This is a hard question to answer, but here are a few thoughts:
1. Resigning from a tenured position likely means taking a one-way street. The exception is a well-known scientist that can easily switch tenure to 2-3 other school today. In many fields competition for tenure is brutal and once you leave you may have some disadvantages in re-entry against a bunch of post-docs. "Only losers leave academia" is still a widely held mindset. All this does not mean not to resign; just be aware.
2. Do you still need money? The fact that the company is not ramen profitable in 7 years (including last 3 years of dedicated effort) means it may not be a source of income for a while. If you are not set for life, how long can you afford to not work? Will you be OK in industry (some professors thrive there some are completely miserable with a manager who tells them what to do and imposes deadlines)?
Unless you are set for life I would seriously consider your 50% option -- you get another year to fully dedicate to your startup without teaching a single day and still maintain tenure. In a year, re-evaluate. My 2c.
> 1. (OP here) I doubt I could easily get a tenured position somewhere else today, because I have not published much in the last few years, due to focusing on CoCalc. I also I have a 2-body problem (my wife is an academic), which would make getting another position in academia that much harder.
> 2. Do you still need money?
Yes. In fact, I didn't save enough as a college math professor to retire while living in Seattle (an expensive place)!
> The fact that the company is not ramen profitable in 7 years
The company is not profitable, but it is "ramen profitable" according to http://www.paulgraham.com/ramenprofitable.html. Without getting into details, the bank balance goes down a little each month since we pay hosting and for four fulltime employees (we have about 2 years of runway). However, we're close to profitable. If we instead had only three employees (or paid ourselves less), then we would be profitable. If we had just one employee (me), then I would be making a LOT more money than I made working at UW, though I would likely be much less happy (the other three people working on CoCalc are fantastic!).
> The fact that the company is not ramen profitable in 7 years (including last 3 years of dedicated effort) means it may not be a source of income for a while.
This is always a flag for me for something that needs to be investigated. Personally I think the idea the guy took to stick with CoCalc was interesting but at the same time he should really really consider hiring a CFO, someone who really understands where the money comes in and how it goes out.
Such a person could tell him exactly how much "lifetime value" is needed from each customer in order to make the company a going concern. Sometimes that number is "impossible" in that it is way more than one believes they could get for the product. When that happens, you have to take a serious look at whether or not you're looking at a hobby or a business.
It is always difficult to see these sorts of discussions after they have been had, especially when there was information that could have been developed earlier on that would have informed the decision, but it is not uncommon.
Why so? There are so many people who would like to study but can't get into an university. There (as you say) are so many professors who would like to teach but also get into brutal competition. Why not just build more universities? Also why not start a private education company that probably wouldn't be eligible to issue government-accredited degrees (who but medical doctors and lawyers needs them anyway?) yet would provide university-level education quality and compete the free-market way?
> My third year of unpaid leave from UW is up. I have to decide whether to return to UW or resign. If I return, it turns out that I would have to have at least a 50% appointment. I currently have 50% of one year of teaching in “credits”, which means I wouldn’t be required to teach for the first year I go back as a 50% appointment. Moreover, the current department chair (John Palmieri) understands and appreciates Sage – he is among the top 10 all time contributors to the source code of Sage!
To be perfectly honest, it's not that risky. It won't be hard for him to get an academic job somewhere if it doesn't work out. This is usually not the case, but for someone with his background, finding another academic job won't be difficult if he's willing to work outside of a highly-ranked research university math department (and the probability of being able to get one of those jobs is even good).
> I have decided to resign. I’m worried about issues of intellectual property; it would be extremely unfair to my employees, investors and customers if I took a 50% UW position, and then later got sued by UW as a result. Having a 50% paid appointment at UW subjects one to a lot of legal jeopardy, which is precisely why I have been on 100% unpaid leave for the last three years.
The article is a list with many incorrect decisions (like going to commercialisation office before asking anyone who had tried, etc), so I guess it shouldn't come as a big surprise they keep making them?
I saw Prof. Stein's talk at JupyterCon last year and was blown away by what he had accomplished with CoCalc. It was one of the best talks at the conference IMO. Very excited to see where CoCalc is headed and wish Prof. Stein all the best.
Thanks for the link. Watching it I can't help but feel a little sad. Prof. Stein is a highly trained mathematician with a track record in establishing successful software projects like Sage that many people benefit tremendously from (watching the video I learned that he actually started Cython as well!). It says something about the state of affairs -- the general lack of awareness and interest in the development of math unless it benefits some business directly -- when he could not find the resource needed to develop the math software he loved the way he wanted to. Maybe he really enjoyed working on the sync protocols, text formats, backend databases and file systems etc needed to get CoCalc running smoothly. But I wonder if he had the resource he needed would he make the same choice? I say this as I have a son who is double majoring in CS and math. As a freshman he is already mostly done with upper division math (3 A+ in honors real and complex analysis) and is taking graduate math classes. Yet it seems prudent for him to at least put in the minimum effort to get his CS degree to keep his option open. Eventually it will be a hard choice down the road for him as well.
As lead developer on Axiom, an open source computer algebra system, I can fully appreciate his funding problem.
One problem is that open source software can't really handle grants. Government grants require accounting to
handle receipts, and follow all of the rules. We need a couple "open source accounting" people who can handle
managing grants (just like a school's bursar's office).
I have tried to find a funding stream for nearly 20 years, without success.
I am currently doing computer algebra research as a visiting scholar. That is an unpaid position.
Perhaps you can remain connected to the department as a visiting scholar.
If there is some way I can help, please let me know.
I’m not sure if SPI has supported member projects with receiving government grants specifically, but they are setup to provide shared resources like accounting for open source projects.
> Perhaps you can remain connected to the department as a visiting scholar.
I will, though as an "adjunct". It's of course unpaid, but makes it technically possible to do some things with the university (e.g., be on a Ph.D. thesis committee).
I know this isn't the most appropriate place to ask, but what are the main feature gaps between commercial computer algebra systems like Mathematica/Maple and systems like Axiom/Sympy?
You should copy Magma's model but be open source and use support or web hosting (like cocalc does) to justify the price tag. Then you get users to give you their grant money. Or convert to closed source main branch and release 1 yes old versions or at $ bounty milestones as open source, to motivate users to buy a license.
This post resonated with me strongly. Yes, resigning sounds like the obvious best choice. I hope it works out well!
I can certainly understand why Prof. Stein doesn't want to trash his colleagues, but I'll come out and say it: if academia wasn't completely dysfunctional, it would find a way to support this work.
For my own work (which is nowhere nearly as academically relevant as CoCalc and Sage) I'm planning on doing it myself without worrying too much about funding. I can use a combination of savings, random consulting gigs, Patreon, etc. I can imagine doing more "company" kinds of things, but only to the extent it supports the work. This is not an easy problem, and again I wish Prof. Stein well.
I'm really disappointed (with my impression) that UW doesn't seem to appreciate what has been accomplished with Sage and the value of a major open source competitor to Mathematica, Maple, Matlab, etc. I hope William and Cocalc are tremendously successful.
If I'm reading the article right, he's only done work for UW for one out of the last 5 years. That seems to me to be an enormous amount of flexibility on their part.
I think this is a sad reminder that as a developer just because you add value, doesnt mean you will be able to capture it. There is a tragedy of commons at play for tools, most of us (including companies) are unwilling to pay good money for good tools.
To add to his accomplishments, Sage was a pioneer of the web-based client/server notebook model now popular in Jupyter. I'm not sure if Sage was THE first instance of this, but certainly one of the first.
I wish I could come up with a more helpful comment, but, as someone with 1-3 terminal windows dedicated to Sage pretty much at all times on my machine: no, giving up a tenured professorship for Cocalc sounds like a bad plan.
Yes, you are absolutely correct in your decision to resign.
It's - if I'm being honest here - painfully clear you are much more interested in your side project (from the prospective of UW) than your ostensible job.
I think for your sake and theirs' you should resign and try to commercialize this, or you will fail at both. Either that or completely hand off or abandon the project.
It's not inherently a side project, it only has to be one because his department doesn't view this work as a contribution to pure mathematics. Seems shortsighted for a field where progress is often measured in centuries.
Wow, I just went to the Cocalc website, and it's truly shocking. It seems like an interesting service, but terribly marketed. Do you have any designers? I know your service is targeted towards technically minded people, but it still needs to be able to market itself. Have you done any user testing on how people use your marketing website? Here is my experience so far:
The first thing I see is a NINE minute long video. As a first time visitor who doesn't know anything about this service, that's too much time to invest.
The second thing I see is that it supports a lot of stuff. Cool, but why is it better than what I have now? I see that I can share things privately. I can already do that. I can "time travel". Yes, version control is a thing. I can publish it online. Great, I already do that. These are the only thing I read because they are the only thing that's bold. To be honest, this is where I would have clicked away.
It also doesn't help that the navigation is unusable at half-laptop screen width, let alone on mobile.
Only after scouring your website do I realize that it's basically Google Docs but for math, which is cool! But this was not clear at all when first visiting your site.
If you're interested in more feedback feel free to reach out.
UW is a prestigious university and you already earned tenure. Even if you quit your job and the project fails, you're going to be just fine. Probably still a scary decision, but in my eyes you have already "made it".
I worked at Wolfram Research and I have sideline knowledge of how hard it is to successfully commercialize a CAS. I personally would wait for NSF funding to improve (it is an unfortunate reality how funding is prioritized nowadays), and perhaps get resourceful about developing your system further in an academic setting- I’ve done similar work as a university student looking for a resume booster.
1. Do it -- You're ok with this failing and being locked out of academia -- then go for it! Maybe, if it fails, you'd be happy joining cloudera or another placing building notebooks!
2. Do it -- You're on track for paying living wages, both for yourself and future employees, say within 6mo organically, or with outside investment (from your post... you're still before then). Maybe live abroad for a year to further cut down!
3. Go back for a year -- Let it grow a bit more, and push any income you'd have taken to others who are earlier in their career
In both 'do it' scenarios, get ready to pivot/expand to areas that will do a better job of keeping food on the table for your employees families, and to keep failing at it until something works. If you can't stomache that, wait till you can hire someone who will, or keep it as a hobby.
I normally wouldn't offer to chat w/ someone over the internet, but I'm close-ish to this space, and a stage or so ahead wrt commercialization, so would be happy to do so
That you are asking this question.. then No. And you should bootstrap this with UW or carefully manage your obligations. There are many profs with a foot on both sides.
I would not leave until you've achieved escape velocity.
Looking at the full scope of things here it seems like it would be batshit insane for this guy to resign his professorship (on the economic calculus). Of course if he hates every day at the university it’s different.
In UW's case, that would be even more difficult than usual because of its organization. The mathematics department is in the College of Arts and Science and the CS department is in the engineering school. These are practically like separate universities within UW.
Sage is primarily developed to support pure mathematics research (and undergrad teaching). Probably the main possibly unique thing Sage brings to numerical analysis is good support for arbitrary precision and interval arithmetic. Beyond that, Sage is written in Python, so it inherits the standard numerical functionality from that ecosystem, namely numpy, scipy, pandas, etc. Sage also has excellent support for Cython, since much of Sage is written in Cython (I even made up the name "Cython").
I was going to counsel that you retain your tenure but I guess you've already decided to resign. (If so, why ask?)
The rationale for my recommendation is largely captured in other comments so I'll be brief: Winter is coming (macroeconomically). And it sounds like cocalc lacks: a strong balance sheet, a scalable sales model, and a story that would interest outside investors. As such, I personally would view the company as lifestyle/earnings supplementation and not core sustenance. It is also synergistic with your day job.
TBH I feel like there's very little risk with quitting to work on a project that already has users.
It seems like he's a good enough programmer that he could always find a job at a big tech company, make a bunch of money and then quit once he has enough saved up. And that's assuming he doesn't find any paid users or get any source of funding which again is hard but not impossible or that unlikely given that he already has a product with users.
I think he'll be just fine and I wish him the best.
[+] [-] ptero|7 years ago|reply
1. Resigning from a tenured position likely means taking a one-way street. The exception is a well-known scientist that can easily switch tenure to 2-3 other school today. In many fields competition for tenure is brutal and once you leave you may have some disadvantages in re-entry against a bunch of post-docs. "Only losers leave academia" is still a widely held mindset. All this does not mean not to resign; just be aware.
2. Do you still need money? The fact that the company is not ramen profitable in 7 years (including last 3 years of dedicated effort) means it may not be a source of income for a while. If you are not set for life, how long can you afford to not work? Will you be OK in industry (some professors thrive there some are completely miserable with a manager who tells them what to do and imposes deadlines)?
Unless you are set for life I would seriously consider your 50% option -- you get another year to fully dedicate to your startup without teaching a single day and still maintain tenure. In a year, re-evaluate. My 2c.
[+] [-] williamstein|7 years ago|reply
> 2. Do you still need money?
Yes. In fact, I didn't save enough as a college math professor to retire while living in Seattle (an expensive place)!
> The fact that the company is not ramen profitable in 7 years
The company is not profitable, but it is "ramen profitable" according to http://www.paulgraham.com/ramenprofitable.html. Without getting into details, the bank balance goes down a little each month since we pay hosting and for four fulltime employees (we have about 2 years of runway). However, we're close to profitable. If we instead had only three employees (or paid ourselves less), then we would be profitable. If we had just one employee (me), then I would be making a LOT more money than I made working at UW, though I would likely be much less happy (the other three people working on CoCalc are fantastic!).
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|7 years ago|reply
This is always a flag for me for something that needs to be investigated. Personally I think the idea the guy took to stick with CoCalc was interesting but at the same time he should really really consider hiring a CFO, someone who really understands where the money comes in and how it goes out.
Such a person could tell him exactly how much "lifetime value" is needed from each customer in order to make the company a going concern. Sometimes that number is "impossible" in that it is way more than one believes they could get for the product. When that happens, you have to take a serious look at whether or not you're looking at a hobby or a business.
It is always difficult to see these sorts of discussions after they have been had, especially when there was information that could have been developed earlier on that would have informed the decision, but it is not uncommon.
[+] [-] tlarkworthy|7 years ago|reply
A few years later, richer than academia could ever provide (I left academia and did not regret it)
[+] [-] qwerty456127|7 years ago|reply
Why so? There are so many people who would like to study but can't get into an university. There (as you say) are so many professors who would like to teach but also get into brutal competition. Why not just build more universities? Also why not start a private education company that probably wouldn't be eligible to issue government-accredited degrees (who but medical doctors and lawyers needs them anyway?) yet would provide university-level education quality and compete the free-market way?
[+] [-] jrochkind1|7 years ago|reply
> I have decided to resign.
NO, WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?
[+] [-] bachmeier|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ssivark|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SiempreViernes|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrfusion|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Areading314|7 years ago|reply
Edit: here is the talk https://pyvideo.org/jupytercon-2018/real-time-collaboration-...
[+] [-] fspeech|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] williamstein|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] daly|7 years ago|reply
One problem is that open source software can't really handle grants. Government grants require accounting to handle receipts, and follow all of the rules. We need a couple "open source accounting" people who can handle managing grants (just like a school's bursar's office).
I have tried to find a funding stream for nearly 20 years, without success.
I am currently doing computer algebra research as a visiting scholar. That is an unpaid position. Perhaps you can remain connected to the department as a visiting scholar.
If there is some way I can help, please let me know.
[+] [-] xvilka|7 years ago|reply
P.S. What do you think about moving the site to GitHub Pages instead[2] (and overall modernization of it).
[1] https://opencollective.com/
[2] https://github.com/daly/axiom/issues/13
[+] [-] onedognight|7 years ago|reply
https://www.spi-inc.org/
[+] [-] williamstein|7 years ago|reply
I will, though as an "adjunct". It's of course unpaid, but makes it technically possible to do some things with the university (e.g., be on a Ph.D. thesis committee).
[+] [-] cf|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hopler|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] raphlinus|7 years ago|reply
I can certainly understand why Prof. Stein doesn't want to trash his colleagues, but I'll come out and say it: if academia wasn't completely dysfunctional, it would find a way to support this work.
For my own work (which is nowhere nearly as academically relevant as CoCalc and Sage) I'm planning on doing it myself without worrying too much about funding. I can use a combination of savings, random consulting gigs, Patreon, etc. I can imagine doing more "company" kinds of things, but only to the extent it supports the work. This is not an easy problem, and again I wish Prof. Stein well.
[+] [-] selimthegrim|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adenadel|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] treis|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dman|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paulgb|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] User23|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] heinrichf|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] keithnz|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tptacek|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway5752|7 years ago|reply
It's - if I'm being honest here - painfully clear you are much more interested in your side project (from the prospective of UW) than your ostensible job.
I think for your sake and theirs' you should resign and try to commercialize this, or you will fail at both. Either that or completely hand off or abandon the project.
[+] [-] tashi|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aralisza|7 years ago|reply
The first thing I see is a NINE minute long video. As a first time visitor who doesn't know anything about this service, that's too much time to invest.
The second thing I see is that it supports a lot of stuff. Cool, but why is it better than what I have now? I see that I can share things privately. I can already do that. I can "time travel". Yes, version control is a thing. I can publish it online. Great, I already do that. These are the only thing I read because they are the only thing that's bold. To be honest, this is where I would have clicked away.
It also doesn't help that the navigation is unusable at half-laptop screen width, let alone on mobile.
Only after scouring your website do I realize that it's basically Google Docs but for math, which is cool! But this was not clear at all when first visiting your site.
If you're interested in more feedback feel free to reach out.
[+] [-] azhenley|7 years ago|reply
(I'm a tenure-track first year prof.)
[+] [-] winter_blue|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] primitivesuave|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lmeyerov|7 years ago|reply
Either:
1. Do it -- You're ok with this failing and being locked out of academia -- then go for it! Maybe, if it fails, you'd be happy joining cloudera or another placing building notebooks!
2. Do it -- You're on track for paying living wages, both for yourself and future employees, say within 6mo organically, or with outside investment (from your post... you're still before then). Maybe live abroad for a year to further cut down!
3. Go back for a year -- Let it grow a bit more, and push any income you'd have taken to others who are earlier in their career
In both 'do it' scenarios, get ready to pivot/expand to areas that will do a better job of keeping food on the table for your employees families, and to keep failing at it until something works. If you can't stomache that, wait till you can hire someone who will, or keep it as a hobby.
I normally wouldn't offer to chat w/ someone over the internet, but I'm close-ish to this space, and a stage or so ahead wrt commercialization, so would be happy to do so
[+] [-] sjg007|7 years ago|reply
I would not leave until you've achieved escape velocity.
[+] [-] anbop|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] broken_symlink|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jhbadger|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] quotha|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yathern|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] valgor|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] williamstein|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] untangle|7 years ago|reply
The rationale for my recommendation is largely captured in other comments so I'll be brief: Winter is coming (macroeconomically). And it sounds like cocalc lacks: a strong balance sheet, a scalable sales model, and a story that would interest outside investors. As such, I personally would view the company as lifestyle/earnings supplementation and not core sustenance. It is also synergistic with your day job.
[+] [-] formalsystem|7 years ago|reply
It seems like he's a good enough programmer that he could always find a job at a big tech company, make a bunch of money and then quit once he has enough saved up. And that's assuming he doesn't find any paid users or get any source of funding which again is hard but not impossible or that unlikely given that he already has a product with users.
I think he'll be just fine and I wish him the best.
[+] [-] dman|7 years ago|reply