
What it’s like to pursue a dream for 30 years and fail - davesailer
https://thehustle.co/bionic-boot/
======
Gazoo101
I read the article with fascination, and googled his name to get a website
with some media upon which I found a link to a page with a non-clickable link
to this video (likely the same as has been featured earlier):

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aD7ClbhLNOc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aD7ClbhLNOc)

As a fellow passionate creator, it pains me to see a video production like
this. Having never seen this product before, I'd argue what interests most
people first and foremost is seeing the product in action, and what's possible
with them (which wouldn't be possible without).

It takes 18 seconds until the video actually shows them being used while worn.
25, if you want to see them running in real-time. The first time you actually
get a sense of how they compare to anything else (bikes / cars) isn't until
one minute and 16 seconds into the video. It boggles my mind. I understand
that not everyone can be a video da vinci, but this video could be 1000 times
better in so many ways.

It's literally the ideal product for a click-baity - WE OUTRUN A
CAR/BIKE/OLYMPIC MEDAL WINNER - type video. Sure, have a little bit of a lead
in, but then show him squaring off against 3 other commonly known modes of
transportation etc. etc.

And don't even get me started on that constant heart-beat and increasingly
present jet 'woosh' noise O_O.

~~~
on_and_off
I had to turn the volume to its minimum, this woosh noise is borderline
painful.

You are spot on, most of the video shows somebody running alone. It is
uninteresting, just having shiny boots does not make such a clip attention
grabbing..

~~~
jasonlotito
Someone running alone on various types of terrain and various levels
underbrush. This is fairly important, and very interesting.

~~~
emerongi
It shouldn't be the start of the video, though. Right after showing how cool
they are, is when you show utility (you can run in the woods as well!)

------
camtarn
Really surprised that the article doesn't mention PowerSkips (aka powerbocks
or jumping stilts), the remarkably similar product which were invented around
1999 and featured in the 2008 Olympic closing ceremony.

They're pretty common, with several manufacturers making them to this day
under different brands. Several of my friends own a pair.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_stilts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_stilts)

To be fair, jumping stilts don't use quite the same mechanism as Bionic Boots,
but the results are almost identical.

There was clearly a market for this invention - and somebody else actually
filled that market very successfully.

~~~
samstave
I've always wondered what the efficiency of movement is on these things,
specifically WRT fatigue of the user/rider... in that I have often wondered by
soldiers arent equipped with things like this.

Would walking around on patrol in a place like Afghanistan be more or less
better if you were wearing these.

Can they be added to the bottom of the exoskeleton legs which allow relief
from part of the weight of a pack - but then adding faster movement when
wearing the exo-legs+pack?

~~~
camtarn
From this article:
[https://newatlas.com/powerbocking/12337/](https://newatlas.com/powerbocking/12337/)

it looks like jumping stilts allow you to deliver a lot more energy in a short
period - for instance, running up to 25mph, or jumping over cars - but you pay
for that with significantly increased calorie burn and the use of many more
muscles.

So, probably really not what you want for endurance activities such as foot
patrol.

In addition, the springs in them need to be calibrated for the weight they're
supporting, and they top out around 240lb / 110kg. So you'd need extra heavy
duty ones for soldiers with packs, and then you couldn't use those once the
packs had been removed.

Maybe if you had a situation where you needed a couple of soldiers to dump
their packs, don a pair of these that they'd been carrying, and run somewhere
_really fast_ ... ;)

In related news, the Russian Army investigated gasoline-powered 'rocket boots'
for soldiers. Because of course they did. Sadly they didn't work out too well.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/17/business/worldbusiness/17...](https://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/17/business/worldbusiness/17gazshoes.html)

"One result of the Russian space agency testing was a calculation that the
energy in calories used to move the two-pound boot at a run would exceed the
energy input from the gasoline engine. That meant, it was more tiring to run
with the motorized footwear than without it, undermining the original
rationale. Only if the weight could be reduced to below 2 pounds per boot
would the wearer have a net energy gain. So far they have failed at this."

Also,

" 'The worst situation is when the spark fires as the runner just lands, and
the force of the blast is absorbed by his body,' Mr. Garipov explains flatly."

Maybe not the best idea. (Although I reckon if you outfitted them with modern
electronic ignition and a sensor to ensure that they'd bottomed out and begun
recoiling before ignition, you could do a lot better...)

~~~
adrianN
I've seen robots use brushless motors as replacements for springs, but with an
adjustable spring constant. I wonder whether motorized jumping stilts would be
practical. The motors could also add some power to your jumps.

~~~
samstave
Does the motor add force, or absorb force to regenerative-braking-->energy?

A fly-wheel-compression system on a brushless alternator would be an
interesting addition to a spring-ish based stilt-prosthetic. Let it pump an
alternator in the unit to create power for all the gear over time/distance?

------
talltimtom
Sounds like he was too focused on inventing and forgot the production/sales
aspect. He literally had the product and had thousands of people emailing him
directly ready to buy! And he still complains that he couldn’t sell.

He should have realized his personal shortcomings and partnered with someone
who had the qualities he lacked.

~~~
jshowa3
I don't know. There's many people that do practically nothing in that regard
and become mega hits overnight. Happens all the time in software. How many
sales people were marketing facebook back in the day?

~~~
rat9988
You can become rich with 0 work. The harder you work, the more preparation you
do, the more you minimize the luck factor.

~~~
rhizome
"The more I practice, the luckier I get" used to be a common .sig quote.

[https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/07/14/luck/](https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/07/14/luck/)

------
jakespracher
“More egregiously, a Chinese firm nicked Seymour’s design, mass-produced the
product, and sold it under the “Bionic Boot” name on Amazon.”

This is the most important line to me. I’ve heard so many horror stories along
these lines.

Yet, does anyone here know why companies like Sarah Blakely’s Spanx didn’t
suffer the same fate? Spanx is now a billion dollar company that launched with
an easily clonable product.

She talks about how she filed a patent on her idea on her own with no lawyer
and that was the only explanation. I don’t think she had a lot of money to
fight cases.

[https://mastersofscale.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/mos-
ep...](https://mastersofscale.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/mos-episode-
transcript_-sara-blakely.pdf)

~~~
leroy_masochist
> does anyone here know why companies like Sarah Blakely’s Spanx didn’t suffer
> the same fate?

Spanx succeeded because they built a brand around convincing a wide swath of
the population that their life would be better if they wore a fancy girdle.
Their success was because of sales excellence and a smart customer engagement
campaign, not proprietary tech.

~~~
jakespracher
Presumably you’re making the case that they grew quickly enough that by the
time any competitors were aware of the potential of product they did have the
money to fight infringement.

Even still, in the early days of their marketing campaign it would have been
so easy for a foreign competitor to swoop in and make the same thing. I didn’t
get the vibe that they grew that quickly, and I do get the vibe that there are
foreign manufacturers on the hunt for ideas to copy.

~~~
leroy_masochist
I really don't think it's a question of proprietary IP, infringement risks,
etc. It's not complicated technology. Spanx succeeded because they created a
brand that massively expanded the market for slimming compression
undergarments; they were especially effective in marketing to men.

~~~
pandesmos
Yes absolutely this imo. I worked at Saks Fifth Avenue around the time Spanx
we’re taking off. It was absolutely about the “lifestyle” and the brand. There
might have been competitor and there might have been knockoffs, but they were
just that: not Spanx. And that was very important.

I remember one of the top sales girls joking with her clients constantly after
Christmas one year about how she’d had too much to drink at the Christmas
party and she’d fallen and rolled or something and “next thing I knew my Spanx
were hanging out”. And they’d all laugh uproariously as they held several
pairs to buy.

It’s this magical sweet spot where they were just expensive enough to be
special and “the real deal”. Competition didn’t matter. Price didn’t matter.
Spanx mattered. I found it insanely interesting.

------
apo
This article tells about Seymour's many failed attempts to get investors
onboard, but nothing - not one word - about the inventor selling prototypes
himself.

Yes, producing 100K units will require serious capital. But producing a few
units and test-marketing them on Amazon should be well within reach.

There are so many ways to do this. For example, how about starting with a
signature edition, produced as a series of 10 units. The guy's had crazy media
attention. There are people who know about him and who might be willing to buy
a first-run as a collector play or simply to fund a man with relentless drive.

I suspect the investors and other companies he's pitching to see this and
_that 's_ why they refuse to invest. They don't believe Seymour is the man to
bring the idea to market.

And they may be right.

Seymour can solve this problem by:

1\. switching focus to marketing;

2\. bringing on an associate who is focused on marketing.

~~~
onli
Why marketing? According to the article, he already had the orders coming in
via email, that's enough publicity to start.

Some others here said it already, but he could have just accepted the orders,
start manufacturing a small batch and sell them. Why was that impossible to
do? The article is completely lacking that detail. Why the focus on getting an
investor?

------
JabrZer0
I was lucky enough to meet Keahi at a World's Fair Nano in SF a few years ago
and chat with him a bit afterwards as well. He's a really smart guy, and his
boots are awesome, but I have to echo a few other commenters here: he seemed
too focused on the design and engineering and didn't seem to know how to
execute past that. In particular, it seemed to me that the boots themselves
weren't ready for production. They worked exceptionally well, but they were
hand-made, and it was clear that they weren't designed to be made in a factory
setting.

Hardware is a slow business by its nature, especially when coming into it from
the inventor/designer side. But at some point the lean startup is right. "Fail
Fast" has one concept at its core: win or lose, you have to execute. Keahi
actually went out and built his design (which is more than many hardware
inventors can say). But the next step in the execution of a consumer hardware
business has to be building enough of your product to sell to customers, and
that's a different skill set.

If you find yourself stuck in the design phase, try to find a way to push
forward. If you're short on cash, maybe a group of early, dedicated customers
(or a Kickstarter) can provide the funds you need to set up small-scale
manufacturing. If you can't find some initial customers and can't successfully
run a Kickstarter, at least you'll know it's time to move on. Hardware's a
tough industry, and I firmly believe that there are plenty of great ideas out
there that would survive if they could get past this particular bump.

Anyway, I hope he manages to push past the design phase and into production -
it's a cool product, and one that I'd love to be able to buy someday.

~~~
Zanni
I think his real issue is market fit. He only talks about _his_ vision, what
_he_ wants to do. Not a word about his customers. The ability to run that fast
is amazing, but the boots themselves are ungainly and the stride looks awkward
as hell. I wonder what kind of speed boost he could get in a boot that looks
more like a boot than a pair of stilts. I'd bet there's a bigger market for a
"normal" boot that gives you, say, a 10% boost in speed, than these things.

------
egypturnash
Take it to Kickstarter, Keahi. Take it to Kickstarter.

Figure out how many pairs you'd have to manufacture so you can amortize the
cost of making your molds and other setup to around $500 a boot. Maybe you've
already got those, maybe they're only sized for your feet and you need to re-
work them to be adjustable, I dunno.

Kickstart a run of a couple thousand, then go talking to bigger manufacturers.

Or maybe you've thought about this already and it turns out scaling up is
gonna take something more in the range of tens of thousands of pairs of boots,
maybe they're just stuck at $1k/pair, I dunno what the materials cost is on
these things. I'd kinda worry about the legal liability too, if someone is
running at 25mph with these and something breaks they could fuck themselves up
pretty badly. Have you been willing to even make _one_ pair by hand for any of
the people coveting them? You're still in the Bay Area, there's _gotta_ be at
least one person who's coveted these in person who has Obscene Bay Area Money
and can offer enough to own the next pair you build, maybe even pay a rush fee
to cover your rent while you take a few weeks off work to build them faster.

~~~
bschwindHN
> Take it to Kickstarter, Keahi. Take it to Kickstarter.

And maybe send Casey Neistat a pair. He has a huge following on youtube and
loves this kind of stuff. I'm sure he'd feature them in a video with a
clickbait title and everything, lol

~~~
seventytwo
> Casey Neistat

Ugh... I've been sick of that guy ever since he made that phony "i took mega-
corp's ad dollars to go travel the world, lulz" video.

~~~
bschwindHN
I'm not personally endorsing him, but you have to admit that's the kind of
thing he'd put in a video which millions of people would see. Pretty small
investment for a potentially huge return.

------
edoo
He only failed if the end goal was market success. It looks like he did what
he set out to do.

His latest model doesn't look too different from the Olympic blade runners.
Maybe it should have been marketed as a prosthesis.

~~~
ip26
There was another parallel development as well, somebody who attached a rubber
band to a large spur off the back of the heel. Might have been related to
Nike's thing. Bit of convergent development.

------
nemild
This is quite an amazing story, love the persistence and passion.

One note. Just because the patents are expiring, doesn't mean this can't still
succeed. Inventors and scientists sometimes think that legal defensibility is
what allows you to monetize an invention (it echoes some of the debates I've
had with my father, a scientist).

Instead, well after a Chinese knockoff is in market, I could see a niche
product succeed when seeding it with the right early adopter community, using
just Instagram/YouTube, and having great branding.

A product category is not "done" when there's a manufacturer in the market.

~~~
JamesBarney
I think specifically the success he was looking for which is finding an
investing/manufacturing/sales partner and he just does the invention is dead
without a patent.

------
ngngngng
I can't help but think of the bullet ball guy. Spent 26 years developing this
silly game and devoted his whole life to it and it went nowhere.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leHwNiXgnh0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leHwNiXgnh0)

~~~
goldenkey
Wrong spin. Marc persevered and now the game is thriving:

[https://youtu.be/FcGeFo5lz-A](https://youtu.be/FcGeFo5lz-A)

Honestly brings tears to my eyes to see him triumph over naysayers.

------
russellbeattie
There are no hard and fast rules, but I've noticed that it always seems to
take two personalities to create a new tech business: A hacker and a hustler.
Sometimes these are two people: Jobs and Woz, Gates and Allen, Page and Brin,
Moore and Noyce, Yang and Filo, Hewlett and Packard... Sometimes they are the
same person (who are also generally a-holes): Ellison, Zuckerberg (but not
always): Benioff. Sometimes a hustler hires the hackers: Ford, Bezos.
Sometimes the hackers find the hustlers: Andreessen, Omidyar.

OK, these are probably generalizations, but it seems to fit a pattern, no?

~~~
ddorian43
Zuckerberg is an alien/lizard. But seems like yes.

------
soneca
Isn't this the exact concept of those running blades used by paraathletes?

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flex-
Foot_Cheetah](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flex-Foot_Cheetah)

These use carbon fibre and if I recall correctly are proved to be a more
efficient tool for running competitions than natural legs. There is debate if
it should be allowed on regular competitions or if it counts as "doping".

A similar design adapted to able-bodied people might be a better solution than
his metal structure design.

I think this is the downside of working solo and focusing solely on
registering patents and getting rich. You miss how other people contributions
could improve your product.

~~~
huhtenberg
There's also the whole "jumping stilts" category that appears to have peaked
few years ago and now subsided to almost zero.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_stilts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_stilts)

~~~
telesilla
Those are great if you can wear stilts, which I can't (well, I did when I was
a kid but I don't have great balance). What I'd like is just something small
that makes my step bounce: kids get to have those little roller balls in their
sneakers. Why can't I have a pair that just lets me jump a little bit with my
step? It would make running and playing so much fun.

~~~
jniedrauer
It'd be useful for me on mountain descents as well. I really love steep
descents on snowshoes because the landing is so soft. Ice/rock descents
_hurt_. Having a little spring at the bottom of your stride would go a long
way to saving the knees.

~~~
idoubtit
Trekking shoes have a device to absorbs the shocks, which is usually a gaz or
gel layer inside the sole. Unfortunately, this cannot absorb much, since a
thick sole would reduce the stability of the foot. By the way, always walking
with shock absorbers has bad physiological consequences on the feet and knees.

I think the best way to protect the knees, aside from soft snow and screes, is
to lower the body when walking down, and absorb the shock using the thighs'
muscles.

------
coldtea
Sorry, why the duck doesn't this guy start a Kickstarter?

------
keeptrying
He had a lot of interest but for some reason didn’t pull the trigger on
sending his product into the market.

I’m guessing it was some kind of safety measure that he must have believed
that he needed/wanted to achieve.

Honestly, he achieved his dream - Ie building the boot.

He failed in building a multi million dollar business - but that’s something
most all of us will fail to do.

------
plaidfuji
There was another blog post on HN a few months ago titled “Fall in Love with
the Problem, not the Solution.” This is a very clear case of the latter. What
problem is he trying to solve??? That humans are too slow? The bicycle solved
that ages ago.

------
ttul
You have to love the journey, otherwise it isn’t worth the pain. The joy of
entrepreneurism isn’t the huge check; if you want that, just become a doctor
or dentist or corporate lawyer.

~~~
jessaustin
Lots of those just barely stay ahead of their student loans for much of their
lives... Labor is an eventually-efficient market.

------
puranjay
Am I the only one who thinks being able to bring a vision you had at 12 to
life is a remarkable success?

~~~
Aloha
No, you're not.

A lack of commercial success != failure.

------
scottlegrand2
I would buy a pair of these things. Assuming they don't do something
pathological to your bones or your joints, these sound like a mountain of fun.
But he should take heart, the inventor(s) of inline skates suffered a similar
fate with respect to the patent on them.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inline_skates](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inline_skates)

~~~
gscott
It does seem that he could sell probably 10-20 a month. I bet the Chinese
knockoffs probably are poorly made, he could be on the high end of his
product.

------
classichasclass
These remind me of Chell's boots in Portal (in reverse?). For that matter,
there's a little bit of Cave Johnson in this story too.

But throughout the article, while I was delighted by the concept, fascinated
by the execution and impressed by his dedication, I still couldn't think of
where his market for these lies.

~~~
scottlegrand2
The same demographic that runs around Google imitating Sergey Brin in those
toe sneakers perhaps?

------
GlenTheMachine
I'm very surprised DARPA, ONR, or SOCOM didn't at least offer a startup grant
for this. ONR has an entire office devoted to developing stuff exactly like
this.

There is an art to writing DoD research grant proposals, just as there is (I
presume) an art to pitching VC. So maybe a lack of understanding of how to go
about securing these types of grants could explain him not getting one. But
DARPA, in particular, goes way out of its way to take that out of the
equation.

Which leads me to wonder whether there isn't more to this story.

~~~
freedomben
It's possible that safety and/or energy consumption is the issue. As noted by
others, there are similar products like jumping stilts out there. While they
are effective, it is very easy to get hurt on them. Falling from that height
is very risky. One Amazon reviewer broke a wrist for example.

It also sounds like it takes a tremendous amount of energy to use these. One
guy was hoping to replace his bicycle with these but discovered that despite
being in tremendous shape he couldn't handle more than 15 minutes.

Having been in combat situations, the safety factor and energy depletion
factor would be a serious problem for military use, especially while wearing
body armor and/or carrying a pack.

------
matheweis
This reminds me of the Moller M400 Skycar. Although the inventor behind it was
likely years ahead of his time, after 50 years he is still trying to get it
off the ground. Sadly at this point the company is characterized as “no longer
believable enough to gain investors”.

One interesting thing I see in common between the two is a great deal of
effort spent quite early on retaining IP (patents, etc), vs successful
companies who seem to rely more on execution velocity and first mover
advantages until they’re much more mature.

~~~
scarejunba
I looked it up and interestingly the Moller skycar received $100 million in
funding. I think it was just never a working product.

~~~
matheweis
As the many drone-like flying vehicle prototypes have shown, there’s nothing
fundamentally wrong with the idea of a vtol aircraft.

Knowing what we do today about modern rotorcraft theory, it’s likely that the
disc loading of the Moller prototypes was too high for the design to be
practically efficient. It’s also likely that the Wankels didn’t perform
anywhere near expectations for this reason... I don’t believe either of these
to have insurmountable problems.

Rather, it seems likely that a disproportionate amount of effort was sunk into
the software for the flight controller before software development practices
had advanced enough to make it practical; if I recall correctly there was
something like 10’s or 100’s of millions of lines of assembly code involved...

Just an idea that was ahead of its time, plagued by corporate missteps.

------
WheelsAtLarge
The big fail here is lack of focus. The guy has not defined who he's creating
the boots for. He just created them and hoped someone found a need for them.
It's no wonder he's gotten nowhere.

Now that he has a working prototype, he needs to pick a market segment that
can use his boots and tailor them towards that market. My first guess it that
the army would find them useful for soldiers that need to carry heavy
backpacks over long distances or abid outdoor sportsmen that carry lots of
items over a long terrain.

This is a product without a defined need. If I'm an investor I need to know
that I'm going to get my money back so I need to know someone will buy it. If
I'm a buyer I need to know what problem it will solve.

A product that exists without a reason to exist is useless. It does not matter
how cool it is.

~~~
FullyFunctional
It's right there in the article:

> ... his target customers: “Well-to-do adventure-seekers in their mid-30s who
> had tried every type of extreme sport and wanted something new.”

~~~
WheelsAtLarge
Well, it's obvious it did not fill their need. If you look at the inventor's
website you'll see that there is nothing that speaks to that target segment.
It's just a bunch of random shots of him using the product. It's obvious that
he has no idea what his target audience wants. What's the point of saying you
are marketing towards a particular segment and yet you don't work towards
marketing to that segment. You don't just say you are doing something. You
have to act too.

If that's his segment then I would at least have a website showing how to use
the product. I would have some athletes using it too. The demand is not
automatic you have to build people's desire for the product.

He should have consulted a marketing expert even before he had his first
prototype ready.

------
sinuhe69
Other already sold similar boots. That’s why he cannot do a kickstarter
anymore [https://www.amazon.com/CREATETECH-Bionic-Running-Jumping-
Sho...](https://www.amazon.com/CREATETECH-Bionic-Running-Jumping-
Shoes/dp/B07G26YVD3)

~~~
stefs
"With it, you have the power to keep running With it, you will no longer waste
the annual fee of fitness card. With it, you can use your footsteps to measure
the length of your life. With it, there is health With it, walking on the
road, you are the most special one."

this sounds like one of the chinese knock-off companies that just ignored the
patents.

~~~
sct202
Amazon will take down product pages that violate patents--not sure how
quickly, but I've seen people complain about it in the FBA reddit forums.

------
api
This is why it's so important to divorce self worth from achievements.
Everyone cannot possibly win everything.

~~~
petra
Often , the biggest motivation for achievements is self-worth,or ego.

Once you remove that motivation , isn't it much harder to endure and to win
against more motivated competitors ?

~~~
api
For me the motivation can be hard to describe. The best I can do is to say I
try to follow a path where it feels like I am improving the universe, but that
starts to sound like the back of a smoothie bottle.

------
JKCalhoun
I remember watching the episode "Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives" on NOVA
about physicist Hugh Everett III.

I confess I initially watched it because I was interested in Hugh's son, Mark
Everett of the band The Eels.

But it ended up being a poignant look at the also-rans in science. The ideas
that failed.

Link:
[https://vimeo.com/eels/parallelworlds](https://vimeo.com/eels/parallelworlds)

~~~
Eliezer
Failed? There are very few top theoretical physicists (though still some) who
still believe in collapse, and the rest believe something morally equivalent
to an Everettian theory.

~~~
JKCalhoun
I agree, from the point of view of a layman, there seems to have been a
reawakening in regard to his parallel worlds theory. The NOVA episode suggests
there was nothing like that in his life time though. Sadly.

~~~
ummonk
In his lifetime in our world :P

------
scarface74
So he is a Wozniak that didn’t have a Jobs....

~~~
wojtczyk
agreed - he's missing a business-savvy co-founder

------
johnmoore
He knows about the manufacturing process, set up a kickstarter get orders of
10 make those 10 sell them, stream line your manufacturing process within the
United states think 3d printing. Put out the next order of 100 hit the hundred
then take it from there. Get the first 10 to make viral videos for you. Put
made in the US on the outside.

~~~
rabidrat
> Get the first 10 to make viral videos for you.

This is difficult on multiple levels. Most people won't make videos no matter
what (and they paid for the product so they would feel even less pressure),
and those homespun videos are almost certainly not going viral.

~~~
vharuck
Something similar was done with glasses for color blind people:

[https://youtube.com/results?search_query=enchroma+glasses](https://youtube.com/results?search_query=enchroma+glasses)

------
mirimir
Indeed, it's very hard to win with unknown products that can be readily
cloned. And with so much commerce online, it's much harder to fight knockoffs.
I mean, Amazon would probably just bin them all together.

But in fact, as passionate as this guy has been for decades, it's arguably not
such a novel idea. William S. Burroughs featured spring shoes (and spring
knives, flails, etc) in some of his novels, starting in the late 70s.

And if you've ever read _Archeology_ or other elder-targeted media, you'll
know that spring shoes are a trope.[0] Along with "exotic" knives, watches,
cpoins, necklaces, and statues of the Archangel Michael.

0) [https://www.hammacher.com/product/spring-loaded-walking-
shoe...](https://www.hammacher.com/product/spring-loaded-walking-shoes-mens-2)

------
throwaway123871
This is almost too painful to read. I'm at the verge of abandoning a 20-year
old venture and I can feel this guy's pain. Some say we should not give up
hope, but others say fail fast, fail often. It's hard to know which way to go,
especially when you're so emotionally invested.

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bookofjoe
Nike Vaporfly has a carbon fiber plate for energy return built into the shoe:
[https://www.outsideonline.com/2262486/researchers-confirm-
ni...](https://www.outsideonline.com/2262486/researchers-confirm-
nikes-4-marathon-shoe-claim) Some say it should be banned because of unfair
advantage to wearer: [https://sportsscientists.com/2017/03/ban-nike-vaporfly-
carbo...](https://sportsscientists.com/2017/03/ban-nike-vaporfly-carbon-fiber-
devices-future-performance-credibility/)

------
rstn
I'm not going to bother reading the article, but title reveals wrong
mentality. It should be replaced with: "What it's like to pursue a dream for
30 years (among pursuing other dreams), then deciding it failed and then
stopping the pursuing and not pursuing any more." 1) Failure is never
absolute. 2) Every situation is relative. Apple opened their first shop when
Compaq closed their last. 3) Absolute terms, like doing something for 30 years
is misleading. It's generalising and it's not objective.

------
jarjoura
I think the take-away isn't that his idea is pretty radical, but that he was
15 steps ahead of himself and that seemed to set himself up for failure.

Not sure if it's that the article was poorly written, but he didn't seem to
have any early small wins to get him to the next big step.

All great inventors (except maybe for Dyson), seemed to have all these small
wins that would help leverage them to the next chunk. If he needs investment,
he should have started with something early on that would win investors trust
so that eventually he could call on his network to tackle his crazy ideas.

------
capex
This highlights a fundamental truth about human psychology. People want to
have fun without having to do much. If the boots were simply powered, as in,
the person wearing them didn't have to walk in order to move from A to B, it
might've attracted a large following. In fact, check out the [0] Segway Drift
W1

[0] [http://www.segway.com/products/consumer-lifestyle/segway-
dri...](http://www.segway.com/products/consumer-lifestyle/segway-drift-w1)

~~~
Tepix
These boots look like they're great fun. They also look like you could get
badly hurt easily with them (also with other similar jumping boots). That's
what's preventing me from getting something along those lines.

------
hvidgaard
I am by no means an expert in human physiology, but the way he is running does
not seem particular good for the way our body is build.

When you see sprinters run, they are tilted forward and use the quads to
propel - this is now used to put tension in the rubber springs to gain some
height. While it increase your speed, it is essentially wasted energy because
it's not forward motion. But that just an initial impression, I'd have to try
them to comment more.

------
tomerbd
Whenever I fullfill a dream I feel empty. So I don't pursue dreams, I live
life, and try to get the best of the present, as long as it exists, I know not
for long.

------
PavlikPaja
Why didn't he start selling, even if it meant selling the prototypes one by
one? If people can live by selling choppers, it can work with this as well.

------
WheelsAtLarge
Here's a very similar product. Are these the Chinese copies the article is
talking about.

[https://www.amazon.com/Air-Trekkers-Jumping-Extreme-
Exercise...](https://www.amazon.com/Air-Trekkers-Jumping-Extreme-Exercise-
Protection/dp/B01EBL5OCW)

------
balt_s
This guy has led what sounds like a charmed life -- flying to places such as
Spain, France, England, Denmark -- while having enough disposable income to
pursue his passion project (which project is not bullshit, nor does he sound
like a bullshitter). Is this really what we moderns call "failure"?

------
harshulpandav
Speaking about the product -- doesn't the weight of the boots make the body
unbalanced? I mean, weight of hands is an important factor while running. So,
my guess is that adding wrist weights might make running with these boots on
less uncomfortable.

------
jbuzbee
I did't see a video if them in action in the article, but there's more than on
on youtube:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jvKaM7R5iY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jvKaM7R5iY)

------
aboutruby
> Though he’d spent a small fortune securing international patents, Seymour
> didn’t have the means to fight infringements.

Wouldn't lawyers take the case on a commission basis? (I just learned it's
called "contingency fee")

~~~
CydeWeys
You need to have Apple-sized leverage to successfully take on knock-off
manufacturers in China. He has no leverage.

~~~
cwyers
How much leverage does he need to just get them off Amazon.com?

~~~
CydeWeys
(a) There's a lot more retailers than just Amazon, and (b) Knock-offs just
keep coming back under different brands anyway.

------
known
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists
in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the
unreasonable man." \--George Bernard Shaw

------
RickJWagner
Wow. Props for the effort and passion.

If I were him, I'd be wearing a helmet when I ran. I can't image what a 25 mph
crash would feel like, from a couple of feet above standing height. Yikes!

------
gene-h
Now what I'd really like to know is if these boots can actually decrease the
metabolic cost of running at these speeds.

------
sunstone
Ah, but man's reach should exceed his grasp. Or what's a heaven for?

------
wojtczyk
What I am missing on the website is a "buy" button.

------
eruci
It is much better than doing nothing notable for 30 years.

------
asimjalis
Why not fund/sell this through Kickstarter?

------
awestley
That didn't seem like failure to me.

------
ykevinator
This is a lesson in opportunity cost.

------
mgh2
What is the max speed this thing can go? The article mentions 25miles/hour? It
can’t outrun a human...

~~~
egypturnash
The _average_ human running speed is 15mph. The _record_ is 27.8mph, but that
is the domain of a small set of outliers who train for a long time to get
there. If you put these on Usian Bolt (the current record holder), he might
end up closer to 40mph than 30. Or not, that record was ten years ago and he's
retired now.

------
ddmma
While in hell, keep walking

------
soheil
I checked three times I swear to make sure it wasn't April 1st

------
paradoxparalax
These shoes/equips remember me some Genetic Algorithm Simulations of
"Kangaroos" , some of them had only 1 leg, some had 2, They were made to fuel
prototypes of hardware robots that run like a chicken or jump like a Kangaroo.

These robots were scary Impressive! And run Scary fast. And Jump some mortal
loops and flip-flops and stuff.

This was 25 years ago now. 25 years!

Therefore... those bionic Dogs from google or darpa , whoever, were supposed
to be a normal thing 20 years ago, If someone back then let himself be taken
by the Hype, and by 2020 everyone should be wearing Exo-Skeletons like the
iron-man.

