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Researchers and Founders

by dmnd on 6/19/20, 5:39 PM with 105 comments

• by Frost1x on 6/19/20, 6:50 PM

  >Although there are always individual exceptions, on average it’s surprising to me how different the best people in these groups are (including in some qualities that I had assumed were present in great people everywhere, like very high levels of self-belief).

  This is an interesting quote. From my experience and personal perspectives, many of the best researchers and scientists doubt themselves, a lot, and are typically hesitant to make definite statements in general. Research is inherently high risk and prone to failure... that's fundamental to what makes it research. If you work in research for awhile, you're wrong so often that it creates an environment of constant self-doubt and constant questioning of ideas.

  On top of that, from my experience, the more I learn about an area or subject, the more I realize how little I knew before and the more I've discovered in terms of what I don't know. As the space of your knowledge grows, the surface area also increases and you eventually begin questioning things some fundamentally just accept while the deeper you dig, the more you know where the current frontiers of uncertainty and knowledge truly lie. Combine that with the understanding of where you started (knowing even less but thinking you knew more) and how in hindsight, you were so wrong.. leads to lower confidence in your assessments, even if most might consider you an expert.

• by skosuri on 6/19/20, 6:55 PM

  Being an academic researcher (kosurilab.org) and a founder (octant.bio), while I do think there are some similarities (working hard, etc), I think there are some really big differences too. Some of these might be more particular to academic research than research more broadly, but some quick thoughts:

  1. Bias towards action & clear eyed => I think that's right, but there is another part of this too, that is more important as a founder – making decisions even under massive uncertainty. In a company, it's not just uncertain technical decisions, but also market decisions, cultural decisions, people decisions, etc. This is stomach churning, and most researchers can focus on the technical challenges in ways that founders can't. You have to do this in research decisions too; but as a founder it feels like it happens way, way more often with broader and broader sets of decisiosn.

  2. One of the thing that I feel very different about founders is you have be honest about what the actual problems you have to solve are, and not turn your nose at the seemingly mundane and important tasks like managing a company. Great researchers are focused on their scientific problems over decades - founders are focused on building a lasting organization. These have pretty different consequences on what one chooses to spend their time on.

  3. In academia at least, there are some really big differences in running a company versus running a lab. In a lab, my main mission is training people, while working on problems I find interesting... slowly moving towards my long-term scientific/technical goals. In a company, it's building a product that people will buy, and slowly moving towards those same goals. Again, this has pretty big consequences on what one spends their time doing and the types of problems you get to solve. There are positives and negatives to both approaches, some of which are quite subtle. For example, reputation games are far more important in academia than industry - I also find authority becomes a lot more pernicious in academia than industry. Anyways, lots here that are very different (but again this might be academia rather than research itself).

• by Tarrosion on 6/19/20, 6:38 PM

  A small point only tangential to the main point of this post, but something I've noticed about Sam's writing before:

  Is anyone else offput by the phrase "best people"? I get (or at least hope) it's a shorthand for "best at their respective job of researcher/founder," but it really seems to reduce people's innate worth and goodness to this single dimension in a somewhat unnerving way.

• by underdeserver on 6/19/20, 5:59 PM

  I wonder what these differing qualities are, then.

  It sounds very generic, but I've found it to be true. If I spend time thinking about what's the best way forward, then just do it, relentlessly and persistently, and with a healthy disregard for cynicism and disbelief from others, I get a lot done.

  It also reminds me of the concept of "taking ideas seriously": https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Q8jyAdRYbieK8PtfT/taking-ide...

• by dekhn on 6/19/20, 6:26 PM

  I would have thought this was obvious- the archetype in Silicon Valley would be Fred Terman, but there are a lot of others. In particular, Arnold Beckman, who was an intern at Bell Labs where he learned to make vacuum tube amplifiers, moved to Caltech to be a professor and founded the amazingly successful Beckman Instruments company, invented the pH meter (which used a vacuum tube amplifier to turn the tiny signal into a useful one) and the DU spectrometer. He used his proceeds to fund the first transistor company in Silicon Valley, and made huge contributions to the US war effort.

  I've worked with researcher/founders a lot; many of the people from my PhD program (Biophysics, UCSF) went on to start companies (Amyris, Zymergen) and we had strong educational pathways to learn how to start biotech companies. The two groups of people are definitely drawn from a highly overlapping distribution, although many scientists would make poor founders, and vice versa.

• by cossatot on 6/19/20, 5:54 PM

  I'd love to hear a bit more about the differences.

  I've spent my adult life in research environments (academic, nonprofit and industrial R&D) and while much of the activity seems entrepreneurial (particularly grant writing), the overarching structural differences between building something for profit vs. for the public good makes a lot of aspects of building a business a bit mysterious to me.

• by itsmefaz on 6/20/20, 6:31 AM

  John Schulman's article provides better practical insights than the one Sam has authored himself. So, people looking for more concrete views and pieces of advice I'd suggest taking a look at the John Schulman article: http://joschu.net/blog/opinionated-guide-ml-research.html

• by ejo0 on 6/19/20, 5:59 PM

  I agree with this, definitely have seen this with the culture of the early R&D team at Genentech, where a number of the early employees had these attributes right from the beginning. I have reread the book below numerous times, which I recommend, which discuss the dual nature for being both a founder & researcher, having an incredible long-term vision that seems to be almost impossible, but remaining very focused in the short term. "Genentech: The Beginnings of Biotech (Synthesis)" by Sally Smith Hughes (https://www.amazon.com/Genentech-Beginnings-Sally-Smith-Hugh...)

• by hypewatch on 6/19/20, 6:17 PM

  I’ve never heard of the phrase “problem taste” until this post, so if Sam just coined that phrase, well done!

  This is such an important issue in the startup world. The most common mistake that founders I’ve worked with make is that they focus on the wrong problem or even worse focus on too many problems.

  Having good “problem taste” is critical for anyone who wants to start a successful company or publish breakthrough research.

• by lifeslogit on 6/19/20, 7:57 PM

  For a researcher, this difference can lead to deep unhappiness. I moved from a research-heavy institution to a founder-heavy culture thinking the freedom and increased salary would lead to improved happiness, however this was very far from the case. After about 1 year, my CEO began to understand the difference and support me, however, the time and stress prior to that point was very difficult. It required Investor-level individuals with research careers to validate my perspective. Sam's post validates my struggle and I am happy to see it publicized by someone with clout. I hope more founders will begin to give researchers a bit more room and support.

• by mkagenius on 6/19/20, 6:55 PM

  > They are extremely persistent and willing to work hard.

  I think it might be important to quantify these terms, but then I think it is pretty hard to do so. If I worked on some idea for 2 months, then am I persistent enough? And if I worked on it 10 hours a day, have I worked hard enough?

  I guess, you just know it when you work hard or are persistent enough, but sometimes you dont know and you are hurting inside that you are not working hard enough or being persistent enough as you don't see any success

• by bonoboTP on 6/19/20, 7:13 PM

  This post would not survive blind review, though.

  The author's brand makes it look very insightful but if you look closely it's really cliche. Yeah, no shit, successful people work hard on important problems, they have small-scale laser focus and also large-scale vision.

  Seems like the wisdom tree has been plucked, these startup wisdom blogs are getting emptier and emptier (see also Paul Graham...).

• by some_furry on 6/19/20, 8:50 PM

  This article seems a little half-baked to me, like it's missing the great insight that ties these seemingly random observations together and then a conclusion.

  Instead, it just kinda stops abruptly.

• by pplonski86 on 6/19/20, 9:29 PM

  The title could be: Researchers and Founders and Mothers. I think mothers have a lot in common with successful researchers and founders. They are laser focused on tasks (can do many in paralell) and have long term vision (a family). Although mothers dont get attention and press. They are very underrated

• by locacorten on 6/20/20, 12:13 AM

  Sam, I know that you now spent a couple of months with researchers, and thus can write "deep" articles on researchers vs. founders now. Everyone knows that the best kind of researchers in the world are all at OpenAI now, and that gives you a chance to observe them.

  On a serious note, I beg you to write about things other than research and researchers. Leave them alone, outside of the media spotlight and your writings. You see the media and its spotlight have a tendency to disrupt and destroy value. If you truly want do good, leave them alone. Please.

• by divbzero on 6/19/20, 7:23 PM

  Previous discussion of the “Hamming question” that Sam referenced: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4626349

• by m0zg on 6/20/20, 5:41 AM

  I had the opposite experience pretty much. I've worked with researchers quite extensively, and they nearly universally have one massive weakness: they have a hard time committing to any kind of a product plan. They are great at throwing a bowl of spaghetti at the wall in creative ways, and at determining whether any of it stuck, but beyond that - caveat emptor, you better have a great technologist with product chops on board or you'll be stuck repeatedly throwing spaghetti until money runs out.

• by diNgUrAndI on 6/19/20, 6:18 PM

  I like the comparison. Both types of people chase the most important problem.

  Having met people from both groups, the other word I hear a lot is impact. That's a qualitative metric to define success.

• by wyc on 6/19/20, 7:45 PM

  I had to make the decision whether to start companies or pursue a career in research, and chose the former. I think I would've been happy with either. The thing I enjoy about both is that there are rarely closed-form solutions, as the problems are mostly open-ended in nature. This in turn has the potential to grant you absolute freedom to pursue what best matches your interests and values, even as they evolve. You just have to be okay with risk and uncertainty in the pursuit of what is interesting.

• by vzidex on 6/19/20, 7:23 PM

  > They are creative idea-generators—a lot of the ideas may be terrible, but there is never a shortage.

  I feel like I almost never have creative ideas - the entirety of my (short) engineering career has been spent working on school projects, contributing to a design team, or set projects at work.

  Am I screwed if I want to be successful as a computer engineer? (specifically hardware)

• by zuhayeer on 6/19/20, 9:22 PM

  Related: PG’s essay on Design and Research

  http://www.paulgraham.com/desres.html

• by sjg007 on 6/19/20, 8:13 PM

  I am curious about the differences he observed between these two groups.

• by oklol123 on 6/20/20, 8:14 AM

  Reading all these comments makes my tummy grumble

• by liambuchanan on 6/19/20, 6:53 PM

  People with the ability to "work hard" on "important problems" are not rare. People who have the privilege to do so are incredibly rare. It's disappointingly thoughtless not to acknowledge that in a post published on Juneteenth. If gatekeepers, like Sam, put a little more effort into acknowledging how they perpetuate systemic inequality, and trying to avoid it, they could have a huge impacts.