[R0b0t1]

Ah, I was looking at similar stuff, among other things, so keep me in mind.

Me and my coworkers have a running gag where we predict things years in advance, but we just don't have access to the capital to do it... so someone else who does have money eventually does it, and a lot worse than we would have. These things happen every day.

Think: Do you want some nontechnical banker making decisions about what startup gets funding or someone who actually understands the scientific and social impact of a technology?

[smugglerFlynn]

> Do you want some nontechnical banker making decisions about what startup gets funding or someone who actually understands the scientific and social impact of a technology?

On one hand, the latter would be cool.

On the other, I want decisions made by people committed to the cause. Understanding does not get you very far. “Some nontechnical bankers” often spend years of their life dedicated for a cause, dealing with all the non-scientific bureaucracy which is necessary to get this job done, and which constitute 90% of it (not to mention all the responsibility and risk).

How much time, risk and responsibility does your ‘running gag’ require now? Are you sure you would choose to be that banker, and actually spend your life on this?

[R0b0t1]

People who don't really understand the cause and can find employment separate from it likely aren't committed to it. A banker may not have the necessary training to understand what is going on and likely can find employment with someone else who needs paperwork filed. They may be necessary but putting them in charge of the money is a bad idea because they don't have expertise on the things they are deciding and get paid lots of money (but maybe slightly less) even if they are wrong. In some cases they just rig the rules so they never lose.

To be clear what was happening was random gadgets or improvements to an existing product would be discussed, and then invariably we'd see it later. You can claim it was inevitable but if we knew years before they ever did it then the only reason we weren't the ones making money was a lack of capital.

[smugglerFlynn]

> the only reason we weren't the ones making money was a lack of capital

I understand your point.

But all that is just saying “The only reason I am not Batman is my lack of batsuit, mansion and a butler”.

Most important, I think “technological insights” are overrated. Insights are valued exactly because among investors tech savviness comes rare. But If you want to play in the same field, you need all the other pieces and skills (including the capital, but you might also get hired as an analyst or consultant, so it does not seem to be a critical blocker of capitalizing your knowledge).

So what really stops you from “fighting crime”?

[noacct15243]

Batman cannot exist in the real world; Batman has to be a fiction. Lack of money is not.

I worked in the company where the owner set up something relatively mathematically trivial and burnt through £500,000 before he started to make a profit. He was born into wealth. I am several thousand pounds in debt to try to develop something which is far more technically sophisticated and generally useful to DB devs (may do a show HN), but getting anybody to notice it is difficult. Just developing it as I go deeper in debt is very difficult.

I tried to use it as a way of getting a job -- "please look at my project, it's neat!". The response? Hard to say, because nobody has asked me to demo it.

Not having easy, sufficient cash makes things incredibly hard. I'm talking from experience. I very much doubt you are.

[jaystraw]

I see where you're coming from, but, Frank Zappa said longhairs ruined music: the business brains knew they didn't know, so would try anything. Then, hip kids who thought they knew what was popular started falling out of school with A&R degrees and became the gatekeepers. It became much harder for moonshot, weird and outsider projects to receive attention from labels, let alone funding.

As always, YMMV. Also been reading HN for a long time, and just made an account to respond to this. Times they are a-changin'

[astrange]

We're in a relatively environment to get capital now; not sure it's ever been easier. Beyond the site in the OP, there's Patreon and equity crowdfunding like Wefunder. Though I think the best bet traditionally was to marry someone with a government job before quitting, so you can use their health insurance.