with votes but no thoughts. WHAT a flock of losers.
And since only a tiny fraction of users can downvote, no doubt the down votes are from mods. WHAT a bunch of yellow, brain-dead, bird-brain, head in the sand, chickens.
Also you appear not to have any idea how much waste exists in Pentagon contracting. Look up the writings of Robert Higgs, Winslow Wheeler, Dina Rasor etc etc etc When DoD is throwing billions of dollars around with merry abandon of course some of it ends up used for useful projects. They use up all their money and then get their budgets bumped up automatically by the politicians.
And, if YC starts acting like DoD, who exactly is going to provide follow-on financing? None of the money men, not Sand Hill Road, not Wall Street, are willing to put money in the same way and with the same scale that DoD is.
What's even worse is academic research. The professors don't care about product development, they care about publish or perish. And the output from PhDs is predictably a lot of useless greek squiggles and not very much product actually usable by Grandma.
There is no fabulous opportunity because the incentives are out of whack, and your exhortations won't change that.
On waste in DoD, sure, but not the parts I was talking about. Some of the big waste was, say, getting AC working in Iraq and now getting Diesel fuel and jet fuel to Akrapistan. And the cost of the black oil to send a destroyer across the Pacific would really set one back.
> Also you appear not to have any idea how much waste exists in Pentagon contracting.
Nonsense. All my early career was in DoD work, mostly in research, especially in applied math. E.g., I saved a project to improve the system that keeps an SSBN at the right depth in rough seas (and, thus, got my company a nice development contract). I found a solution to a problem of global nuclear war limited to sea, apparently later sold to a place near Langley, VA. I reduced to simple Lagrangian relaxation and the Kuhn-Tucker conditions a problem in non-linear, integer, max-min for evaluating the SSBN fleet. I know my way around the DC beltway, out to Vienna, VA, down Shirley Highway, up to Howard County, etc. very well, thank you.
What I saw in DoD spending was quite efficient, amazingly so.
For academic research, it takes some effort to understand it and how it can connect with entrepreneurship. Much of academic research is too far from real products for my tastes, and I complained about that when I was a grad student and, by accident for a while, a prof.
Still, the best of academic research is by far the best stuff, including for entrepreneurship. But it is crucial to pick and choose. And how to connect from academics to entrepreneurship is not so easy to see at first glance, varies across subjects, easy in some fields of engineering, super tough in some other fields, has varied across time, especially in recent years, but, net, in many cases can be quite easy, efficient, and effective.
The idea that the academic research is just generalized abstract nonsense and Greek chicken tracks is dangerously misinformed: In simple, blunt terms, for the technical areas of research, it is funded for essentially one purpose from essentially one source. The source is Congress, and the purpose is US national security. E.g., that's where Silicon Valley came from. Along with microelectronics. And the Internet. And the last I heard, the Department of Energy funded the BSD effort at Berkeley, and Congress funds that department also mostly just for national security.
In funding this research, Congress is quite correct, amazingly so. The beginning of the movie on Nash was correct: Essentially math research won WWII. No joke.
You are correct that SV would not be able to deploy the results of the research the way the DoD often does, but you are wrong to assume that there is nothing that SV could do. First, notice that much of the best research, especially for 'information technology', is done dirt cheap, typically by one person with paper and pencil. Second, notice that now with current computing, in a major fraction of cases, such research can be deployed at shockingly low cost. Not all research has to be as expensive to deploy as the B-2 bomber or GPS satellites.
There are many ways to waste money, and for SV to waste money. And PG's essay indicated some serious struggles in project evaluation. And there are plenty of posts, e.g., by Mark Suster, that on average VC ROI over the past 10 years sucks. So, SV is wasting money now.
But there are also some ways to make money, and I gave some rock solid ideas for how, based on research.
Long ago I guessed that no one would believe me short of my having a 300 foot yacht in Long Island Sound. By then I'm not sure I'll still give a sh!t about telling people things they so much don't want to hear.
"Nothing concrete"? SURE there is. Just read what I wrote.
I said to pick an important, unsolved problem and then to do some research to find a powerful solution.
For what is 'research', get a Ph.D. from a good research university. For how to do research that yields a solution powerful for an important problem, get a job in a lab, e.g., a DoD lab, that does such work. For how to take a powerful solution to an important problem and make money with it, be an entrepreneur -- that is, write some corresponding software and start a business.
If you will lower your ego and read, you might learn something, e.g., a solution to what PG, VCs, SV, and LPs are struggling with, i.e., how to get "big wins" and how to know early on that a project has high promise of a big win.
A war story: The SSBNs were well on the way to sea, and the question of navigation was noticed. An SSBN didn't want to have to surface for navigation. So, there was inertial navigation, but something more accurate was desired. So some physics guys worked out navigation satellites. Their derivations and proposal were short. The Navy evaluated their proposal, approved it, and the project was 100% wildly successful. The lab where the work was done navigated its position to within 1 foot. The GPS system was later, by the Air Force, and better, but the original Navy system was quite good. At one point, the Navy system, to have a better means of measuring the gravitational field of the earth, wanted a satellite with no drag. Some research found one. I will leave for you just how to do that!
This is so silly. You don't have a startup idea until you have a product that you can sell to Grandma, that will work for her on a standalone basis. It can't require an Act of God to take it market. It has to be cheap enough that Grandma can buy it, and it has to be simple enough that it can be built by 3 guys in a shack in Palo Alto.
Often this means taking stuff that exists already and chopping off the most expensive features, even if they are the best features, to make it cheap enough for Grandma. Whole books have been published on this; lookup "The Innovator's Dilemma".
This is a completely different goal from the goals of research, which has to be new to be published. Taking an old idea, even which was impractical to build/deploy, and productizing it, is a very hard sell to the professors and very difficult to get published papers out of.
(Some academics just do not care about practicalities, no matter how hard one tries to persuade them.)
Both these situations are also completely different from the military, who care about maximum effectiveness even if it means throwing money at problems and even if it means redeploying the very oldest ideas. If a ceramic capacitor works, instead of a funky DSP algorithm, they'll use the ceramic capacitor. If it somehow proves necessary to defend against a nuclear attack, they'll switch the ceramic capacitor for a solid gold ingot in a heartbeat.
