Recent Posts
Reviewing is a fairly formal process which is integral to the way academia is run. Given this integral nature, the quality of reviewing is often frustrating. I’ve seen plenty of examples of false statements, misbeliefs, reading what isn’t written, etc…, and I’m sure many other people have as well.
Recently, mechanisms like double blind review and author feedback have been introduced to try to make the process more fair and accurate in many machine learning (and related) conferences. My personal experience is that these mechanisms help, especially the author feedback. Nevertheless, some problems remain.
The game theory take on reviewing is that the incentive for truthful reviewing isn’t there. Since reviewers are also authors, there are sometimes perverse incentives created and acted upon. (Incidentially, these incentives can be both positive and negative.)
Setting up a truthful reviewing system is tricky because their is no final reference truth available in any acceptable (say: subyear) timespan. There are several ways we could try to get around this.
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One thing I have learned in my experience with startups is that if you are not careful, you are as likely to experience as many challenges with your co-founder(s) as you are with the business itself. The following are some of the most important questions that should be resolved as early in the process as possible. In most cases, these issues only get more difficult over time...
1. How should we divide the shares? ..
2. How will decisions get made? ..
3. What happens if one of us leaves the company? ..
4. Can any of us be fired? By whom? For what reasons? ..
5. What are our personal goals for the startup? ..
6. Will this be the primary activity for each of us? ..
7. What part of our plan are we each unwilling to change? ..
8. What contractual terms will each of us sign with the company? ..
9. Will any of us be investing cash in the company? If so, how is this treated? ..
10. What will we pay ourselves? Who gets to change this in the future?
