Well, it's difficult to see how this trial study is going to yield any useful information.
- The sample subjects are incredibly biased, in that they are already founders and presumably motivated individuals. Not a representation of the general population, not even close.
- The study has a time limit (5 years). So no test subject is going to make life-long or life-altering decisions based on this limited trial.
So, this study doesn't seem to accomplish any of the basic tasks needed to study ramifications of such an idea in practice.
All we will know after this study is concluded, is how founders treat monthly cash given to them for 5 years. In reality, it sounds a lot like YC is just paying them a salary to build their business.
YC is testing the outcome of paying their founders a salary in order to achieve greater gains down the road... something any business will attest to being beneficial. This is not a BI study.
I agree, start small, work up. This is why I said let a small nation conduct this test (such as Finland, who is already planning to convert into a BI economy full-scale, from my understanding).
> But you are just guessing at what the problems might be.
No, the issues listed in my previous post are clearly issues with conducting this test at a city level. Part of preparing a study is to examine complications that may impact the findings... and these are obvious complications.
In all honesty, I will be rather surprised if it really winds up being a truly random selection of the Oakland population. The political incentives for the city to find a way to put a thumb on the scales will be very strong.
> Participants will be randomly selected from the population of Oakland
So you are implementing a lottery.
Why not examine existing lottery winner stats? It's essentially identical to what you are doing.
I still fail to see what anyone gains by this "experiment", except for some good PR for YC.
Not to mention, you opted to use a brand new PhD, instead of (or under the supervision of) someone more established and experienced. For this work to be taken credibly, it must have weight behind the research.
If this thing was really just about gathering data, you would have just done it... not wrote-up a blog post about it, posted it to HN, and then spent hours defending it.
I think you are putting too much weight on this pilot. They aren't trying to find out if BI is going to work, they are trying to suss out basic, mechanical issues that they might not have thought of. If good BI data comes from it, great, but that's not the point yet.
- The sample subjects are incredibly biased, in that they are already founders and presumably motivated individuals. Not a representation of the general population, not even close.
- The study has a time limit (5 years). So no test subject is going to make life-long or life-altering decisions based on this limited trial.
So, this study doesn't seem to accomplish any of the basic tasks needed to study ramifications of such an idea in practice.
All we will know after this study is concluded, is how founders treat monthly cash given to them for 5 years. In reality, it sounds a lot like YC is just paying them a salary to build their business.
YC is testing the outcome of paying their founders a salary in order to achieve greater gains down the road... something any business will attest to being beneficial. This is not a BI study.
I agree, start small, work up. This is why I said let a small nation conduct this test (such as Finland, who is already planning to convert into a BI economy full-scale, from my understanding).
> But you are just guessing at what the problems might be.
No, the issues listed in my previous post are clearly issues with conducting this test at a city level. Part of preparing a study is to examine complications that may impact the findings... and these are obvious complications.