
Engineer and Investor in Spat About Wireless Charging Startup UBeam - w1ntermute
http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/consumer-electronics/portable-devices/engineer-and-investor-in-spat-about-wireless-charging-startup-ubeam
======
harryh
FWIW I've been following this story for a long time and here is what I think
the situation is.

Early on the uBeam folks built a pretty low power acoustic
transmitter/receiver that could, over a relatively short distance, actually
deliver a charge to a phone. Not a super useful charge but, you know,
something. Based on this demo and some handwaving (and maybe a bit of math)
they went out and said "something that delivers more charge is possible. give
us some money and time and we'll work out the engineering." Mostly they raised
money on this. Likely without a ton of due diligence.

The actual engineers working on the project (including the one in this "spat")
at some point realize the actual limitations of what is possible physics wise.
But they still think "a useful product is possible here." Maybe you can
deliver enough to charge a phone overnight while it sits on your coffee table.
That could actually be cool? Maybe?

Meanwhile the PR machine gets going and, as so often happens, the exaggeration
kicks in. Those that haven't been here themselves look at it and see LIES. I
have a more nuanced view. The press can misunderstand and distort things on
their own side. And then if you don't refute it fast enough then you almost
have to support it. Not saying this is ok, but I can see how it happens. The
statements about what is possible just get out of hand and then you're stuck
with them.

So behind the scenes some of the engineers read the press and go "WTF, this is
insane, I'm out!" Others say "well, that's all bullshit, but this overnight
charger thing could be useful. So I'm gonna keep my head down and work on
that. If we can get it to the point that we can release a commercial product
then we'll see what the actual market is." Inevitably actually building a
commercial product takes longer than you think. These are just normal
engineering delays. No "trying to defy physics" type delays.

Which brings us to the present day. Almost certainly what has been hyped is
not real. But there might be something less good there. Maybe. If they can
balance the tradeoffs between input power, actual power delivered, distance
and safety. That's real engineering work right there.

All just speculation. Take it for whatever it's worth.

~~~
logicallee
>The actual engineers working on the project (including the one in this
"spat") at some point realize the actual limitations of what is possible
physics wise.

I read until here and would like to cut you off. So, at this point, can you
tell me YOUR perspective on the alternate history where the company, exactly
at this point, starts behaving exactly like Apple, consumer-driven instead of
fundamental R&D driven, and simply pivots and enters some totally unrelated
part of the power or battery market. Literally any other part of it - not just
super capacitors (which were making the rounds around that time) but literally
ANY part of the market, since they had obscene gobs of money in the bank for
the stage they were at ($10M+) and lots of extremely talented engineers.

What would have happened? Could they have retained their goodwill,
credibility, and name, and simply successfully pivoted?

~~~
logicallee
-4 for asking? Well, okay. I wrote to them when it became obvious that they were selling snake oil, urging them to pivot to tech that can work. I'm curious if people think they could have pivoted, or if they were married to the snake oil (ie a pivot would have failed) . It's a yes/no question without preconception from me and I'd appreciate a response or explanation...

~~~
ChuckMcM
I think its a valid question on pivots, but its also pretty much the sole
discretion of the founder/CEO to actually do the pivot. Without them on board
and leading the change you end up with a mess, some people following the
"strong" leaders and some people following the "original" leaders, and nobody
gets anything done to their satisfaction. It also affects your team makeup,
since at the small scale one tries to craft a team with overlapping but
interlocking skill sets. Pivots require restructuring for that reason, and
being able to pull that off is a skill as well.

At the end of the day, if the CEO is thinking the "least risk / best shot" is
to stay the course, then a pivot is off the table until you replace the CEO.

~~~
logicallee
Nonono, I'm actually curious if in harryh's nuanced view, Meredith Perry (not
someone else) had this option open and could have done so once she realized
the tech couldn't work. What do you think?

~~~
ChuckMcM
To what end? Not enough information for speculation. One of the nice things
about HN discussions is that generally folks who comment have some line of
reasoning that leads to their opinion. Unless someone was actually working at
uBeam and a confidante of Perry, what ever they speculate is useless. And if
they are an employee and confidante, what ever they say will no doubt lead to
at least the end of their position and at worst legal action.

And the really relevant point is that uBeam hasn't, according to its current
press, pivoted into anything other than its stated mission. So debating why
not is like debating why you didn't ask out someone back when you were in high
school and now has turned out to be someone you didn't expect. Kind of a waste
of time :-)

~~~
logicallee
She had a proof of concept that turned out didn't scale. If you think it's
"useless" to discuss whether and how it's possible for such a CEO to pivot we
have nothing further to discuss. I will say that I expect any and every world-
changing CEO to be at risk of being in such a position now and in the future,
and that the development of a game plan by the startup community for when (not
if) this happens again is the difference between billions of dollars of value
and the statement "unfortunately I have to say no to changing the world
because I only have a working proof of concept. Personally I do not want to
run even a 1% risk of ending up in the position that Perry ended up in - and
in my conservative opinion I have a 20-90% chance of that. Oh well - I'll put
this proof of concept aside and go do something else. "

Well, okay. But I hope it's blindingly obvious that we all lose. . That pre-
CEO and the world.

EDIT: Whoever is downvoting me doesn't get it. She had a proof of concept. The
proof didn't scale. She raised money - millions - anyway. To me this is all
fine. The question is whether she HAD to stick with this non-working concept,
or whether she could have pivoted, when she had all that money in the bank and
learned that the concept does not work/scale. You guys just don't get the
question.

~~~
nimish
Except a proof of concept that doesn't scale is explicitly not a proof of
concept

The concept doesn't work because it's physically impossible and having a low
power example is all you can do without severe issues. In this case having a
small scale example doesn't tell you much if anything about the large scale
behavior ( among other things nonlinear effects start happening at high power
physically )

------
calcsam
When a reputable investor and a good engineer are in a dispute about whether a
startup is financially viable, believe the investor.

When a reputable investor and a good engineer are in a dispute about whether a
startup is technically viable, believe the engineer.

~~~
jboydyhacker
I'm not entirely sure either side is lying. It's pretty tough to go around a
CEO to the board or investors with concerns like that. I don't think it's
necessarily fair for Suster to say "Hey I talked to this engineer and he never
voiced these concerns while I worked with him" based on that reason.

Mark is an operator and knows that most people do respect the CEO chain of
command unless the behavior is unethical or the situation extreme.

On the other hand, what's the bloody point of the engineer coming out in a
secret blog to raise concerns on the tech. If the team can't develop a
solution, the company will not be able to raise money and fail.

If enough people read the blog and get concerned reading the blog- the company
fails because of litigation around fraud etc and everyone loses their jobs and
the company for sure fails to find a solution.

Either way, if all of our goals is to see innovation, it's not a very
constructive approach.

~~~
ryguytilidie
At this point I honestly have no idea what people at startups are supposed to
do if they suspect wrongdoing/foul play by executives. Tell your boss, who
tells the CEO, who fires you. Tell an investor, who wants to protect their
investment, and they fire you. Tell the CEO and they fire you. Tell the HR
manager and, again, their job is to protect the CEO and the exec team so they
fire you. I'm genuinely wondering what the expectation was here. I imagine if
this person had expressed these concerns to Suster he would have been
shushed/fired, so thats why he didn't...

~~~
pjc50
CYA is pretty much the only rule. Whistleblowing always works out badly for
the whistleblower. It's strange but true that it's far easier to get hired
from a failed startup than as a whistleblower, so the only thing to do is keep
your head down and look for a new job. Let them fly the investors' money into
the ground as long as your name isn't on anything illegal.

Fortunately SV startups are rarely capable of getting people killed with a bad
product. I'd like to hope that someone would whistleblow the safety issues on
home thorium reactors before the Bay Area is rendered uninhabitable, but I
know it would be career suicide for the person that did.

------
aerovistae
I remember very clearly when something or other about this company got posted
here awhile ago and almost immediately thereafter someone submitted a blog
post explaining in basic physics terminology that the company's premise was in
no uncertain terms _total bullshit,_ and reamed the entire startup community
for heaping attention and praise on them without thinking through what (to the
author) were obvious faults in their plan.

I enjoyed that piece. I like it when the discussion reverts to basic math and
physics to resolve points of contention.

At any rate, it continues to amuse/distress me in the time since then that the
company is still around and still has investors, etc. Do people still not get
it? _It won 't work._

On some level, moreover, it disturbs me that people are actively pursuing a
technology that would effectively be torture to household pets. Does that mean
nothing to anyone? Do they get that dogs and cats would be able to hear this
as a siren in their skull?

~~~
Gratsby
At some point every piece of technology that we use was impossible. It's very
easy to sit on the hilltop and say "it's not possible". What's not easy is
climbing the hill anyways and figuring out a way to make the impossible
happen.

I'm not here to defend this company. I don't know a thing about them or their
technology. I'm just saying... "what kind of world would we live in if we
never looked past what we thought was possible?"

EDIT: I think that a few of you have missed an important piece of this post,
so once again...

I'm not here to defend this company. I don't know a thing about them or their
technology.

~~~
kiba
It's _physically_ impossible, different from extraordinary difficult.

~~~
Florin_Andrei
Yup. Some things (not all) are impossible in a literal sense.

Want to extract 2 kW / m^2 from solar radiation somewhere near the Earth?
Won't work, the Sun doesn't pump out that kind of power density (the max is
1.whatever kW). Literally impossible.

~~~
thrownaway2424
Can't I just put a lens above the surface to concentrate it? I think you
picked a poor example.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
No you can't, because you're increasing the surface are of the collector so
the 1.366kWh / square meter still stands.

From Wikipedia:

 _Average annual solar radiation arriving at the top of the Earth 's
atmosphere is roughly 1366 W/m2. The Sun's rays are attenuated as they pass
through the Atmosphere, leaving maximum normal surface irradiance at
approximately 1000 W /m2 at sea level on a clear day._[1]

Therefore it is impossible to get more than about 1kW / m2 from any solar
panel. Until such times as something fairly fundamental changes, like a loss
of atmosphere or an increase in energy output from the sun.

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insolation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insolation)

~~~
mjevans
Well, you're mostly correct; but not technically correct.

From /just/ a solar panel it isn't possible to achieve higher density, however
you can use reflectors in the spectrum that your solar panel operates in to
increase the energy available for capture at a focal point.

~~~
simoncion
So, there's this: [http://what-if.xkcd.com/145/](http://what-if.xkcd.com/145/)

But there's also TheSpiceIsLife's opening comment which says:

> ...you're increasing the surface are of the collector so the 1.366kWh /
> square meter still stands.

It feels like your second sentence

> ...[H]owever you can use reflectors in the spectrum that your solar panel
> operates in to increase the energy available for capture at a focal point.

plays rhetorical games by ignoring the existence of large parts of your solar
collector (namely the reflectors) in order to arrive at an inflated energy
density figure.

------
svskeptic
For me the big issue is Mark insisting on holding on to the case that this was
a good investment.

Last time he insisted on calling out the non-believers about tech. This time,
he only writes a couple sentences defending the tech and is laying the
groundwork for abandoning the physics and just supporting the team.

Something like.. 'yeah, we took a chance. Someone has to. It didn't pan out,
but the team is great.'

I have done my share of pitching the VCs and they have to uphold the image
that they are the smartest people in the room, or else what are they? Just
Money who can't possibly know everything about everything? No! can't be.

So, here is a smart person dispensing advice on all things life,
entrepreneurship, investment and technology who is clearly been had and out of
his depth in this particular field. But smart enough to know that he's been
had and the only remaining way out is to abandon tech and back the team.

This is a personal issue for Mark and has nothing to do with science and the
rest of us. The science is clear. He just can't admit that he was had, because
that kills his standing in his day job.

------
vonklaus
Theranos is working on a technology that will exist in the near future,
confirmed by many many other companies working on it, so it seems quite
likely: _someone will succeed in using less blood, to run more tests_.

That doesn't sound like a totally alien idea, and since Theranos will probably
not deliver on this promise fully, someone else likely will. However, the
uBeam sounds super dubious. I think wireless energy is probably possible, but
without a prototype a consumer could feasibly use in their home, and the large
amount if scientists I coming out against this a few years ago doesn't seem to
have shrunk.

So, yes it is a really hard interesting problem, but all the fun ones are. I
wouldn't have invested with the expectation of success, but that the
technology developed could be used for something else/is valuable.

~~~
w1ntermute
> Theranos is working on a technology that will exist in the near future,
> confirmed by many many other companies working on it, so it seems quite
> likely: someone will succeed in using less blood, to run more tests.

Except we don't need more blood tests[0]. With uBeam, there's no doubt that
_if_ the technology works, it would be a game-changer. Theranos was facing
both technical and market challenges, but with uBeam, it's a purely technical
challenge.

0: [http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/theranos-is-wrong-we-
don...](http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/theranos-is-wrong-we-dont-need-
more-blood-tests/)

~~~
qaq
I can't agree more our startup is working on time travel there's no doubt that
if the technology works, it would be a game-changer. Since it's a purely
technical challenge we expect to raise a trillion dollars in our seed round.

~~~
malz
I should point out that time travel would fix the phone charging problem quite
handily. Just send your phone back in time a few hours. Not sure if there are
other applications.

------
state
Hard not to be impressed by how aggressive 'the engineer' is on his blog[0]. I
don't think I've ever seen anything like this. It's pretty bold. Seems rare to
find someone being so candid.

Am I missing something? Does this happen in public regularly?

0 -
[http://liesandstartuppr.blogspot.com.au/](http://liesandstartuppr.blogspot.com.au/)

------
andmarios
It is a scam. The only difference between other scams is that they managed to
take a bite of larger investors than usual.

There are always people who want to believe. Some months ago there was a man
who claimed that he could create hydrogen from water by bombarding the water
with radio waves. The electricity needed for the radio waves was neglible to
the energy we could get by burning the hydrogen.

I tried to explain with physics, maths, equations, I pointed to esteemed
professors' materials. Nothing. For the people who wanted to believe, even if
they had a nobel laureate explain them the “inventor's” fallacies, they
wouldn't budge.

------
sajid
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public
relations, for nature cannot be fooled."

------
yarou
I'm surprised these guys are still around.

I remember having a hearty chuckle when I first saw it on either HN or Product
Hunt, thinking to myself "wow, does anyone take this seriously?"

A rising tide lifts all boats I suppose. Even if your boat is actually a
floating piece of debris.

------
techitreal
This post is amazing. What Mark Suster Missed In His Blog Post Defending uBeam

[https://ludwitt.wordpress.com/2016/05/13/what-mark-suster-
mi...](https://ludwitt.wordpress.com/2016/05/13/what-mark-suster-missed-in-
his-blog-post-defending-ubeam/)

Sums this up the best.

------
rajacombinator
Came in ready to denounce Suster, but after reading his post, he handled the
situation pretty tactfully. The engineer's blog on the other hand, is pure
drivel. He may be correct, but his blog posts are awful and not helping him at
all.

------
puppetmaster3
Investor seem to like bombastic claims and bombastic people.

------
iaw
There are two approaches to this concept:

1) One heavily rooted in Physics, Math, and well understood Mechanical
properties that says it is not feasible.

2) One heavily dogmatic approach that boils down to a fundamental
misunderstanding of Engineering and it's limits.

There are things that can be done, and there are things that cannot be done.

Examples of things that _can_ be done:

1) Human travel to Mars - It's hard but very feasible

2) Economically Positive Controlled Fusion - It's harder than getting a man to
Mars, the economics of investing in the technology are difficult to justify
relative to things like oil exploration, but it remains theoretically, if not
technically, possible.

3) Completely Green Energy on Earth - Technical, political, and economic
forces make this goal challenging but it is very possible if we try as a
species.

Examples of things that _cannot_ be done:

1) Faster than light travel - It's not physically possible with our current
understanding of the universe, and nothing indicates this will be changing at
any point. There are mathematical constructs that imply it's a possibility,
but the physical requirements of these constructs are considered super
unlikely to exist (and in some senses have very little meaning). Unless our
understanding of the physical world changes to include materials like the ones
described mathematically, this is thoroughly impossible.

2) Fly People 1000s of miles on 1 fluid ounce of gasoline - The energy isn't
chemically in the substance. Unless you have some new fission and/or fusion
mechanism (see earlier) this is _physically_ impossible. Even if you could
beat all of our observations around the engine cycles and overcome the
theoretical maximum efficiencies (e.g. extract 100% of the energy from the
gasoline), it would still not be possible because the raw energy required to
perform the function of raising people into the air and changing their
momentum is so much greater than what is chemically available in that much
gasoline.

3) Pack enough energy safely into air via sound (or another mechanism) to
allow for wireless charging - You should have seen this item coming. For
reasons outlined by people who have spent much more time on this than I have,
this is physically impossible. Long-range cohesive sound waves : not possible.
Air efficiency for sound transmission : very very poor. Using EM runs the risk
of all sorts of nasty side effects (it burns, it burns). Lasers are the only
thing I can think of that could work, they're coherent and relatively
efficient, they could target high density solar cells to charge the phone
right? Yep, they sure could. Bill Gates investigated high energy lasers as a
means of killing mosquitos in developing nations to prevent the spread of
malaria, they built a fantastic system that worked perfectly, the concern over
injury or loss of human life was just too great so they abandoned it. Would
you want to get laser burns every so often in trade for wireless phone
charging? I don't.

~~~
extrapickles
I've worked on a few laser based wireless power systems and I don't see it
easily becoming safe enough for consumer use at power levels that are useful.
For industrial/military use, the only thing keeping them from being off the
shelf is their high cost and maintenance requirements (oddball cooling system
requirements and very clean optics).

If you want to charge your phone on the order of 1w/hr, it's possible, any
more power than that, consumers can't maintain equipment good enough for it to
work. The main limiting factor for the power level is keeping things clean and
scratch free enough. If you figure that out, it is worth more than wireless
power system is (and I can I buy a few?).

One of the systems I worked on could deliver 1kW at 100m, and even something
as small as a 0.5% reflection could set your clothes on fire if you were close
to the reflection. 1KW is less power than what you can draw from most standard
consumer wall outlets.

~~~
witty_username
> w/hr

Did you mean W (watt) = J/s which is a unit of power?

------
Twirrim
> “There is too much noise. There are too many flags popping up. What the heck
> is going on there?” Thorpe says.

So the reason to to invest more is because of the 'noise' and the 'flags
popping up'. Not because the company has consistently failed to meet any of
its ambitions?

~~~
beambot
So... post-facto crowd-sourced due diligence?

------
jeffmould
Someone will eventually do this, or at least something similar, just maybe not
with ultrasound. Whether that company is uBeam or another company is hard to
say.

I was a little surprised to see Suster's response. One half of me says that is
great to see an investor sticking his neck out for one of his investments and
conveying the faith he has in that investment. Personally, I don't get judging
uBeam and calling them a failure quite yet. I think it is unfair to compare
them to Theranos. At least with uBeam there is no claim they have faked
results or compliance issues. There are no criminal investigations over
falsified technology. The only issue really at hand with uBeam is an
overzealous CEO who stated they would have a prototype available and they
haven't delivered yet. So what? They are behind, it is bleeding edge tech that
will have a huge impact if they are able to pull it off. Is it because she is
a female everyone is quick to judge her a failure at this point? Or because
she is a young, first-time CEO? If Elon Musk was the CEO would the same
negative press be surrounding uBeam about a failure to deliver?

Now on the flip side, even Suster's post lends truth to Reynolds' statements.
This part, to me at least, is a little more damning, and leads me to believe
that Reynolds really was trying to put a stop to the hyperbole marketing.

Suster states, "Throughout my many discussions with Paul over our time
together, he never questioned the viability of uBeam and the technology that
he was critical in developing. Instead he expressed concerns that we not
overstate our capabilities or fall prey to hyperbole."

To me these are one in the same essentially. Reynolds apparently was concerned
about the claims being made, said something to Suster, which Suster confirms
in this statement, and now Suster is downplaying those concerns.

In the end this seems like drama over nothing to me. So what if they fail to
deliver? Thousands of companies before them and thousands of companies after
them will fail to deliver on a product at some point. That's the nature of the
beast. To me it seems the only issue is that there is a young CEO who is
excited about a product that has yet to be developed. She makes exciting,
dramatic statements about her company and product than she really should be
making, and both Reynolds and Suster tend to confirm this. But I believe her
statements and the Theranos situation are in two different ballparks, so I
think the comparison is far from fair to uBeam.

~~~
revelation
You could write the exact same post about any random IndieGogo scam. This kind
of interchangeability is a common feature of comments who make no attempt at
all of discussing the subject matter at hand.

You can not exactly discuss uBeam when ignoring the entire body of work done
on the feasibility of the concept.

~~~
jeffmould
I am by no means overlooking the work that has gone into determining the
feasibility. Sorry if my comment came across that way. My point was really
two-fold. The idea itself should not get discredited simply because of the
method they are using. If you take the idea, wireless power at a distance, and
separate that from the method, via ultrasound, the idea is game-changing.

The question then becomes how do you go about doing it. Ultrasound is
apprently one option (I am by no means a scientist or have vast knowledge of
this area). It is obvious, based on the research conducted to date, that
ultrasound as a long-term solution is not viable, both from a technology and
health perspective. So what is? Just because ultrasound is not going to work,
does that mean the idea itself should be thrown out? Maybe, maybe not. But if
we threw out every idea simply because existing technology was incapable of
implementing said idea, we would be rolling around in Fred Flintstone cars.

If VCs want to gamble on developing the technology by throwing money at it,
that is their choice. The real issue is that at some point, the VCs need to
stand up and say enough already with the ultrasound theory. Instead they
should be guiding the company more towards exploring the idea itself and
finding viable solutions. More importantly they need to rein in the CEO, and
hyperbole marketing claims she makes, to take the focus from wireless power
via ultrasound to just the idea of wireless power. That is my second point,
that people seem to be looking at this solely from the claims the CEO has
made, and not from the idea itself.

Suster's defense of the company was a case of right idea, wrong words. He, in
my opinion, through his choice of wording, made the situation worse. While
essentially bashing Reynolds in one sentence, he completely lends credit to
Reynolds statements. He acknowledges that Reynolds expressed doubts regarding
the marketing and public statements.

The problem I see with this whole issue is that everyone, from the company
executives and VCs to the media, is hyper-focused on the method (ultrasound),
that they have lost focus on the idea (wireless power at a distance).

~~~
simoncion
> If you take the idea, wireless power at a distance, and separate that from
> the method, via ultrasound, the idea is game-changing.

Uh. It is my understanding that free-space [0] wireless power transmission is
a _rather_ old tech. [1] You just pretty much never see it because if you want
to move substantial amounts of power with a relatively small antenna, you
_have_ to keep living things a _significant_ distance away from the
transmission area, lest they cross between the Tx and Rx sides and get
seriously harmed.

[0] That is, things like microwave or laser power transmission through the
atmosphere rather than things like inductive charging mats and transmission
rings.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_power_transfer#Far-
fi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_power_transfer#Far-
field_radiative_techniques) (Notice the mention of the microwave-powered RC
helicopter in 1964.)

------
lordnacho
Aside from it not being physically possible, there's a question of whether it
would beat alternatives.

My wife told me IKEA are now selling wireless charging surfaces. So for
example if you buy a shelf, it could have magnetic induction charging, which a
number of phones now support. It's not a big deal hooking up some wires, and
once it becomes common, there may well be a time when everyone expects every
table, shelf, or countertop to charge their devices.

It's not something that requires much research either. I already have a
magnetic charging unit for my samsung phone. At the moment it's a toy, but not
hard to imagine it built into a shelving unit.

~~~
aliston
This was my thought too... why use ultrasound when you can use induction? Was
there some perceived advantage to sound?

