I was briefly calling myself an independent researcher: somebody who self-funds spec R&D on their own ideas. In theory it’s something like indie-research : academic research :: blogging/self-publishing : traditional publishing.
But the idea doesn’t really work.
Conversation
Unlike the market for general interest writing, the market for R&D is almost entirely institutional, and they don’t really “buy” indie R&D. It’s 99.9% crackpot inventors, 0.1% black swan stuff.
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When I was in BigCo R&D we paid a few times for experts to do multi month R&D projects. Key is selling before. It's just long term indie consulting with work packages and artifacts.
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I’ve done maybe 5k worth of R&D grade modeling work in like 8 years of consulting 🙂
Slim pickings
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I've been party to paying out about $500k. But niche stuff. Very niche. Molecular dynamics, pharmacokinetics, etc. Academics gone AWOL kind of stuff. I feel like a tinder of that would be a good business. In this deep learning post-weirding time there's probably loads of it.
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