
Nikola Tesla Pitching Silicon Valley VCs [video] - espeed
https://plus.google.com/u/0/+avinash/posts/UgWmghiGvRM
======
dmk23
The funny thing - this video is not too far off in describing Tesla's actual
interactions with financiers of his time.

If you are going to make financial players a dependency in your business plan
you'll have to jump through similar kind of hoops.

On the other hand Thomas Edison figured out how to bootstrap his enterprises,
maintain control and avoid dealing with this kind of nonsense.

~~~
JanezStupar
The moral of this story is "Do not try to be like Nikola Tesla, because it
will not help you in any way."

~~~
pcrh
I think many people such as myself (biotech scientist) fail to see how far we
have to move away from the "cutting edge" in order to attract interest. A
basic researcher thinks nothing of investing 3 years of labor into something
that _might_ work, because if you look at it _this_ way and also _that_ way,
then it means the other, etc, etc.

The time horizon for VCs is much shorter than that. If your idea is not
working _now_ , then you have very little chance of getting investment.

------
Luyt
There exist great myths around Tesla:

 _"Hardly anything written about Nikola Tesla fails to exaggerate his
inventions and deify the man. Factually wrong descriptions of his
accomplishments are found all over the place. His name is broadly smeared by
association with virtually every crank conspiracy theory on the planet. They
want magically easy answers to complicated problems, and when they hear that
Tesla invented such answers and that the government and industry suppressed
them, they trumpet his name to the world. This group has become little more
than a cult, an insult to the man and his accomplishments."_

 _"Tesla is not known to have ever mentioned ball lightning in any of his
writing or speaking, and no record from his time is known to exist stating
that he created, demonstrated, or knew about anything that could reasonably be
called ball lightning — despite intense rumormongering to the contrary"_

 _"Tesla posed for a famous publicity photograph, that you've seen many times,
of himself sitting in a chair inside his lab taking notes while the air all
around him is filled with such streamers from his giant coil."_

 _"During the final decade of his life, Tesla was essentially penniless and
living in a New York hotel, consumed by what we think today was probably
obsessive compulsive disorder. It was during this period — and not earlier
during his productive laboratory years — that he openly spoke of having built
and tested a Death Ray."_

Source: 'The Cult of Nikola Tesla', <http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4345>

~~~
Luyt
Oh, and about the wireless power, which the video clip is about:

 _"Did Tesla plan to transmit power world-wide through the sky?

It was his ultimate plan, but the farthest he ever got was the partial
construction of his famous tower at Wardenclyffe which was intended for
wireless communication across the Atlantic. His worldwide wireless power
system was theoretical only, employing the Schumann-Tesla resonance to charge
the Earth's ionosphere such that a simple handheld coil could receive
electrical power for free anywhere, and everywhere, in the world. Tesla's idea
was innovative, but innovative idea it remained, as debts mounted and the
tower was dismantled before it ever got to be used. Now that the nature of the
ionosphere is much better understood, physicists now consider Tesla's concept
unworkable, and no attempts to test it have ever worked.

All sorts of conspiracy theories exist, for example that the HAARP research
facility in Alaska is secretly a test of Tesla's worldwide power grid, or some
sort of superweapon based on it. The profound differences between these
systems become clear upon doing even the most basic of research."_

~~~
officialjunk
hmm... i believe that for long distances, tesla planned to use the
conductivity of the earth itself, because of it's low impedance, to send AC
current to any point on the plannet's surface
(<http://www.google.com/patents/US1119732?printsec=abstract>).

for short distances, air transmission was possible, but there is strong drop-
off in efficiency because of air being an insulator
(<https://www.google.com/patents/US645576?printsec=abstract>).

also, people do consider his work "workable:"
<http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2010/wireless-power-0409> the rumor is that
tesla intentionally left out key details in his patents to keep from dangerous
tech being in the wrong hands, while maintaining the rights to the tech. so,
we aren't even able to reproduce tesla's levels of efficiency or distance
without re-discovering certain aspects... but to say that physicists consider
his concepts unworkable is false.

edit: typo

------
JDGM
Hysterical. I especially liked the way one or more of the VCs said "uh-huh",
"right", or "yeah" every two seconds when Tesla was talking. Reminded me of
Harry Shearer in Wayne's World 2.

I didn't quite understand the ending though. "You haven't really seen any of
the inventions yet. Would you like to?", "Sure", _Tesla points finger_ -> I
don't get what just happened.

------
arunoda
Here is the kickstarter project related to this video:
[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dorrian/a-statue-of-
niko...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dorrian/a-statue-of-nikola-tesla-
in-the-silicon-valley)

------
smalldaddy
Created to support this [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dorrian/a-statue-
of-niko...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dorrian/a-statue-of-nikola-
tesla-in-the-silicon-valley)

