Hacker News Reader

Comment by garry | Hacker News Reader

Both Thalmic Labs and the Meta project are examples of longer term projects that raise money through YC. There are a bunch more in the current batch that have a much longer time frame. While the three month demo is a constraint, it is not one that kills ambitious projects at YC.

View on HN

Given that these more visionary, long-term, scientific startups will often require founders of a different demographic than what we're used to seeing (eg. older, more experienced in a given field, maybe with obligations like a spouse and kids), will you guys modify your approach to evaluating applications, more specifically the founding teams?

> older, more experienced in a given field, maybe with obligations like a spouse and kids

I'm not convinced that this describes the Thalmic guys at all.

Sure, there is a subset of science-oriented startups that don't require founders who fit that description, but for many of the industries listed in the article to be disrupted, you'd need doctors, lawyers, researchers, biotech engineers -- ie. seasoned experts who understand the intricacies and harsh realities of their fields -- and many of them would certainly fit my description. I'm assuming that the type of startups they're looking to fund include those that try to "fix" these industries, instead of building a product that sits on the periphery -- eg. a healthcare solution to help streamline the claims process vs. an app for patients to record bowel movements.

> you'd need doctors, lawyers, researchers, biotech engineers

There are lots of these types of people in every recent YC batch.

Really great question...I'm hoping someone chimes in here.

This presupposes YC discriminated against older founders in the first place.

This isn't like normal tech-transfer. Most of the teams that would be looking for funding on a break-through idea, and can't get it from NIH/NSF aren't going to be seasoned tenured faculty. They're going to be senior graduate students and young post-doc's. They'll know the field, but they will have radical ideas and won't fit in to the academic funding heterodoxy. They'll probably be 25-35.

D-wave is a great example of a company in the class described. Founded in 1999, they didn't ship their first quantum computer until 2011. However, they were able to show progress along the way, solving sub-challenges and as a result were able to raise many rounds of funding before ever shipping a product. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-Wave_Systems

They still don't actually have a quantum computer in the vein of the accepted model of one though.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com