Show HN: Petridish.org, a kickstarter for scientific research
petridish.orgI was working in this space part-time but got beat to the starting line. I still think I have something to offer since I am a scientist. I don't want to port the conversation I'm having in another news item here, so would anyone be kind enough to offer me some advice in the following thread?
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3680207
I could also use some 1-on-1 advice via chat if it can be spared.
edit: Thanks to everyone who has commented and emailed me thus far! All of your advice is wonderful and really encouraging. I still appreciate new comments, and I'd really love to hear from Atlanta-area Python/JS hackers.
We are launching Microryza, which is still differentiated enough, but is pretty much the same thing.
We got beat by 4 days. But, screw it, we're going to launch anyways because we feel we have a better product.
Though, of the 14 competitors in this space, these guys flew under the radar pretty damn well.
Wow, best of luck! It'll be hard to compete with VCs, but if you're a scientist you speak a language that isn't easy to learn. That could be a deciding advantage.
My favorite thing about this is how it exposes non-scientists to the first (and IMHO most exciting and least appreciated) phase of research - thinking up experiments.
It also exposes your research plan to other scientists when your work is at a stage where it's the easiest to be scooped. I have a science project idea to be crowdfunded, but I'm still a bit skeptical...
That's a real risk. But the longer I'm in science, the more I believe that "ideas are cheap, follow-through is everything." If I'm scooped, it's not because someone else had the same idea (probably lots of people had that same idea); it's because I didn't reduce it to practice first. If getting funding from Petridish helps you reduce your idea to practice first, maybe it's worth the risk of getting scooped.
Thanks!
Good luck! I'm glad more people like you (VC's) are stepping into the game. And in fact, this is going to require a lot of hands on experience. By the way, have you been a researcher before?
Are the various proposed projects vetted at all? This seems like the sort of thing that would result in lots of pseudo science getting funded or is it buyer beware in that respect?
Also do you envisage any way of helping fund less glamorous projects?
I'd actually be more concerned about trying to define "junk science" than having a bunch of psychics running experiments.
What is the harm in someone putting their own money into a pseudo-science experiment? It will fail if it's an incorrect hypothesis either way.
In fact, the feedback loop between a "believer", their money, and reality, seems like a feature not a bug.
Hi, Sam. This is Matt from petridish.
We are doing a first pass at vetting in the sense that we are looking for projects that we think the public will be excited about, run by researchers with good credentials / affiliations, and that don't include obvious "junk science."
Ultimately, though, our model puts the power to pick projects in the hands of the public!
I'm not sure about Petridish but SciFund is implementing a "peer review" for their next round of science crowdfunding: http://scifund.wordpress.com/2012/03/04/adding-a-mild-review...
I hope someone is working on a Kickstarter for Kickstarter clones, huge market opportunity there.
It could be called Kickexchange!
Awesome idea, I'll be watching it for interesting projects.
Why is there no link to information about the team under About?
It's on our todo list to add info about the team, but here are our profiles on the site:
Matt Salzberg: http://www.petridish.org/users/2 Ilia Papas (me): http://www.petridish.org/users/1
Where in New York are you guys? Do you need interns?
Sure, we could potentially use interns. Send us a message through our contact form and we'll talk about it.
Done, even if potential means you weren't really considering until somebody asked!
You mean like Fundageek?
U.S. only?