To date YC has not shown a good understanding of the life sciences. It's not just about a regulatory burden, but the premise of breaking away from academia, of somehow finding a magic bullet and commercializing it, and assuming that biology is somehow like software is flawed. Sure the barriers to entry may be lower, but most science is a slog. There are very few home runs. Next-gen sequencing was a huge breakthrough and happened very fast by life science standards. The drivers came both from academia and industry and by all means it worked really well and remains highly innovative.<p>I completely buy that a different model of funding will help and could be successful. I just don't have a good understanding of whether there is a good understanding of the real scientific challenges and the implications.
I woek in a uniersity lab.. But I'm here less than a year.<p>In some ways investing in science is a good thing. But there is a big difference between "industry" where some of our post docs go to work on for profit medicine and the academic labs.<p>Why give money to a university? Well some pays for overhead you are going to have anyway. For all its problems, the fact that a lot data is published (pubchem and pubmed) is good for society as a whole. The for profit side doesn't do that to the same degree.<p>The equipment side of things I think is where hopefully YC can help. Right now overpriced equipment, "robots" with software that barely works (Microscopes that use proprietary image formats....). I even saw a USB dongle for software access of the really expensive microscope. welcome to the 90s.
I may be naive/ignorant (I do have an Electrical Engineering B.S.), but hardware really seems like it would benefit from an experience / innovation sharing like this. It seems like hardware is at an inflection point w.r.t. large portions of it being backed by shareable / FOS software (e.g., 3D-printing blueprints; hardware/software platforms like Tessel, Beaglebone, Arduino; etc...), and adding a little fuel to the fire like this really seems like a potentially huge payoff. Pardon the connotation, but it's like domesticating a rare, but extremely useful wild flora, and growing it in mass while disseminating the process so others can grow it as well. Very exciting.<p>Would anyone with recent hardware prototyping experience care to comment on whether the above reflects their own experience?
<p><pre><code> > My job is to help our companies make hardware people
> want faster and better than ever before.
</code></pre>
That took me a few seconds to parse correctly. So you're making "hardware people" want faster and better <i>what</i>? Oh, it's hardware <i>that</i> people want...
Interested to see changes around how quickly the "regulatory and logistical differences" can be overcome specifically in the biotech industry.
I know he emphasized biotech in the blog post, but I got the impression that he would assist general startups that incorporate some kind of hardware in their product. So it could be biotech or something like Anki or the Myo armband by Thalmic.
> Over the next decade, you’ll see some of these entrepreneurs create companies at YC that rival Airbnb’s social (and financial) impact.<p>I think this sentence is interesting. It kind of hints that they use the term "AirBnB" internally as a short-hand way of saying "Our most successful company". He doesn't mention AirBnB anywhere else in the post, and this sentence expects the listener to understand the implied context.
Wow, the American attitude is strong with you ;). Looking forward to see what the SN-ratio of all these strong statements is!<p>edit: As I am beeing downvoted:<p>"you'll use many of these in your home or neighborhood within the next 12 months" -> I doubt I have used "many" yc-products from the total last batch in the past 12 months.<p>"Over the next year, you’ll see us introduce several features that make YC the best place in the world for people who want to make something new. Over the next decade, you’ll see some of these entrepreneurs create companies at YC that rival Airbnb’s social (and financial) impact." -> That's very nice, but it has nothing substantial to back it up!<p>All I want to say is: yc does not need to sell hot air.