Both GF and us (Helion) are attempting to dramatically shrink the size and cost of fusion reactors. We are doing that by compressing a fusion plasma repeatedly to generate energy, rather than trying to heat and confine it for long periods.
The main difference is that Helion uses high field pulsed magnets to compress the plasma, GF uses pistons to generate liquid metal shocks.
Not yet, right now we are focused on pushing the technical milestones as fast as possible. This is a great question, what do people here think about a crowdfunding campaign for something like fusion, is it worth it?
I helped out with the recent Focus Fusion crowdfunding. Our goal was $200K, we raised $180K, but it also brought in some new investors who took us well over the goal, and who gave the crowdfund the credit for their interest.
We had a very low budget so our marketing was bare-bones.
We had a lot of excitement, but also a lot of skepticism and pushback. Our hired marketing team insisted on an extremely optimistic presentation and that turned a lot of people off. Of course I don't know whether we would have done better with a more measured approach. With LPP being such a small team and so far off the beaten path we faced a lot more skepticism to start with.
The Solar Roadways campaign ran on Indiegogo at the same time and raised over $2 million. They managed to make a video go viral.
That's very interesting. So what do you think solar roadways did better? Or is their concept just more reportable by media because it's more understandable.
What role did you play? Do you think a marketing team is necessary for a successful campaign?
By the way, email me if you want to chat sometime. I've been kicking around an idea for a better kickstarter.
I don't know whether they had a bigger marketing budget or were just good at it. It does seem like an easier-to-understand hook. Various people have criticized the idea's practicality but say "solar roadways" and you've got the concept. That probably helped media coverage. For us, it was complicated to explain why it was more than "here's another guy in a garage who thinks he's solving the world's energy problems."
I'm on the board of the Focus Fusion Society so I debated and voted on various decisions, got interviewed a couple times, and spent a lot of time commenting online various places, mainly reddit.
A marketing team at least helps do a lot of legwork. If you want to pay more for expert advice it can be hard to determine who's expert enough to give good advice for your particular situation.
Well there've been campaigns out there that have reached above $1 mill. It's difficult but doable, I don't know what kind of money will you need this three years, probably it's not worth the (PR) risk of failing to reach the goal quantity. On the other side it could be a way a good PR move on it's own. I'm sure there is some people at YC that are able to give an autoritative opinion.
There it's also the option of getting some scientific teams(universities, institutes) to help in a crowdsourcing way. For no money, just stock and the possibility to help with a world changing project like yours.
I know it's possible because I've got some high level volunteers (NASA, European level matematic institute, Airbus ingeneers) in contact with Dirk Ahlborn (Jumpstart) to work on the Hyperloop (they got more than 80 volunteers selected).
I don't know if having ingeneering, designers and matematician teams working remotely could be helpful to you at this moment, but it's another way to get people around the world to help, and now that you have YC backing it'll be easier.
