Yeah this, in fact forget local and just write to researchers in your field, or go through dedicated network events. Finding a university researcher with a common interest in a field who'd consider the opportunity to be subsidised for the next 3-4 years working on stuff they're interested in isn't the hardest hurdle deeptech startups will face on their road to commercialization, especially when the alternative people treat like it's some kind of meritocratic sieve is "get warm intros to a VC class so insular some of them write unironic LinkedIn posts about how it's impossible to be successful outside the Bay Area"
(Or just use one of the funding mechanisms that attach little or zero weight to academic collaboration)
Ha! Downvotes for pointing out that if you actually need them, university researchers are actually more willing to chat about getting research funding than VCs are to give the average first time founder money. Never change, HN!
Honestly, I'd love it if the mail in my inbox from universities wanting to do European projects with us was the result of me being some sort of uniquely-valuable well-connected wizard whereas all the founders had to do was flutter their eyelashes and say "Founders Fund are following on" to get term sheets from everyone in the Valley. But that's not the reality...
In reality there's no shortage of bureaucracy and credentialism if you want Federal contracts (and in some industries plenty of bureaucracy just to do your research in the US even if you don't take any money), and the US exceptionalism when it comes to mindset and regulatory looseness is pretty much the same in the backwater states that don't have any notable startups of their own, whilst Bavaria doesn't seem to be doing too badly for VC investment compared with anywhere that's not California despite the extremes of German bureaucracy. And fundamentally VCs and government funders on both sides of the Atlantic are doing different jobs, with different investment targets and different tradeoffs for founders.
There are clearly some frustrated voices in this thread. I try not to take the downvotes personally.
I hope to eventually learn how to engage more constructively with such responses. When someone claims to understand how a system works, yet behaves in a way that contradicts that understanding and then blames the system for not meeting their expectations, I question whether their insight is as deep as they suggest.
(Or just use one of the funding mechanisms that attach little or zero weight to academic collaboration)