[LiveTheDream]

> I cannot understand why it is that so many obviously very intelligent people decide that we need another computer vision-based startup. Because the unfortunate truth is that computer vision (right now) doesn't work.

This seems like a really good reason to create another computer vision-based startup.

[diego]

No, it seems like a very good reason to take useful/promising but improperly commercialized research and turn it into a product. A startup rarely has enough runway to do the scientific research needed to solve a problem like this.

[snikolov]

It is certainly rare, but Numenta has been doing it for the past 6 years, and for several years before that at the Redwood Neuroscience Institute from which it spun off. In doing so, Numenta undoubtedly stands on the foundation of significant progress in academia, but still has to do a fair bit of what one might call "research engineering."

[khafra]

Basic R&D is a cost that successful businesses--especially small ones--tend to externalize. Microsoft does a bit, Bell Labs used to do more; but you just don't start a FTL spaceship company before basic research has established a coherent theory of FTL travel.