
Putting $10M into UBeam illustrates what is wrong with tech investing - tacon
http://lookatmeimdanny.tumblr.com/post/101432017159/how-putting-10m-into-ubeam-illustrates-everything-that
======
cperciva
This reminds me of my favourite VC story from the height of the dot-com
bubble. A few months prior, I had announced my distributed computation of the
quadrillionth bit of Pi, and the concept of doing computations using unused
CPU capacity from around the Internet was getting a lot of attention. A VC
asked me to look at a company they were thinking of investing in and give my
opinion as someone with experience in the field.

Stripped down to its core, the company was pitching technology which would
allow it to do "useful" internet-wide computations once global communication
latency dropped below a certain threshold. Going along with this was a graph
showing how internet round trip times had been steadily dropping for the past
two decades, and projecting into the future that some time around 2006 the
latencies would become short enough to make their solution work.

Unfortunately, their projection had communication becoming faster than the
speed of light in 2004.

I pointed this out to the VC in question. They decided to invest anyway. My
understanding is that the company raised $10M before going bankrupt.

~~~
sgt101
I had a wonderful discussion about reducing latency in about 2003 where I
pointed out that there was a bound on everything imposed by the speed of
light; I remember the investor attempting to use his MBA... "Ok, let's
challenge that - how can we go about changing that assumption".

You can do anything if you try is a good moto for 4 year olds, but seriously,
business schools should set traps for folk that still believe it in their 30's
and empty those traps into [[horrid but funny slasher movie imagery removed to
protect the innocent]] ^B^B somewhere where they can't do any more damage.

~~~
pixelcort
This is where we get issues where software engineers are expected to do things
that are difficult to impossible (DRM, safe crypto backdoors, accurate
copyright infringement detection, accurate censorship) and are told to just
"do their magic" and make it work perfectly.

~~~
kybernetyk
Hey, if someone wants to waste their money who am I to disagree if it lands in
my pockets? :)

~~~
DanBC
Your professional ethics should be guiding you to manage expectations.

"I'm happy to try this, but here are the limitations I'm aware of and some of
these are unavoidable."

~~~
kybernetyk
> Your professional ethics should be guiding you to manage expectations.

Of course. But if someone hires me and then they decide that we need to
transfer information faster than at the speed of light there's only so much my
professional ethics can do.

~~~
jschwartzi
If someone asked me to do that, my first response would be to ask for a huge
lab and a lot of PhDs for several decades.

------
Animats
I've been looking closely at the UBeam demo video at

    
    
      http://on.aol.com/video/ubeam-wireless-power-demonstration-at-d9-517342543
    

There's a lot of information one can get from that video if you turn the
resolution up to 720p and look at still frames.

The meter is reading voltage, on what appears to be the 10 VAC scale. (Someone
wrote it was on ohms, but it's not.) About 4V is coming out. We don't know
what, if anything is the load, and there's no current measurement, so we can't
compute power. It's interesting that they're measuring AC voltage while
supposedly charging a DC device, a phone.

The ultrasonic transducers seem to be common hobbyist-level range sensors as
used on small robots. Like these:

[https://www.futurlec.com/Ultrasonic_Sensors.shtml](https://www.futurlec.com/Ultrasonic_Sensors.shtml)

At 00:31 into the video, there's a good view of the back of the board holding
the ultrasonic receivers. If you take a screenshot of this and enhance it, you
can see the wiring. There are just two wires coming out of the receiver, and
it looks like all the sensors are just wired in series. That maximizes voltage
at the expense of current, of course.

The transmit array has 10 transducers in a hexagonal pattern, which helps
focus the beam. (That transducer is a rather broad-beamed device.) The
transmit end is powered by a hefty looking power supply, so those transducers
are probably being driven hard.

With that setup, they should be able to get a few volts out of the receiver
end, using the same kind of off the shelf transducer at both ends. This is
something you could put together in a day or so after ordering the parts.
There doesn't seem to be anything new here at all in the demo version.

The efficiency is probably a few percent. That's for this ideal case -
transmitter pointed directly at receiver. The Wireless Power Consortium
inductive wireless charging people report 60% efficiency, and they're trying
to get to 80%.

The patent application talks about steering and focusing the beam, but you're
still going to need line of sight, and a big emitter array.

~~~
KaiserPro
You might be able to beam form a bit more efficiency, however one thing you
can't escape is the angle at which the receiver is pointing.

All microphones have polar patterns. There are areas that are more sensistive,
areas that are less.

So not only does it need line of sight, it'll need to be pointing at
transmitter.

It's also interesting to note that we've had wireless charging for at least 5
years, but none of them yet are long distance. they are all mats that you put
the device on.

~~~
kybernetyk
> but none of them yet are long distance.

Possibly because of the pesky inverse square law. A mat is "good enough" and
trying to achieve remote wireless charging would probably induce exponential
engineering head aches for not much gain.

~~~
KaiserPro
Physics. Its a bastard.

------
ISL
I'm also a physicist, though not in the world of ultrasound, and had similar
concerns when I saw uBeam turn up on HN today. I thought about writing up my
concerns (power loss, inadvertent heating of the wrong thing, cranky animals,
etc.), but decided to hold my tongue.

If you have $10M to invest in a startup, then you certainly have $10-20k to
contract someone knowledgeable in the field for a week to vet an idea for
sanity. As a skilled but low-paid academic, I'd jump at that gig, as I'm sure
many others would.

If the investor's done their homework, then perhaps there's a clever trick of
which uBeam makes use. If not, then perhaps the investor will lose money.
Either way, it'll sort itself out.

~~~
harmegido
10-20k might not sound like much compared to $10million, but remember that was
the total amount raised, so any one investment is likely around 500k. Sorry
for taking your post a bit too literally, but 10-20k then represents an added
cost of 2-4% (or more if your investment isn't that much).

I guess my point is that if you have 100 investments, you would maximize
returns by balancing return on investment with cost of investment.

From the skeptical posts here, it sounds like that 10-20k (or whatever sum)
may have been worth it in this case, but in general it probably is not.

~~~
jamiequint
That's not how Series A rounds work. The lead very likely took at least $5m of
the $10m round.

------
mikeyouse
If I may critique his critique, changing one single assumption completely
changes the story. He starts with the assumption of 100dB as the max power but
OSHA's ultrasonic recommendation[1] is actually 145dB which is _31,000x_ more
power.. Even if you use 130dB, it's still 1,000x more power than he assumes.

Another big assumption is that the performance should match a 5W iPhone
charger. Why? The whole point is at you won't need to worry about charging. If
you have 8 hours at your desk to charge rather than 20 minutes plugged in, you
can get by charging at 1/20th the speed.

So try putting a requirement of 0.25W and 130dB in his formulas and see if
you'd 'gamble' $10M on this idea... I'm on mobile so excuse the lack of units,
but I followed his calcs for a 25cm x 25cm transmitter at 130dB:

[http://m.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=10+*+%284pi%29+*+.25%5E2+...](http://m.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=10+*+%284pi%29+*+.25%5E2+*+50%25&x=0&y=0)

So it should deliver ~4W. Obviously there will be losses, etc but even at 25%,
1W should be sufficient to passively charge your phone.

Note that all of the same assumptions but with 140dB would instead give you
10W, which is only slightly less than the rapid charger for the new iPads.

[1] -
[https://www.osha.gov/dts/osta/otm/noise/health_effects/ultra...](https://www.osha.gov/dts/osta/otm/noise/health_effects/ultrasonics.html)

~~~
cowsandmilk
actually, for 20 kHZ, the frequency in his article, the OSHA recommendation is
105dB. And if you dig into the OSHA regs, the 115+30 standard for higher
frequencies only applies for 15 minutes of exposure per day or less. So, if
you only want your charger running for 15 minutes, have at it!

~~~
mikeyouse
Again, why 20 kHz? The patent application only lists examples of greater than
40kHz -- most are in the range of 50+ kHz. My point isn't that this tech is
going to work and change the world just that it's incredibly easy to be
pessimistic and to justify it with small incorrect assumptions.

------
Blackthorn
I am not a physicist and have no clue about the viability of the startup. What
I do know is that an awful lot of the comments here are begging the question.

They tend to be of the form: "Since they were invested in, they must be
good/viable/work!" What the fuck, folks? Have you lost your collective minds?
You should know better than this.

~~~
waterlesscloud
It's more along the lines of: "Smart groups gave them money, so they must at
least have a response to the first objections that pop into everyone's head."

Whether those responses represent approaches that will work or not is unknown,
but I feel quite safe in assuming they have some sort of plan for them. It's
insanely arrogant to assume otherwise.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Smart people are often irrational when reasoning about something outside their
domain expertise. If it sounds like uBeam is physically impossible or unwise,
then I'd rather bet against them than simply assume that other investors have
done the scientific vetting.

~~~
waterlesscloud
What I'm saying is that it's crazy to assume the investors didn't ask the
questions that popped into the heads of every Tom, Dick, and Harry on HN in 10
seconds.

Therefore, it's safe to assume the company team must have had _some kind_ of
response to that.

Was it valid? Did it snow the investors and their vetting teams? Who knows?

But certainly that first level of conversation must have taken place.

------
vonklaus
Putting the physics and this product aside, let's go to another core "law":
make something people want. What do people want? Better battery life. What are
you doing? Finding a worse way to charge a battery.

Quick recap

Problem: Battery life is much shorter than consumers would like.

>Solution: Make better batteries that last longer, are more durable, and can
be recycled into new batteries (to keep costs down in the future)

~~~
sgt101
Or - make lower power devices?

The economics are interesting, how much would it cost to make a lower power
device with the same capabilities? Say a 100% improvement in battery life? Or
how much would a better battery cost? Say twice the capacity?

If it cost $200 to do this for an iPhone (I have no idea) then why is it that
companies don't spend this; the answer has to be that consumers are just not
that willing to pay.

Or - it's impossible or would cost $2,000,000 or something!

But, thinking about it, if it costs $2,000,000 now wouldn't it be smart to
invest in a company with a plan to reduce that to $20?

Oh wait! Intel!

~~~
kybernetyk
> how much would it cost to make a lower power device with the same
> capabilities?

Probably not much as we could do this mostly in software. Just throw away the
bloated layers of abstraction we have to deal with and you get improved power
efficiency. (Example: When I visit certain websites my device uses far more
power than when I'm watching a movie.)

~~~
tyang
Maybe the key use case initially is to keep charged things like remote
controls, sensors, other Internet of Things.

------
beloch
To get as basic as possible, an iPhone 5S has a ~6 Wh battery that Apple
claims will operate the phone for up to 250 hours on standby. So, if your
phone is sitting on your desk doing nothing in an area with good signal, it
will require a mere 6/250 = 0.024 Watts just to keep the battery from running
down further than it already has.

Delivering even this tiny amount of energy to a phone-sized traducer that may
be tens of meters from the emitter and oriented randomly is going to be very
difficult. An omnidirectional emitter would likely require more power than a
Megadeth concert and heaven help anything with a millimeter scale resonant
frequency that's in the room! Tracking the phone's position and delivering a
tightly focused beam is probably the only realistic way to go about this. That
means you will need some very cutting edge focused ultrasound beam transducers
(not cheap) that can mechanically track phones (not cheap) which must be
pointed by something like a kinnect (not cheap) and a clear line of sight to
the phone (completely unlike WiFi). It's probably going to have to let the
user know when there isn't a clear LOS too, because it would suck if your
phone died because you set it down behind a plant.

I can't say all this is outright impossible to do at a competitive price.
Danny didn't convince me that it's impossible. It is probably pretty close
though.

So, why is this company being funded to do something that's probably
impossible? Well, Danny is right about one thing: Investors often invest in
impossible things. Just google "over unity" generators (better than perpetual
motion devices basically) if you don't believe me. Earlier this decade Steorn
suckered millions of euros out of investors with a lot of talk and a few cheap
parlor tricks. UBeam might not break the laws of thermodynamics, but Steorn
literally scoffed at them. People still lined up to invest. Whether Steorn and
his co-workers were/are truly insane or con-artists has not been determined to
this day. Their website is still live so, against all reasonable expectations,
Steorn is still viable!

Personally, if I wanted to scam investors I'd choose something that has a
direct impact on the layman's life and theoretically has the potential to be
big. Simultaneously, it would not obviously break the laws of physics but
would be difficult enough for a company to spend years working on it only to
fail. UBeam would be a pretty great setup for a scam actually.

~~~
tzs
> That means you will need some very cutting edge focused ultrasound beam
> transducers (not cheap) that can mechanically track phones (not cheap) which
> must be pointed by something like a kinnect (not cheap) and a clear line of
> sight to the phone (completely unlike WiFi)

Note: I'm not in any way in the following saying uBeam will work. I'm just
speculating on ways that one might work around some of the objections that
have been raised. Here's an idea that combines the tracking and the pointing
and I don't think uses anything expensive.

One way to do focused ultrasound beams is by using a phased array of
transducers. That reminded me of a phased array demo I saw a film of at
Caltech in the early '80s. I was taking the introductory optics class, which
was taught by William Bridges [1]. Before he came to Caltech, he worked at
Hughes Research, where he did such interesting things as invent ion lasers.
After he came to Caltech, he split his time between Caltech and Hughes, and
when I took his class he showed us a film of something his Hughes group was
working on. (Note: I saw this film once over 30 years ago. The description
below of what I saw is correct. I may not have the technology exactly right)

It had an array of optical radiators whose phase could be varied. If you got
the phase right, you could get constructive interference at a target, and
destructive interference off the target, and so deliver your energy to the
target. Get the phase wrong, and you just deliver a bunch of light to a large
area in the general direction of the target.

In the film, you saw a black background, and you saw a bunch of of vague
overlapping blobs of light moving around. Someone then dangled a shiny model
of the starship Enterprise in front of the background. Then they started
modulating the phases of the radiators, with each being modulated at a
different frequency. They had a light sensor pointed toward the target area,
so that it picked up light reflected from the Enterprise.

The signal from the light sensor was sent through a set of parallel filters,
one for each of the frequencies being used to modulate the radiators, and the
output of those filters was used to control the phase of the radiator
associated with that frequency. It was designed to try to set the phase to
minimize that frequency in the reflected flight.

The idea is that if a given radiator is contributing to a maximum at the
target, then slight changes in the phase of that radiator won't make much
difference, and so the modulation frequency of that radiator should be weak in
the reflected light. If, on the other hand, a given radiator is contributing
toward a minimum, slight changes in phase will make big changes, and so the
modulation of that radiator should be strong in the reflected light.

When they turned on this feedback circuit that filtered the reflected signal
and adjusted the phase, those drifting blobs all pretty much instantly
disappeared, replaced with a beam that was focused on the Enterprise, and
tracked it as they waved the Enterprise around.

Could something like this work for an ultrasonic charger? Suppose the
transmitter uses a phased array of transducers in order to get a focused
ultrasonic beam. Suppose we include in the receiver some kind of wireless
communication mechanism, such as ZigBee (IEEE 802.15.4). Now perhaps we can
modulate the phases of the transducers, and have the receiver report back on
how strong the modulation is at its end, and then we can adjust the phases
back at the transmitter side to focus the beam on the receiver and follow it,
doing with ultrasound what Bridges' group at Hughes was doing with light.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_B._Bridges](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_B._Bridges)

~~~
lovelearning
Their patents[1] do talk about phased array transducers.

[1]:
[http://www.faqs.org/patents/app/20120300592](http://www.faqs.org/patents/app/20120300592)

------
enraged_camel
Actually, what's happening is pretty obvious: they are investing in the
founder, not the idea.

Think about it this way: $10 million is pocket change for VCs. Even if they
lose all of it, it would barely make a dent in their yearly metrics. However,
the potential gain is huge: they see in Ms. Perry someone who can identify a
big demand in the market, take the initiative to try to do something about it
and find a clever and catchy way to market it ("WiFi for energy"). So spending
$10 million to let her gain more experience in business and build a deeper
relationship with the VCs is a pretty good investment.

~~~
leeber
What experience is she going to get by working on a product that never even
makes it to market? Don't try and tell me they spent $10M knowing full well
that the idea was physically impossible. That's BS and you know it.

Many entrepreneurs today seem to think they've made it because they secured
large investments from VCs. Very few know what it takes to actually become
profitable, reach liquidity, and create real value.

------
malanj
When I read the investment announcement I thought "Hmm, there must be
something big/new I'm missing." If this author is correct, then there is
nothing new here. Just the insanity of thinking you can transfer power
efficiently with sound. How could you make a $10M mistake on such a
fundamental issue though?

~~~
minimaxir
Michael Arrington, who funded uBeam's seed round through CrunchFund [0], wrote
about a sneak peek of the product [1] two years ago:

"She then performs the closest thing to magic I’ve seen in a long time."

Investors fund things _because_ they don't understand it. (Although, two years
to a Series A is pretty slow in today's climate.)

[0]: [http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/11/disruptive-defined-ubeam-
la...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/11/disruptive-defined-ubeam-
lands-750k-to-let-you-charge-gadgets-without-plugs/)

[1]:
[http://uncrunched.com/2012/05/23/serendipity/](http://uncrunched.com/2012/05/23/serendipity/)

~~~
7Figures2Commas
From Arrington's blog:

> In a year or so when this thing is productized you’ll be hearing a lot more
> about Mary.

As you note, that was written on May 23, 2012, more than 2 years ago.
According to this article[1], the company is now aiming to be selling "by
2016." This suggests there was either a misunderstanding about the time
required to develop a commercial product, or developing a commercial product
has taken a lot longer than anticipated.

What's interesting to me is that the recent photo from the New York Times[2],
which Mark Suster also included in his blog post[3], doesn't on the surface
seem to show substantial progress from what was being demoed back in
2011[4][5]. Charging a single phone from a couple of feet away is _not_ what's
being promised.

[1] [http://www.businessinsider.com/ubeam-
raises-10-million-2014-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/ubeam-
raises-10-million-2014-10)

[2] [http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/08/06/ubeam-technology-
wi...](http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/08/06/ubeam-technology-will-enable-
people-to-charge-devices-through-the-air/)

[3]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8541674](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8541674)

[4] [http://allthingsd.com/20110618/how-to-charge-your-iphone-
ove...](http://allthingsd.com/20110618/how-to-charge-your-iphone-over-the-air-
ubeams-d9-demo-video/)

[5]
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoHxyweJcZI](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoHxyweJcZI)

~~~
DanBC
Does the lawsuit between Dweck and Perry account for the time?

[http://www.businessinsider.com/college-roommates-founded-
hot...](http://www.businessinsider.com/college-roommates-founded-hot-tech-
startup-and-sued-each-other-2014-8)

------
tzs
Any IEEE members here who could take a look at the following paper, which may
shed some light on what is and is not possible here, and then summarize it for
us?

\----------

Roes, M.G.L.; Hendrix, M.A.M.; Duarte, J.L., "Contactless energy transfer
through air by means of ultrasound," IECON 2011 - 37th Annual Conference on
IEEE Industrial Electronics Society , vol., no., pp.1238,1243, 7-10 Nov. 2011

doi: 10.1109/IECON.2011.6119486

Abstract: An alternative approach to the wireless transfer of energy is
proposed, employing acoustic waves in air. Unlike conventional methods,
acoustic energy transfer is able to achieve energy transfer at high
efficiencies over distances that are large in comparison to the dimensions of
the transmitter and the receiver. This paper gives an overview of the
principle and explains the different loss mechanisms that come into play. A
theoretically limit on the achievable efficiency is calculated. It exceeds
that of a comparable inductively coupled system by an order of magnitude.
First preliminary measurements indicate that AET is feasible, although the
measured efficiency is lower than the predicted theoretical limit.

URL:
[http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6119...](http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6119486&isnumber=6119266)

Update: I was able to get a 5 minute preview of the paper from DeepDyve.com
[1]. They got 53% efficiency at 1 meter, but that was at very low power
(something like 37 uW). They weren't using particularly high powered
transducers, though, so could have gotten more power if that had been what
they were aiming for, but probably still a long way from charging a phone.
They say that the challenge for acoustic energy transfer will be in developing
the high power transducers that will be needed.

[1] For those who have not heard of DeepDyve, they provide access to a very
large number of journal articles for prices that are much lower than what the
journals charge for individual articles. Yes, I know that ideally all of this
stuff should be available to the public for free, but until that happens
DeepDyve is worth considering. They have a "Freelancer" plan that costs
nothing up front, and gives you 5 minute full previews of articles. You can
purchase "tokens" in packs of 5 for $20. You can rent an article for 30 days
for one token. They also have a $40/month subscription plan that lets you read
unlimited articles, and gives a discount if you want to buy a PDF. You can
cancel the monthly plan at any time, and your account converts to Freelancer,
and you can switch back to the subscription plan at any time.

------
slagfart
It's my humble role in life to stand in front of a manager and tell them that
their tech idea is garbage. For $10M a year, you could buy a hundred of me.

I think the real problem is that they're not investing their own money, and
are just looking at buying some great PR to write off as a tax deduction.

------
fillskills
I am not a physicist, and this is not an excuse for due diligence, but
investing in this problem is certainly better than investing in the next app
that sends messages or brings you beer.

I feel there is a lack of initiative, money and publicity towards inventors
solving real physics problems.

~~~
aaronbrethorst
> solving real physics problems.

Except the author says:

    
    
        crazy ideas that are physically impossible
        [with] dishonest PR [are raising lots of
        capital] while great ideas that have huge
        potential are sitting by the wayside trying
        to rise above the noise.
    

A couple more well-capitalized total flame-outs will sour investors on this
entire space, meaning that the companies that obey the laws of thermodynamics
will be even more screwed than they are today.

I'd rather this entire space be ignored than see top-tier VCs sour everyone on
the industry.

~~~
new299
>I'd rather this entire space be ignored than see top-tier VCs sour everyone
on the industry.

Agreed. However, if they don't know how to do DD a better one option would be
just to fund more companies at a lower level. With a more realistic valuation
that reflects the risk involved. However I don't think they like spreading
their cash out like that.

Overall, it seems like there's probably not enough seed level funding for
science/basic tech startups.

~~~
mboer
I'm with you on that, but I don't know if it's a question of enough/not enough
seed-level funding.

I worry that there's an ever-increasing attempt being made to substitute in
credentials for careful evaluation of actual ideas. I understand why relying
heavily on pedigree is so attractive, but I wonder if startup failure rates
would decrease and startups' overall quality would increase if that metric
shifted.

------
Animats
If only I could short the stock on these guys...

Short-range _electrical_ wireless charging is a perfectly good technology. The
problem is that there are three proposed systems, all incompatible, each with
shipping products but little volume. Somebody needs to kick some butt, get
everybody to agree on one system, and get those charging pads in every
business hotel room, and every Starbucks in the developed world. This isn't a
technical problem. It's Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD, which held up high-definition
discs for about two years.

------
cdixon
VCs almost always bring in outside experts to diligence ideas that they are
qualified can't diligence themselves. That happened extensively here.

~~~
vasilipupkin
So, your experts concluded the tech works or at least could work ? Are we
calling bullshit on the naysayers then ?

------
codeN
Was wondering if this is instead transformed into a wireless "near-fieldish"
charging solution. Where you keep your phone on top of a speaker, then
realized that the article assumed only 50% loss because of air, and in fact
you can't even physically focus a 1m^2 speaker at near field.

~~~
solistice
That seems like an awfully Rube Goldberglike way to charge you phone though.
If you're putting it on top of a speaker, why not ditch the speaker assembly
and just keep the coils and there you have an inductive charging mat.

------
s_q_b
Meredith Perry is no fraud. She was in a Penn graduate program before this
venture, and has worked at NASA.

It's directional transmission technology. The power loss is minimized as the
ultrasound is directed and focused at a particular location. There's no
inverse square law here, and it's easily within the bound of known physics.

As far as I know, (indirect relationship with the a good friend of the
founder, that I won't say anything more about to protect his privacy) Meredith
is actually genius-level and a relentless work horse. I'd bet big on this one.

If I could work for any one company it would be uBeam. And I just started a
great position, and I'd do it despite the press.

This is a "First they dismiss you. Then they laugh at you. Then you win"
scenario.

~~~
DanBC
She was an astrobiologist. But so what? There are plenty of real engineers who
are tinkering with over-unity nonsense. While this ultra-sonic charging isn't
as dumb as perpetual motion it does appear to be dumb.

~~~
s_q_b
She's also worked for NASA, in additional to being a wet work astrobiologist.
Meaning she has a high level of intelligence, experience working with
technology, and the ability to improvise tools. Those all sound like great
credentials.

Honestly Computer Science used to be so open to outsiders, now it's "If you
don't have a degree we don't believe you."

That's really bad. Especially considering the alternative theory involves her
pulling the wool over the eyes of both AH and Marissa Mayer for ten million
dollars.

~~~
DanBC
So what if she worked for NASA? I can probaly find NASA ex-employees who
believe in homeopathy.

What's she's doing has nothing to do with computer science.

You're right that people shouldn't be dismissing her work because of her
qualifications and previous work experience but that works both ways - she
doesn't magically gain credibillity just because she used to work at someplace
or other.

~~~
s_q_b
She's worked on hard problems before. No matter the type of problem, I impute
an advantage to that person in other hard activities, even if they're
unrelated. E.g. I believe that someone who earned a Harvard mathematics PhD to
be more likely than the average person to be able to earn a Yale Microbiology
degree.

As for working at NASA, she was doing hard science research on a type of
spectrography, for which she was given multiple awards by NASA Ames Rearch
Center. So yes, I do consider the multitude of indications of her intelligence
to be directly relevant.

This negativity reeks of "she's not part of our West Coast club" and people
with no knowledge of the technology are making blanket assertions that its
impossible. That's wrong.

If this company had a valley pedigree and a male founder, I'm sure I'd be
reading all about the amazing self-charging forthcoming revolution.

~~~
DanBC
If anything people are holding back because she's female.

This thread would be far more insulting if she were male.

The problem has nothing to do with her being UPenn (I have no fucking clue
about US geography or state rivalries) or not being in some club (which she
clearly is part of - look at where she's raised $10 million from).

It's to do with people being sceptical of the physics. This device is
implausible at best.

------
jnaglick
That was a great analysis of their technology, but I don't think this is
everything wrong with tech investing.

I think there are larger implications about how VC driven start-ups could be
changing society for the worse. Whether the infringements upon the rights of
lets-not-call-them-employees in 2-sided markets, or $1B valuations given to
free apps whose users are [perhaps unknowingly] paying with their personal
information, there is quite a lot to unpack to say the least.

A great tech writeup but I think he misses the mark on "everything wrong."

------
aaron695
"Move Fast and Break Shit."

The tech industry seems to earn a lot of money, employ a lot of people and
have us on an unparalleled rate of change.

Their current theory is, 1 in 100 things pan out and when they do they make up
for all the fails.

This article doesn't really provide evidence this high risk approach is not
worth it. Who knows, perhaps other applications might pop out of the
technology. Perhaps it's a more obvious 99% in the fail basket. But being
overly cautious can also cripple you.

But a good write up on why the tech sucks.

------
uniclaude
We could say: This article illustrates what is wrong with tech blogging.

Taking a media story of a funded startup and running with this sort of
conclusions is short sighted at best. There might be much more than this, the
probability for funds like a16z to invest $10M without a bit of research
sounds rather low to me.

~~~
DodgyEggplant
> the probability for funds like a16z to invest $10M without a bit of research
> sounds rather low to me

Well, it's a probability, and it's greater than zero. It could happen.

------
Pengtuzi
An honest question: Are we heading towards a new dot-com bubble? I feel like a
lot of companies have been bought/sold for ridiculous amounts, e.g. Mojang, as
well as these crazy investments devoid of critique. I'm far from a biz man but
it makes me a bit worried. Should I be worried?

~~~
no_future
According to Mark Cuban(who I'm pretty damn sure knows what he is talking
about), it isn't remotely a bubble, because in the dot com bubble everyone was
investing - regular working people quit their jobs to become day traders, you
would hear people at the coffee shop talking about the prices of stocks they
bought, etc. Then when the bubble burst those who hadn't got out while they
could lost everything and more. Now its VCs that are throwing money at
everything, and they've got more than they know what to do with, and will be
just fine if companies they invest in fail.

------
DanBC
But they plugged it into a multimeter and "the dial went up"
[http://allthingsd.com/20110602/demo-
at-d9-ubeam/](http://allthingsd.com/20110602/demo-at-d9-ubeam/)

I've never seen a Radio Shack meter before - I have no idea what that meter is
measuring or what it's set to. It could be set to read micro volts, but it
would be odd for them to take a close-up photo if it was reading a tiny
number. But then maybe that's why they went with an analogue meter - big
needle swing is psychologically persuasive.

And Dweck is no longer involved - [http://www.businessinsider.com/college-
roommates-founded-hot...](http://www.businessinsider.com/college-roommates-
founded-hot-tech-startup-and-sued-each-other-2014-8)

------
jaredklewis
The criticisms seem valid, but I'm surprised by the extreme negative
reactions. VCs have a lot of money to play with, which they usually pump into
the latest photo sharing/email organizer/whatever app. I'd prefer mistakes
like this to getting more yo like apps funded.

Plus, who knows. we will probably never have ultrasonic iPhone chargers but
maybe ubeam will pivot or stumble upon other unrelated ideas or uses for their
technology, as often seems to happen with startups.

~~~
mkagenius
Plus, pg says do things that don't scale initially.

~~~
Ecio78
do things that don't scale =/= do things that don't work

~~~
yen223
What they lack in effectiveness, they'll surely make up for in volume!

------
highCs
Actually, I wouldn't even do the math. For any tech, the question is: does it
work (right now)? I beleive people made that mistakes with occulus rift too
for example. Does it work? no. It's _maybe_ promising, but it don't work.
Period.

------
andyidsinga
some of the comments here and the article remind me of clinkle - see
[http://www.businessinsider.com/inside-story-of-
clinkle-2014-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/inside-story-of-
clinkle-2014-4)

------
bdickason
I would much rather see 10 million put towards an idea that most people think
is impossible but could dramatically change the way we experience the world
than another photo sharing network.

------
lateguy
I am quite unsure about the entire concept, but I went to Facebook and a lot
of people who are/were not getting investor funding was sharing this :).

------
vladtaltos
as we require more and more power every year does it make sense to charge your
phone with a few percent efficiency instead of walking 3 steps to a damn wall
socket? is it that difficult for people? I hope there will be a regulation
preventing stupidly wasteful technologies that will impact everyone globally.
thank god we can charge our phones from 3 meters - we need another war to
support this energy though.. .

------
serve_yay
Investors decided to invest in a dumb project.

Here's the thing: so what?

------
andrewstuart2
Because with a can-do attitude, who needs your fancy equations and negative
attitude?

You just need to look at it from the right angle. With your eyes closed.

------
venomsnake
I have even better solution. For a couple of million dollars less. Standardize
batteries. Make them replaceable. When your battery dies - pop new one. Loan
one. You can charge them in bulk. We have been using that with AA for couple
of decades with awesome results.

Now can I get my funding please?

------
blahblah12
Um doesn't this use piezo electric crystals that vibrate with sound?

------
blahblah12
UM doesn't this use piezoelectric crystals that are vibrated by ultrasound?

------
msoad
Investors invest in people not ideas. She is a great entrepreneur and will
make a successful company with that money. Doesn't matter if their initial
prototype isn't working. Instagram was a check-in service while Twitter was a
sound sharing website when they started. There is no thermodynamics law for
social apps so nobody could blame investors for their investment back then.

~~~
ohashi
That seems wildly optimistic. Color got 41M in funding and was a complete
waste. Nothing says a good team and lots of money will yield a successful
company.

