I'm looking for a co-founder for Thinklab. I believe there is opportunity to dramatically accelerate academic research. Instead of working in silos and hoarding information, we'd like scientists to work together openly over the Internet.
The core idea of Thinklab is to partner with science funders (e.g. The Gates Foundation or the NIH) and help them distribute their money in a way that creates incentives for scientists to work more openly and collaboratively. This is where you come in. I need a people person to build our community of scientists, and build partnerships with funders.
What if there were a startup that partnered with science funders to help them distribute their money in a way that produced better models of doing science? That's the idea behind Thinklab: https://thinklab.com/d/38
> The tricky part is that the current system may act as a filter where the best people will still try to hide their methods and get into the existing Journals because it's best for their career - so you'll get lower quality requests for funding.
Yes you could be right about that. It's possible that in the short term an individual funder could see a drop in the quality of applicants -- but I think this will be offset by massive increase in overall impact. I think science funders underestimate how much power they have to compel change.
Yes. I mean broken in the sense that the incentives of individual scientists are not aligned with what's in the best interests of science a as a whole. It's the reason scientists hoard knowledge and work in silos instead of sharing their work openly while collaborating over the internet. I've written more here: http://thinklab.com/blog/10-consequences-of-a-broken-scienti...
Great! I read your comments and have to admit I'm unfamiliar with what a "collaborative atlas" is or would be? But I certainly agree it's a big problem that scientists are only rewarded for publishing papers. There needs to be a way to reward scientists for sharing in smaller chunks -- even just an idea that might help out a peer.
I agree -- we're making great progress. Science IS working. My point is really just that since the advent of the internet, we've had the potential of making progress much faster.
To expand upon this, it's not just publishing papers behind paywalls that is the problem. The entire system we use to advance humanities shared knowledge is broken. The Internet enables a dramatically more efficient model of scientific collaboration. The problem is academic science has been stuck with a reward system from the 17th century. And quite simply, it does not reward what we want it to reward anymore. However, there is a solution: science funders can distribute their money in a way that creates a very different set of incentives. Sadly, almost all science funders are very conservative organizations. YC Research can play a critical role in catalyzing a transition to an Internet-native model of research. My startup, Thinklab, wants to help. We're a service that helps science funders reward participation in a massively collaborative open online model of research.
My startup, Thinklab, is trying fix the incentives. The concept is to partner with science funders and help them distribute their money in a way that rewards scientists for openly sharing their work in real-time while collaborating with each other over the Internet. The first simple step is requiring researchers to openly post their proposals in order to get funding. A portion of funding is then set aside to reward valuable contributions from the scientific community. We would love to have the support and participation of YC Research.
Hey Lucas, I'd love to connect. I'm currently in Saigon bootstrapping http://thinklab.com
Regarding talent -- what do you think about the technical talent here? I find myself still working with guys from Eastern Europe. Would be awesome to find some talent locally though.
- Funding availability by country will depend on who our funding partners are (right now we have none).
- Yes, we could support existing projects that want to become open. Right now the site assumes people start with a "proposal stage", but we could create an option for an existing project.
- ThinkLab does not enforce what should be shared. It's up to the project leaders to declare what they intend to share, and it's up to the collaborators to ultimately decide how much of a performance bonus the research team should receive. (Partly based on how open they are with their data)
I'm looking for a co-founder for Thinklab. I believe there is opportunity to dramatically accelerate academic research. Instead of working in silos and hoarding information, we'd like scientists to work together openly over the Internet.
The core idea of Thinklab is to partner with science funders (e.g. The Gates Foundation or the NIH) and help them distribute their money in a way that creates incentives for scientists to work more openly and collaboratively. This is where you come in. I need a people person to build our community of scientists, and build partnerships with funders.
About me: I've sold two companies, and previously made a bunch of money through high frequency trading. https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessespaulding
I can offer you up to 40% equity. Please email me at [email protected].