Why don't we have deep tech ?
Hi all, I graduated from IIT Delhi and have been working at well established startup since. So for a while I have been wondering why we don't have any deep tech startups doing innovation. Don't get me wrong, there are startups doing innovations but not the kind of innovation which we would call industry shattering or taking the level up a notch. Most of these innovations are just integrating what others are doing in an aggregated platform. I again wondered this today when I saw cognition launching Devin the AI software engineer. They have a pretty small yet highly talented team. We in India too have highly intelligent folks educating themselves in CS, why don't we have this mindset (even I don't have this mindset). Is it about the difference in culture or a sense of security that folks in the US have that helps them be free from an economic point of view and try innovative things ?
Talking product sense with Ridhi
9 min AI interview5 questions
Ok...so here I go.
Our education system is flawed and only teaches to do rote learning and reach at top of pyramid. Best out those reach at top but still they are good players not leaders.
As a society, we have minimum risk appetite.
People respect failure in USA, but in India u will be looked down!
Access to capital is easy for West, like see how easily perplexity ai got funding from stalwarts like nvidia and Amazon founders. Here in India we fund d2c only :D
These are major reasons why we do copy cat startups or with minimum risk.
But yeah, future is bright and am looking forward.
Classical mathematics or physics research is very less in India, so less patents and ip hence less deeptech startups.
Infact Sam Altman challenged to create something like open ai.
For that u need 100000s of GPUs and we have just acquired land for Fabs. Period.
We are too slow like a huge elephant 🐘
Lots to learn from israel
Shark tank sharks only fund D2C , dumb enough i guess except for Piyush Bansal(lenskart) who really is interested in knowing and how of technology.
There's simple solution to this Abolish caste and arrange marriage When people date and find partners they won't make their career decisions based on CTC Deeptech needs patient capital and time if most graduates are not well off and they have to marry by 27-30 , deeptech research, ecosystem building, long term thinking won't command respect by either potential date/spouse or unfortunately their parents too who get involved
😂😂
I was not prepared for this answer.
That is pretty woke, though I agree with the gist of it.
Basically force people to make their own decision and be more welcoming to risk.
It isn't woke that's the truth imo The option of arrange marriage makes dating redundant and once you start aging CTC decides the commitment Though there are very rare exception
Some of my thoughts:
- lower salary, so all those who want to innovate will go to US or Europe
- investors here (institutional as well as individuals) sometimes act like they own the business and not like they're just supporting them. They may not cut some slack for the team to work the way they want.
- The founding team may not be completely ethical and true to what they're doing.
- The founding team usually marries their solutions/approach rather than solving the problem. And they would focus on output and not the outcome.
- Relatively, we're not that patient and always try to do what others are doing (stems from Sharma ji ka beta concept maybe)
- Beyond some small tech bubble, people may not be willing to pay for products
- We're, at times, hardwired to deliver poor quality items faster rather than high quality items. This doesn't work for deep tech. Quantity over quality here.
- it's not easy, and we want convenient things faster. We appreciate results (output, not outcome) rather than the efforts.
- Any idea will be easily devalued and punched down by others. We like to kill ideas rather than nurture them.
- We always want to start from chapter 100 and not chapter 0. There's expectation mismatch from the beginning.
- it's completely hardwork. Not everyone can do it, and that too consistently.
Beyond all, we want others to do deep tech and innovate rather than doing it ourselves.
We probably won't because all that AI deep tech startups are founded by Physics PhDs. Those who want to do research go abroad. India will never have deep tech. There is no incentive.
Americans in general are cowboys and to an extend anti-establishment
Deep tech requires years and years of futile work and isolation and dosent always covert to success.
Their aura is so grandiose that they attract cowboys all across the globe
It's crazy tbh, I remember seeing a guy interviewing American Homeless people and asking them if they had 3 wishes what would it be .Apart from financial ones every other guy would ask for "World Peace" 🤯
Just see Sam Altman, it takes a special amount of something to ask billions of dollars for something that dosent exist, with use that no-one knows and never been seen..... just saying "We want to create God"