YHK - yet another hacker news clone

10 points masterchief166 1 hour ago 3 comments

Suppose you come up with an invention involving a highly specialized, equipment-intensive field you’re unfamiliar with, such as plasma processing or high-temperature metallurgy. You’ve already consulted experts who agree the idea is plausible, but haven’t found anyone with the relevant expertise willing to help develop a PoC. How could you acquire the necessary hands-on skills to test the invention yourself?

I’ve considered switching jobs, postdocs, master’s programs, a second PhD, and shared research facilities. However, jobs and postdocs may require existing expertise, master’s programs may offer insufficient hands-on training, and independent equipment access can be prohibitively expensive (and even then, access alone may not provide the necessary training).

Are there any other realistic ways to retrain in experimental fields that require specialized equipment and can’t be learned at home?

lrvick 58 minutes ago | parent

I learned everything I know about CNC machines and plasma cutting and 3D printing from local hackerspaces and makerspaces.

ActorNightly 48 minutes ago | parent

Write a technical paper. Email college professors, see if you can pay them as consultants to review the paper.

Once you have reviews and other people say its plausible, you can go present to VCs and acquire the funding.

lp92 21 minutes ago | parent

If your idea/invention can actually make people money, then VC funding would be an option. Either that or you need to bootstrap the startup costs.

Also, building subscale POCs could be a good option depending on your idea and help cut down costs significantly, especially if you can use or modify COTS parts to make it work for the POC.

For example, when Rocket Labs was starting out they salvaged components from junk yards and so on to keep costs down like paying $5 for a used valve and refurbishing it rather than pay $100 for a new one (Peter has talked about this in various interviews).