After having incubated the likes of Dropbox, Reddit and Airbnb over the past decade, startup seed accelerator Y Combinator is launching a research lab to fund and enable moonshot projects that focus on fundamental technologies that will be freely available to everyone.
YC Research will work with small groups on “open-ended questions.” YC president Sam Altman said, “At the risk of sounding cliché, this is for the benefit of the world.
Altman is kicking off the program with a personal donation of $10 million. The first research group will be announced in the next couple of months, and the lab will raise funds for specific groups. Researchers will be full-time employees and will receive salaries as well as equity in Y Combinator.
Altman says that YC is in this for the long haul: “If some of these projects take 25 years, that’s perfectly fine with us,” he notes.
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➤ YC Research [Y Combinator Posthaven]
Image credit: “Paul Graham talking about Prototype Day at Y Combinator Summer 2009” by Kevin Hale
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