Phd vs Startup

The very title makes me think I am biased........of course towards a Phd...The last few days ( almost a week) has been the worst roller-coaster ride till date...It does not surprise me if I continue to say the same in every post of mine..

A fast update on the few coding/algo stuff. First we found the bug in the bundle adjustment as an integer overflow problem..Thankfully, got the projective bundle adjustment working...But the auto-calibration would not be so easy...We got so frustrated that we thought we need to invent a whole new way of looking at the problem as most auto-alibration things are not always going to work. More importantly, as some one in the ML community, I hate being stuck at the local-optima in lev-mar algorithm. Fortunately, as we were almost packing our bags and postponing things by atleast 6 months, we found a small ray of hope...using K,R,t in the lev-mar instead of camera matrix P...Chytu is working on it as I jot this down....

Now for the most important dilemma......Phd vs Startup.....As we got stuck with these techniques, I strongly felt that we need to innovate fundamentally in a very mathematical way....But Microsoft's Photosynth always reminds me that the present technique is pretty mature......But I dont want to agree. We felt that posing this problem as a convex optimization/markov model thing is the solution forward..But we neither have that mathematical versatality nor the time to do that in just a month...So we decieded to go and join our respective companies and work on this problem for the next 6 months...If everything goes well, we may have a solution in 6 months..which I see as very improbable... because changing 20 years of research in 6 months is not easy...So Chytu and myself taught that we need to come back to IISc for a Phd after 6 months..taking these six months as time to work further on this problem and see a bit of 'Corporate' life...This Phd thing is getting very much into my head...so much so that I was reconsidering the whole startup thing....As my weekness goes, I get too caught up with something ....So is this.....

I feel like contributing fundamentally to science now a days...I donot know why?..it feels that I am thinking like the way I used to in my BTech 3rd year...do some fundamental research...It all seems to come a full-circle...I am confused as I write this....but this small ray of hope in the 3D thing is seemingly like a small thread to which I am hanging on now...If it all works, I probably will have a nice startup and hopefully Chytu and myself will do some fundamental research in our spare time in the startup..But this startup cannot live long wiothout some fundamental research....So may be even a startup is not a bad idea...if i dont get too sucked up into marketing.......If i get into a phd, I may have to forget startup till I am 35 or so....this post seems as confucing and ill-written as I dont even know what to write...CONFUSED to the extreme...


The best way seems ...Startup in next 6 months..and a gr8 research wing in it...where in I will also be an integral part...Years down the line, may be I can get into Research completely...in the lines of DE Shaw or Bose or Edison....(I guess I am expecting too much in Life)..As Sai points out with me, "I dont want to give up anything in life".....But the thread of hope still holds me from falling away from the Startup thing..Hope this will be the same for next 6 months atleast.. I guess I can hold on for 6 months..But if the Phd thing in my head gets too powerful, I guess I cant hold on for anything more than 6 months....

I hope this dilemma will be something I will laugh at years from now...