I really like this framing of research-y ideas. Matches what I was thinking in a conversation with an angel investor on the difficulties of investing in frontier-tech startups.
It seems like the key for startup funding is finding profitable intermediate goals. Optimizable projects within the bigger, non-global-critical-path effort.
This is basically what SpaceX did to me. Building a colony on mars is a clear goal but has no global critical path. However “drastically lower cost of payload to orbit” does (albeit with some “fatness” in it for sure). And more obviously monitizable despite the capital/time requirements. Add to that the creativity of exploiting other monetizable businesses that are enabled in pursuit of the goal (Starlink) and it makes further financial sense.
Thinking about it like this reminds me of the means-ends heuristic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Means–ends_analysis You may not know what to optimize for the final goal but there can be profitable intermediate ones that get you closer to the final goal.
Of course, there are some areas where there still won’t be any intermediate + profitable goals. These are the real research-y ideas.
I really like this framing of research-y ideas. Matches what I was thinking in a conversation with an angel investor on the difficulties of investing in frontier-tech startups.
It seems like the key for startup funding is finding profitable intermediate goals. Optimizable projects within the bigger, non-global-critical-path effort.
This is basically what SpaceX did to me. Building a colony on mars is a clear goal but has no global critical path. However “drastically lower cost of payload to orbit” does (albeit with some “fatness” in it for sure). And more obviously monitizable despite the capital/time requirements. Add to that the creativity of exploiting other monetizable businesses that are enabled in pursuit of the goal (Starlink) and it makes further financial sense.
Thinking about it like this reminds me of the means-ends heuristic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Means–ends_analysis You may not know what to optimize for the final goal but there can be profitable intermediate ones that get you closer to the final goal.
Of course, there are some areas where there still won’t be any intermediate + profitable goals. These are the real research-y ideas.