ROUNDTABLES ★ 5 upvotes 2016

Ask HN: Collaborate on research as a side project?

The Founder's Submission

Direct narrative and submission text authored by @bjornsing on Hacker News:

Hi HN,

I'd like to work on some (mostly machine learning / statistics / AI) research projects in my spare time and would be interested in e-meeting others with similar ambitions / interests. I've written up my thoughts here: http://www.openias.org/welcome-to-the-institute.

Anybody else out there who'd like to have their name on a couple of papers, and perhaps get some open source written / released in the process? :P

Cheers,

Björn

Retrospective Overview & Key Insights

Distilled analysis of the business dynamics, operational challenges, and strategic takeaways:

An open Ask HN community consultation from 2016 where @bjornsing convened hundreds of developers and bootstrappers to share real experiences, hard numbers, and tactics.

Core Principles for Independent Builders:
1
Participants share raw revenue figures, churn rates, and stack decisions that corporate PR never publishes.
2
Recurring answers reveal that distribution, not coding skill, is almost universally the rate-limiting step in developer businesses.
3
Practical recommendations on bookkeeping, payment gateways (Stripe vs Paddle), and freelance-to-product transitions.
Community Debate Themes:

Hundreds of active indie hackers contributed case studies, pricing heuristics, and pitfalls to avoid when moonlighting on side projects.

Community Discussions & Critical Reviews

High-signal perspectives, counter-arguments, and peer founder insights debated on Hacker News (6 total discussions):

DR @dragon_king Peer Contributor

I have been thinking kind of along the same lines. I work full time but I can carve out 5-8 hours a week to work on some research project and add value as a technologist. I would love to contribute especially to projects and folks working in the medical field trying to fight diseases, finding cure and advance genetic engineering to name a few.

I think a lot of people would love to contribute their free time and together that would mean thousands of hours of help into these projects which could mean that the goals could be achieved sooner. The problem is I don't know where to start and which projects would benefit from my 5-8 hours a week. This seems like the same problem I have with contributing towards open source projects.

I would love to talk more and see if there is a viable solution out there.

KE @keyle Peer Contributor

I think you're better off starting it, figuring what it's about, and then, inviting people to join. As is stands, it sounds rather vague.

PS: I'd love to help but I don't think I'm qualified enough in that field! Good luck!

MA @malux85 Peer Contributor

Yes - I am building a deep learning platform right now, and it's 95% complete (just some UI to finish) I am starting to look for real use cases to run on the demo servers.

My email is in my profile if you'd like to work together

HISTORICAL ERA Cloud & Mobile Era (2014–2019)
COMMUNITY SCORE ★ 5 points
TOTAL DISCUSSIONS 6 comments
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