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UBeam CEO Meredith Perry steps aside amidst B2B pivot

126 points by Ice_cream_suit 8y ago

crankylinuxuser 8y ago
It makes sense. Continuing in Tesla's footsteps was doomed to failure. You end up wasting 90% or more energy being transmitted. And it significantly raises noise floor for 'power'. This just seems like a bad ideal all around, so no surprise they're "pivoting". A way this could have worked, is if it could tell where the charging devices were, and then beam-form in that direction. Then you'd be limited to by how many beams you could initiate.
- taneq 8y ago
  Also you'd get energy beams being fired around your living space. Seems a bit iffy to me that you could do this without frying random things, biological and otherwise.
  - village-idiot 8y ago
    “Please remove all iron from your house before activating the device”.
- gh02t 8y ago
  There actually is another company doing something similar to that called Wi-Charge, except they use an IR laser beam. It's still got quite a few fundamental physical limitations on safety and efficiency, but it's more practical than uBeam at least. Dave Jones also did a video on it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bXjn3wwM8o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bXjn3wwM8o
maxxxxx 8y ago
Reading the article sounds a little like what I read in the book about Theranos. Seems they "invented" something that in theory would be very useful but had really no technology to make this happen but went out anyway to get investment money. Then for years they desperately tried to make it work while lying left and right .
- minimaxir 8y ago
  The difference between Theranos and uBeam was that uBeam's technology worked... ...in a highly controlled environment with specs making it unsuitable for practical consumer use.
neotek 8y ago
Clever move, get out before the indictments land when investors figure out they've been had. uBeam's been completely full of shit from day one, and Perry is every bit as deceptive and deluded as Theranos' Elizabeth Holmes. Dave from EEVBlog has a couple of great videos about the uBeam scam, they're well worth watching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8dqzVlhFkA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8dqzVlhFkA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLly4WdRAjY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLly4WdRAjY
- village-idiot 8y ago
  My immediate thought was always “oh boy do I not want to be in the same room as that thing”. [insert scene from Oceans 11 with Basher covering his testicles in fear before triggering an EMP].
- legohead 8y ago
  > Andreessen Horowitz, Founders Fund, CrunchFund, Marissa Mayer and Mark Cuban how were these people so easily bamboozled? this is some pretty dubious tech straight from the get go.
  - minimaxir 8y ago
    From Michael Arrington: https://web.archive.org/web/20170819183727/https://uncrunched.com/2012/05/23/serendipity/ https://web.archive.org/web/20170819183727/https://uncrunche... > I’m sitting backstage at TechCrunch Disrupt. I’m introduced to (let’s call her) Mary, a 22 year old recent college grad. She spends ten minutes setting up a science experiment on my desk. There are jokes about how she managed to get this thing through airport security. She then performs the closest thing to magic I’ve seen in a long time. > Stuff like that is what makes my job so much fun. In a year or so when this thing is productized you’ll be hearing a lot more about Mary.
    - _pmf_ 8y ago
      > She spends ten minutes setting up a science experiment on my desk. There are jokes about how she managed to get this thing through airport security. She then performs the closest thing to magic I’ve seen in a long time. Maybe he should go to Las Vegas instead of making decisions about technological investments.
dawhizkid 8y ago
It’s pretty depressing that two of the higher profile SV scams in recent years involved woman founder/CEOs
- api 8y ago
  Dont worry. There are plenty of scammy vaporware startups founded by men. Just look at pretty much the whole cryptocurrency field for starters.
  - wpietri 8y ago
    Agreed. I have now been asking this question for nearly a decade: what economic value does cryptocurrency deliver today? So far, I have found no good answer to that. (Note that speculation does not create value; it at best transfers it from bet-winners to bet-losers. Crime seems to be the next-most-popular use case, and that is also generally net negative economically. And not also that the future isn't today. Which seems obvious, but every time I ask this I get a lot of fantasies about the future.) That hasn't stopped an awful lot of people from raising money and launching ICOs for products that haven't worked and often couldn't possibly work. For example, see David Gerard's excellent ongoing dissection of Kodakcoin: https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/tag/kodakcoin/ https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/tag/kodakcoin/
- legostormtroopr 8y ago
  No, its pretty predictable and preventable. People clamor over themselves to prove how "woke" they are when a woman CEO comes along and prove how totally not sexist they are. When Theranos was first starting there was lots of solid critiques of why it was all a scam, and so much of that was deflected as "sexism" [1,2,3,4,5,6]. Theranos was bound to fail, and was bound to implode - not just because Holmes was a fraud, but because the wokeness of Silicon Valley was complicit in her fraud, but letting her deflect any and all criticism as sexism. Criticising a fraud who happens to be a woman isn't sexist and we shouldn't let people get away with suggesting otherwise. Thats the only way to prevent this exact same scenario from happening again. [1] https://www.bustle.com/articles/117841-is-criticism-of-billionaire-elizabeth-holmes-sexist-yes-no https://www.bustle.com/articles/117841-is-criticism-of-billi... [2] http://fortune.com/2015/12/10/elizabeth-holmes-sexism-theranos/ http://fortune.com/2015/12/10/elizabeth-holmes-sexism-theran... [3] https://medium.com/@abyah.wynn/elizabeth-holmes-and-the-struggle-of-being-a-female-entrepreneur-5a34bd154d57 https://medium.com/@abyah.wynn/elizabeth-holmes-and-the-stru... [4] https://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/15/theranos-ceo-elizabeth-holmes-is-a-victim-venture-capitalist-tim-draper-says.html https://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/15/theranos-ceo-elizabeth-holme... [5] https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/08/03/488569884/is-there-a-double-standard-when-women-ceos-in-tech-stumble https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/08/03/48... [6] https://www.google.com.au/search?q=theranos+sexism https://www.google.com.au/search?q=theranos+sexism
Afrotechmods 8y ago
1) This is the blog by the former VP of Engineering that the article references: https://liesandstartuppr.blogspot.com/search/label/ubeam https://liesandstartuppr.blogspot.com/search/label/ubeam 2) Does anyone know if she ever apologized for this awful speech? https://youtu.be/ukgnU2aXM2c?t=240 https://youtu.be/ukgnU2aXM2c?t=240 3) This uBeam shit is literally one of the reasons why I created a beginner's course in wireless power. It drives me nuts that investors have gotten ripped off so many times in this industry and the degree to which the media has been complicit in the hype train. If Mark Cuban or any other VCs happen to be reading this, please watch this course before putting any more money into wireless power. I created a coupon so you can watch it for free. https://www.udemy.com/wireless-power-to-the-people-wireless-charging-101/?couponCode=YCOMBINATOR https://www.udemy.com/wireless-power-to-the-people-wireless-...
- copperx 8y ago
  No joke, that's a terrible speech archived for posterity and it will follow her for the rest of her life.
- wpietri 8y ago
  I strongly recommend that blog. It's so very rare that an insider after leaving will publicly point out the bullshit. So rare and so valuable. Anybody new to the tech industry should carefully study that blog. It's far easy to spend years of your life on something that sounds good but couldn't possibly work.
- mintplant 8y ago
  > I was not an engineer, and I did not have Asperger's. Yuck. Seems like she thought that was going to be a laugh line.
  - village-idiot 8y ago
    Some people just don’t have comedic sensibilities or timing, and that’s fine. But sometimes on stage jokes let you see what the speaker considers to be funny, which can occasionally be horrifying.
- 8y ago
minimaxir 8y ago
Throwback to the original 2014 post Putting $10M into UBeam illustrates what is wrong with tech investing which pointed out the basic physics impossibilities: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8542091 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8542091
- raverbashing 8y ago
  A lot of very relevant comments at the top of that discussion
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  Aren’t there theoretical methods for columnarly focusing sound waves? I’m not saying uBeam has that. Just that there’s a middle ground between “it’s impossible” and “uBeam pitched crap.”
  - nradov 8y ago
    Sure you can focus sound waves. But they're still subject to the inverse square law. And the tightness of the beam is proportional to the size of the emitter: you need a huge array to maintain focus over any reasonable distance. Plus there's no theoretical way to entirely get around the efficiency or safety concerns. So not literally impossible, but totally impractical as a commercial product.
    - Balgair 8y ago
      This is a broader case of all wave phenomena. As a VERY coarse guide, the equation is : R = Lambda/D Where R is the angular 'resolution' of the device, Lambda is the wavelength of the wave used, and D is the diameter of the device. This means that as the 'resolution' gets smaller (ie. better), the diameter becomes bigger. For example, if you have a 20kHz sound source (~1.7 cm wavelength) and want an angular resolution of ~ 1 arc-second, then you'd need a ~3.5km diameter array. Actual equations will vary GREATLY from this, but it's a good 'sniff test' starting guide.
- xoa 8y ago
nradov 8y ago
How long will it be until Energous is also revealed as a fraud? https://liesandstartuppr.blogspot.com/2018/08/mailbag-questions-on-energous.html https://liesandstartuppr.blogspot.com/2018/08/mailbag-questi...
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
neya 8y ago
Another Elizabeth Holmes in the making. Isn't there some legal proceeding to sue her for lying/cheating/deceiving? It has been proved uBeam isn't possible by the scientific community well before. We should not let people get away with fraud and deceiving the public so easily.
- compcoffee 8y ago
  Mark Suster's blog post on her is not aging well: https://bothsidesofthetable.com/what-is-it-like-to-wake-up-and-have-the-press-ready-to-torpedo-your-business-351f27ca6d67 https://bothsidesofthetable.com/what-is-it-like-to-wake-up-a...
- harryh 8y ago
  In what way did uBeam deceive the public? They never raised money or sold the public any products.
  - Trevor908 8y ago
    It's still deception, there's just no injury.
rdlecler1 8y ago
Unlike Theranos which had a lot of non-VC investors uBeam had some of the best. Sound travels in a wave and energy would dissipates exponentially with distance. It made no sense to me how this would work or why these investors got behind this. Insight would be appreciated.
- Afrotechmods 8y ago
  Back when this first started Meredith built a "prototype" in a couple of days which, to a layperson, would appear impressive. There was a function generator with an amplifier sending out ultrasound via an array of transmitters and about a meter away there was an array of receiving transducers that picked up the utlrasound. Then the output from those receiving transducers was rectified with a few diodes to get DC. In this demonstration she had a multimeter showing the voltage at the receiving side, and when she tweaked things just right, she received 5 volts on the receiving side. 5 volts is the standard voltage you'd use to charge a phone, or any other USB powered device, so it was reasoned that she had created a viable system that could charge phones wirelessly. The problem is that any idiot can get 5 volts out of thin air. You can literally hang up a long bare wire and rectify ambient radio waves and get 5 volts. The trick is getting 5 volts and being able to supply significant amounts of current at the same time i.e. receiving useful amounts of _power_. Power = Volts x Amps and Meredith and her investors simply did not understand the importance of this equation that a freshman in engineering would understand. FOMO kicked in and they threw millions of dollars at her thinking it was going to be the next big thing.
  - baud147258 8y ago
    > a freshman in engineering would understand I don't even think that as a freshman, I would have gotten it. On the other hand, I was pretty loosy on the EM side of things, that's why I then went into software quickly afterward .
  - illiac_1962 8y ago
    Wow, so she generated a shitload of charged air and used a child's science experiment to woo some VCs? I think I'm in love. I cannot stop laughing. She could get rich many times over pulling this trick.
bkraz 8y ago
Whenever a CEO starts to behave as if the success of their company/idea is a personal battle as opposed to an actual business, time to get out. Back in 2015, the uBeam CEO ended a combative twitter rant with "peace out, bitches." Yeah, it was very personal. https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Ameredithperry%20since%3A2015-10-20%20until%3A2015-10-22&src=typd https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Ameredithperry%20since%3A...
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > Whenever a CEO starts to behave as if the success of their company/idea is a personal battle as opposed to an actual business, time to get out Casting strategic battles as personal fights is fine. What is also necessary is someone who can wage a personally-meaningful battle without losing touch of reality. That duality produces a motivating and insightful personality. Moving people with the charismatic power of a personal mission is simultaneously empowering and intoxicating. Like storybook mythical objects, it must be carefully wielded.
logicallee 8y ago
I've often thought about this predicament. The original inventor made a demo and raised a lot of money. It's clear that after they went ahead, they didn't quite get it working due to the physics involved. (It's not viable.) Around the time that this was becoming super clear to everyone (around three years ago), I wrote them this (not sure if they got it): https://imgur.com/a/WQicmGS https://imgur.com/a/WQicmGS Since then I've thought about this so much. Here's Suster's glowing praise when handing them a huge check, a year earlier: https://imgur.com/a/i2zIslW https://imgur.com/a/i2zIslW What I concluded in the past 4 years of lightly watching this is that you must retain total, like, totalitarian power over your company, to do whatever you want to do. Because uBeam did the hard part: getting the cash. It's practically impossible to fund a company. Really, go ahead and try it. I'll wait. See you when you're 45 and have been trying for 15 years across ten companies, and finally said fuck it and built your own organic revenues of half a million a month with 90% margin, and still aren't getting the checks. The hard part is the Series A. But the problem is signing paperwork that gives investors (such as Suster), any amount of control whatsoever. It's clear that Perry was smart enough to figure out the tech wasn't working. But she wasn't powerful enough to pivot to something that was. Her lesson, at least to me, is that you must retain almost total power to do whatever you want at the company. I'll never sign anything that gives investors any amount of power whatsoever. If they want to be along for the ride, go ahead. But you don't get to be Steve Jobs without negotiating enough power to be Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs has gone down a lot of rabbit holes that, uh, didn't lead anywhere. He could do that because he negotiated for it. If you're founding CEO, you need to negotiate for total power at your company. Or you will end up like Meredith Perry. The problem isn't with the tech. It's that she just wasn't powerful enough to keep doing whatever the fuck she wanted. Her lesson to me is: "Get more power." If you're the visionary CEO of a tech company, and aren't powerful enough to do whatever the fuck you want to do, including pivoting out of what you just sold to investors - then you didn't get the negotiations and the paperwork right. Be more powerful. ----- EDIT: downvoter, I'm happy to engage in a conversation about your opinion on this matter.
- URSpider94 8y ago
  This makes zero sense. If you prove that your tech won’t work, and you have a better idea, go back to your board. Because of the way venture investing works, they’d almost certainly rather bankroll you to pivot, than take their money back and shut you down. In any case, the board usually has no control over how you operate the company. Their only choice, if they don’t like it, is to fire you - and a majority of them would have to agree to do so. I see no evidence that the founder is somehow trapped inside her company, totally aware of her terrible idea and yet unable to pivot. All evidence points to the fact that she is still a believer. If anything, she’s now being pushed aside by her board, who are putting an adult in charge and looking for some kind of licensing deal or IP buy-out as a last-ditch exit.
deepnotderp 8y ago
Whenever the concept of wireless charging pops up, people always helpfully suggest the use of phased arrays or other beamforming methods. Directional waves are still subject to inverse square law, just like lasers.
- Gibbon1 8y ago
  Last time I looked at phased array technology it seemed like you need large number of elements to get real gain. At the same time you either need phase control and PA for each element, expensive. Or high power phase control which is inefficient. And still not cheap. One gets dubious real quick considering the incentive there is to develop affordable beam steering technology. And the lack of examples outside of a few niche area's.
  - deepnotderp 8y ago
    You need lots of antennae to get high directivity with phased arrays. A millimeter wave (very small lambda) wafer scale (giant chip = super expensive) phased array integrated onto a chip achieves a half power beamwidth of around 6 degrees. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7747488 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7747488 For good millimeter wave RF you usually need either III-Vs or SOI. Those wafers are expensive.
- chime 8y ago
  How are lasers subject to inverse square law? > Laser light travels as a parallel beam spreading very little, so the inverse square law does not apply. https://www.reed.edu/ehs/laser-safety/1laser_basics.html https://www.reed.edu/ehs/laser-safety/1laser_basics.html Is the above wrong?
  - foldr 8y ago
    It seems to be a perennial point of confusion, but as far as I can make out from googling, it's not strictly true that lasers follow the inverse square law. Why is the parent being downvoted? https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/sci.optics/P-8VmDlY45g https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/sci.optics/P-8VmDlY4...
grizzles 8y ago
Hah. It's incredible it took this long tbh. So much for the market allocating capital efficiently.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  Yup. uBeam is probably the longest joke in SV, and given this article, we're still not getting near the punchline. Apparently they want to license this nonsense now...
samfisher83 8y ago
This idea didn't make sense from a physics point of view. Tesla tried to do wireless power a hundred years ago. It left him broke. Sound would seem to be less efficient than EM waves. I mean how did she get this much money?
- 2_listerine_pls 8y ago
  It's actually possible to have long range wireless power transmission using beams of EM waves with the thanks to phased arrays of antennas: https://newatlas.com/cota-ossia-wireless-charging-microwave-phased-array/29217/ https://newatlas.com/cota-ossia-wireless-charging-microwave-... https://www.geekwire.com/2017/intellectual-ventures-microwaves-metamaterials-beam-power/ https://www.geekwire.com/2017/intellectual-ventures-microwav...
  - deepnotderp 8y ago
    Wi-charge uses lasers. Wanna guess how efficient and cheap high power IR lasers and GaAs solar panels are?
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - nradov 8y ago
    Sure it's possible. It's just not efficient, practical, reliable, or safe (at high power levels).
    - 2_listerine_pls 8y ago
      Might not be very efficient but it's practical if you need a 24/7 flying drone.
      - tzs 8y ago
        Airbus has a patent on that: https://patents.google.com/patent/FR3012923A1/en https://patents.google.com/patent/FR3012923A1/en
dbcooper 8y ago
https://liesandstartuppr.blogspot.com/2018/09/end-of-era-thoughts-on-ubeam-founder.html https://liesandstartuppr.blogspot.com/2018/09/end-of-era-tho... > One meeting in particular pushed me over the edge, and I told the CEO that I was extremely unhappy, and we should discuss a way to amicably separate. I knew the transducer and acoustics side better than anyone, and would give the company as much time as needed to transition and pass over my knowledge. It was a tense meeting, and I went home after, and there were then a series of ... interesting ... emails and phone calls with Perry, that ended with no conclusion. Ironically, among the demands from the company was a statement for the press about how I still believed in uBeam's goals and the technology, but I declined. I got a text the next morning to come to the downstairs company conference room, and to bring my laptop, lab-book, and any company property - it was clear what was about to happen. >I arrived and the room had CFO Hushen and CEO Perry. It was tense, and Perry sat at the head of the table in her position that she used when about to be CEO-like and give a prepared speech - straight back, leaning slighty forward, hands together. She looked at me and said: >"Today will be your last day with the company. But before we go on to that, it is important that you understand that you are a quitter. You have quit on me, you have quit on yourself, you have quit on the company, you have quit on your team, you have quit on.... wait what are you doing?" >At this point the speech was so ridiculous I had picked up my phone to start taking notes because this was too good not to write down. I looked up and she seemed shocked and demanded "Are you texting someone? I'm talking." and I looked at her and said "Just taking some notes." Sadly, this seemed to throw her off, and I never did hear the rest of that prepared speech. She simply mumbled then moved to telling me that I would now give an exit interview, and was again perturbed when I declined. She insisted and the CFO, acting as HR, had to step in and say that wasn't necessary. I handed over my laptop and the few items I had, and made a clear instruction that the company was not to make any statements or quotes that were to be attributed to me - I heard from the team that about ten minutes later they were all told in a company meeting by the CEO that "I wanted them to know that I wished them all the best and success for the company, and still believed in the company mission" or something similar.
- copperx 8y ago
  This is a disgusting look at Perry, the ex-CEO. She is as self-assured and voluntarily ignorant of the impossibility of the technology as the perpetual machine inventors of yore. But they've got millions of dollars this time around.
dbcooper 8y ago
LOL @ Mark Suster still in denial mode in the Techcrunch comments.
- Trevor908 8y ago
  He's trying to unload the company and save a bit of his reputation. Of course he'll still hype it.
pbreit 8y ago
Isn't this, like Theranos, a company where if the product works, it prints money?
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  Yes, but unlike Theranos, it was known from day one that the product is bullshit, as the physics part doesn't add up.
  - nikanj 8y ago
    One of the most ironic parts is Meredith Perry's TEDx talk, where she's proud about not having any education in the field. "I was not an engineer, and I did not have Asperger's(!!)" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukgnU2aXM2c&feature=youtu.be&t=240 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukgnU2aXM2c&feature=youtu.be...
    - TeMPOraL 8y ago
      Yeah, well. It shows. Also, I'm proud of my self-diagnosed aspie. I don't know of an engineer who isn't.
foobaw 8y ago
I used to have friends that worked here and told me horror stories about the CEO. I hope this technology works in the future in a reasonable amount of time without such a horrendous leader because it is quite an awesome concept if done properly.
- copperx 8y ago
  I wouldn't doubt that this post was written by her: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8543220 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8543220
  - raverbashing 8y ago
    Might not be, actually that commenter has stopped commenting and the last comments are a bit worrying (though not in a personal level)
nhylated 8y ago
From 2014: > The Audacious Plan to Make Electricity as Easy as WiFi > https://bothsidesofthetable.com/the-audacious-plan-to-make-electricity-as-easy-as-wifi-45d9e26d81f0 https://bothsidesofthetable.com/the-audacious-plan-to-make-e...
deepnotderp 8y ago
Honestly ubeam makes me kind of mad, it makes it much harder for other non-PhD/"outsiders" who are working in hard tech fields but who are legit to convince others.
- EpicEng 8y ago
  Does it? It should be hard to convince anyone of something that goes against accepted and proven constraints. They don't and never have had the data/science to back up their claims. That should be the bar.
Illniyar 8y ago
Mmm... when you step down to get someone more suited for the new path a company is going to take, you have someone lined up to replace you - to ease transition and alleviate concerns. You don't put an interim CEO from HR and finance while your are searching for a "seasoned executive in the electronics field", that's what you do if the current CEO is hurting the business and needs to be pushed out quickly.
bookofjoe 8y ago
Nikola Tesla, where are you when we really, really need you?
fabricexpert 8y ago
I'm not sure the criticism at UBeam (especially at the CEO) is all that fair. Shouldn't we be encouraging moon-shoots that look impossible? Isn't that the point of VC funds? I'd rather see 100 UBeams than one more social media network or adtech company getting funding. VCs tend to invest in the team over the tech. In this case you have a young woman leading the team, which (sadly) looks great for your portfolio and makes it easier to raise the capital needed to make progress on tough engineering issues. Despite what she says, she isn't an engineer so she's not solving the hard problem. Actually she did quite a good job to raise 30m USD on basically nothing, it's not really her fault the physics doesn't work out. The problem is that they haven't built up any useful IP here to pivot with, it's fine if they said hey we failed at wireless charging at 10 feet, but we made 50% gains in improved efficiency of Qi chargers and we're going to still build the next gen of wireless chargers. But they haven't managed that.
- kiba 8y ago
  There's physically impossible and there's "impossible".
  - mojuba 8y ago
    I remember people saying capacitive touch display is impossible on mobile devices because "physics". Not everyone and not always is right when they cite physics. Ubeam seems like a more clear case of physical impossibility, but who knows maybe someone improves this tech at some point. That probably won't be Ubeam though, the DNA of this company already seems to be broken.
- gaius 8y ago
  it's not really her fault the physics doesn't work That is an excuse on a par with “the black hole ate my homework”
  - arethuza 8y ago
    Well at least that would generate some power... - although making it practical for mobile devices might require significant investment.
jacquesm 8y ago
The most dangerous founders are those that believe their own bs and that peddle an idea that would be so nice if it were true. Investors tend to push each other out of the way for opportunities to invest in such companies and lose all capability for rational thought.
- sambull 8y ago
  Her TEDx video [0] makes it clear, she just believes she knows better and within an hour of any subject matter that has experts she could revolutionize their field by just thinking outside the box. The experts too limited in their thinking to see how awesome it could work lol [0] https://youtu.be/ukgnU2aXM2c https://youtu.be/ukgnU2aXM2c
  - copperx 8y ago
    Her condescending attitude towards engineers and scientists, especially the bit at the end saying she can't wait to "give them the middle finger" is appalling. If she has zero charisma and zero smarts, how did she convince so many people? That's what's worrying about VC culture.
  - nradov 8y ago
    TEDx talks are mostly just feel-good nonsense. It's really disappointing how many people take them seriously.

It makes sense. Continuing in Tesla's footsteps was doomed to failure. You end up wasting 90% or more energy being transmitted. And it significantly raises noise floor for 'power'. This just seems like a bad ideal all around, so no surprise they're "pivoting". A way this could have worked, is if it could tell where the charging devices were, and then beam-form in that direction. Then you'd be limited to by how many beams you could initiate.

taneq 8y ago
Also you'd get energy beams being fired around your living space. Seems a bit iffy to me that you could do this without frying random things, biological and otherwise.
- village-idiot 8y ago
  “Please remove all iron from your house before activating the device”.
gh02t 8y ago
There actually is another company doing something similar to that called Wi-Charge, except they use an IR laser beam. It's still got quite a few fundamental physical limitations on safety and efficiency, but it's more practical than uBeam at least. Dave Jones also did a video on it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bXjn3wwM8o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bXjn3wwM8o

maxxxxx 8y ago

Reading the article sounds a little like what I read in the book about Theranos. Seems they "invented" something that in theory would be very useful but had really no technology to make this happen but went out anyway to get investment money. Then for years they desperately tried to make it work while lying left and right .

minimaxir 8y ago
The difference between Theranos and uBeam was that uBeam's technology worked... ...in a highly controlled environment with specs making it unsuitable for practical consumer use.

neotek 8y ago

Clever move, get out before the indictments land when investors figure out they've been had. uBeam's been completely full of shit from day one, and Perry is every bit as deceptive and deluded as Theranos' Elizabeth Holmes. Dave from EEVBlog has a couple of great videos about the uBeam scam, they're well worth watching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8dqzVlhFkA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8dqzVlhFkA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLly4WdRAjY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLly4WdRAjY

village-idiot 8y ago
My immediate thought was always “oh boy do I not want to be in the same room as that thing”. [insert scene from Oceans 11 with Basher covering his testicles in fear before triggering an EMP].
legohead 8y ago
> Andreessen Horowitz, Founders Fund, CrunchFund, Marissa Mayer and Mark Cuban how were these people so easily bamboozled? this is some pretty dubious tech straight from the get go.
- minimaxir 8y ago
  From Michael Arrington: https://web.archive.org/web/20170819183727/https://uncrunched.com/2012/05/23/serendipity/ https://web.archive.org/web/20170819183727/https://uncrunche... > I’m sitting backstage at TechCrunch Disrupt. I’m introduced to (let’s call her) Mary, a 22 year old recent college grad. She spends ten minutes setting up a science experiment on my desk. There are jokes about how she managed to get this thing through airport security. She then performs the closest thing to magic I’ve seen in a long time. > Stuff like that is what makes my job so much fun. In a year or so when this thing is productized you’ll be hearing a lot more about Mary.
  - _pmf_ 8y ago
    > She spends ten minutes setting up a science experiment on my desk. There are jokes about how she managed to get this thing through airport security. She then performs the closest thing to magic I’ve seen in a long time. Maybe he should go to Las Vegas instead of making decisions about technological investments.

dawhizkid 8y ago

It’s pretty depressing that two of the higher profile SV scams in recent years involved woman founder/CEOs

api 8y ago
Dont worry. There are plenty of scammy vaporware startups founded by men. Just look at pretty much the whole cryptocurrency field for starters.
- wpietri 8y ago
  Agreed. I have now been asking this question for nearly a decade: what economic value does cryptocurrency deliver today? So far, I have found no good answer to that. (Note that speculation does not create value; it at best transfers it from bet-winners to bet-losers. Crime seems to be the next-most-popular use case, and that is also generally net negative economically. And not also that the future isn't today. Which seems obvious, but every time I ask this I get a lot of fantasies about the future.) That hasn't stopped an awful lot of people from raising money and launching ICOs for products that haven't worked and often couldn't possibly work. For example, see David Gerard's excellent ongoing dissection of Kodakcoin: https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/tag/kodakcoin/ https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/tag/kodakcoin/
legostormtroopr 8y ago
No, its pretty predictable and preventable. People clamor over themselves to prove how "woke" they are when a woman CEO comes along and prove how totally not sexist they are. When Theranos was first starting there was lots of solid critiques of why it was all a scam, and so much of that was deflected as "sexism" [1,2,3,4,5,6]. Theranos was bound to fail, and was bound to implode - not just because Holmes was a fraud, but because the wokeness of Silicon Valley was complicit in her fraud, but letting her deflect any and all criticism as sexism. Criticising a fraud who happens to be a woman isn't sexist and we shouldn't let people get away with suggesting otherwise. Thats the only way to prevent this exact same scenario from happening again. [1] https://www.bustle.com/articles/117841-is-criticism-of-billionaire-elizabeth-holmes-sexist-yes-no https://www.bustle.com/articles/117841-is-criticism-of-billi... [2] http://fortune.com/2015/12/10/elizabeth-holmes-sexism-theranos/ http://fortune.com/2015/12/10/elizabeth-holmes-sexism-theran... [3] https://medium.com/@abyah.wynn/elizabeth-holmes-and-the-struggle-of-being-a-female-entrepreneur-5a34bd154d57 https://medium.com/@abyah.wynn/elizabeth-holmes-and-the-stru... [4] https://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/15/theranos-ceo-elizabeth-holmes-is-a-victim-venture-capitalist-tim-draper-says.html https://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/15/theranos-ceo-elizabeth-holme... [5] https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/08/03/488569884/is-there-a-double-standard-when-women-ceos-in-tech-stumble https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/08/03/48... [6] https://www.google.com.au/search?q=theranos+sexism https://www.google.com.au/search?q=theranos+sexism

Afrotechmods 8y ago

1) This is the blog by the former VP of Engineering that the article references: https://liesandstartuppr.blogspot.com/search/label/ubeam https://liesandstartuppr.blogspot.com/search/label/ubeam 2) Does anyone know if she ever apologized for this awful speech? https://youtu.be/ukgnU2aXM2c?t=240 https://youtu.be/ukgnU2aXM2c?t=240 3) This uBeam shit is literally one of the reasons why I created a beginner's course in wireless power. It drives me nuts that investors have gotten ripped off so many times in this industry and the degree to which the media has been complicit in the hype train. If Mark Cuban or any other VCs happen to be reading this, please watch this course before putting any more money into wireless power. I created a coupon so you can watch it for free. https://www.udemy.com/wireless-power-to-the-people-wireless-charging-101/?couponCode=YCOMBINATOR https://www.udemy.com/wireless-power-to-the-people-wireless-...

copperx 8y ago
No joke, that's a terrible speech archived for posterity and it will follow her for the rest of her life.
wpietri 8y ago
I strongly recommend that blog. It's so very rare that an insider after leaving will publicly point out the bullshit. So rare and so valuable. Anybody new to the tech industry should carefully study that blog. It's far easy to spend years of your life on something that sounds good but couldn't possibly work.
mintplant 8y ago
> I was not an engineer, and I did not have Asperger's. Yuck. Seems like she thought that was going to be a laugh line.
- village-idiot 8y ago
  Some people just don’t have comedic sensibilities or timing, and that’s fine. But sometimes on stage jokes let you see what the speaker considers to be funny, which can occasionally be horrifying.
8y ago

minimaxir 8y ago

Throwback to the original 2014 post Putting $10M into UBeam illustrates what is wrong with tech investing which pointed out the basic physics impossibilities: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8542091 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8542091

raverbashing 8y ago
A lot of very relevant comments at the top of that discussion
JumpCrisscross 8y ago
Aren’t there theoretical methods for columnarly focusing sound waves? I’m not saying uBeam has that. Just that there’s a middle ground between “it’s impossible” and “uBeam pitched crap.”
- nradov 8y ago
  Sure you can focus sound waves. But they're still subject to the inverse square law. And the tightness of the beam is proportional to the size of the emitter: you need a huge array to maintain focus over any reasonable distance. Plus there's no theoretical way to entirely get around the efficiency or safety concerns. So not literally impossible, but totally impractical as a commercial product.
  - Balgair 8y ago
    This is a broader case of all wave phenomena. As a VERY coarse guide, the equation is : R = Lambda/D Where R is the angular 'resolution' of the device, Lambda is the wavelength of the wave used, and D is the diameter of the device. This means that as the 'resolution' gets smaller (ie. better), the diameter becomes bigger. For example, if you have a 20kHz sound source (~1.7 cm wavelength) and want an angular resolution of ~ 1 arc-second, then you'd need a ~3.5km diameter array. Actual equations will vary GREATLY from this, but it's a good 'sniff test' starting guide.
xoa 8y ago

nradov 8y ago

How long will it be until Energous is also revealed as a fraud? https://liesandstartuppr.blogspot.com/2018/08/mailbag-questions-on-energous.html https://liesandstartuppr.blogspot.com/2018/08/mailbag-questi...

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

neya 8y ago

Another Elizabeth Holmes in the making. Isn't there some legal proceeding to sue her for lying/cheating/deceiving? It has been proved uBeam isn't possible by the scientific community well before. We should not let people get away with fraud and deceiving the public so easily.

compcoffee 8y ago
Mark Suster's blog post on her is not aging well: https://bothsidesofthetable.com/what-is-it-like-to-wake-up-and-have-the-press-ready-to-torpedo-your-business-351f27ca6d67 https://bothsidesofthetable.com/what-is-it-like-to-wake-up-a...
harryh 8y ago
In what way did uBeam deceive the public? They never raised money or sold the public any products.
- Trevor908 8y ago
  It's still deception, there's just no injury.

rdlecler1 8y ago

Unlike Theranos which had a lot of non-VC investors uBeam had some of the best. Sound travels in a wave and energy would dissipates exponentially with distance. It made no sense to me how this would work or why these investors got behind this. Insight would be appreciated.

Afrotechmods 8y ago
Back when this first started Meredith built a "prototype" in a couple of days which, to a layperson, would appear impressive. There was a function generator with an amplifier sending out ultrasound via an array of transmitters and about a meter away there was an array of receiving transducers that picked up the utlrasound. Then the output from those receiving transducers was rectified with a few diodes to get DC. In this demonstration she had a multimeter showing the voltage at the receiving side, and when she tweaked things just right, she received 5 volts on the receiving side. 5 volts is the standard voltage you'd use to charge a phone, or any other USB powered device, so it was reasoned that she had created a viable system that could charge phones wirelessly. The problem is that any idiot can get 5 volts out of thin air. You can literally hang up a long bare wire and rectify ambient radio waves and get 5 volts. The trick is getting 5 volts and being able to supply significant amounts of current at the same time i.e. receiving useful amounts of _power_. Power = Volts x Amps and Meredith and her investors simply did not understand the importance of this equation that a freshman in engineering would understand. FOMO kicked in and they threw millions of dollars at her thinking it was going to be the next big thing.
- baud147258 8y ago
  > a freshman in engineering would understand I don't even think that as a freshman, I would have gotten it. On the other hand, I was pretty loosy on the EM side of things, that's why I then went into software quickly afterward .
- illiac_1962 8y ago
  Wow, so she generated a shitload of charged air and used a child's science experiment to woo some VCs? I think I'm in love. I cannot stop laughing. She could get rich many times over pulling this trick.

bkraz 8y ago

Whenever a CEO starts to behave as if the success of their company/idea is a personal battle as opposed to an actual business, time to get out. Back in 2015, the uBeam CEO ended a combative twitter rant with "peace out, bitches." Yeah, it was very personal. https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Ameredithperry%20since%3A2015-10-20%20until%3A2015-10-22&src=typd https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Ameredithperry%20since%3A...

JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> Whenever a CEO starts to behave as if the success of their company/idea is a personal battle as opposed to an actual business, time to get out Casting strategic battles as personal fights is fine. What is also necessary is someone who can wage a personally-meaningful battle without losing touch of reality. That duality produces a motivating and insightful personality. Moving people with the charismatic power of a personal mission is simultaneously empowering and intoxicating. Like storybook mythical objects, it must be carefully wielded.

logicallee 8y ago

I've often thought about this predicament. The original inventor made a demo and raised a lot of money. It's clear that after they went ahead, they didn't quite get it working due to the physics involved. (It's not viable.) Around the time that this was becoming super clear to everyone (around three years ago), I wrote them this (not sure if they got it): https://imgur.com/a/WQicmGS https://imgur.com/a/WQicmGS Since then I've thought about this so much. Here's Suster's glowing praise when handing them a huge check, a year earlier: https://imgur.com/a/i2zIslW https://imgur.com/a/i2zIslW What I concluded in the past 4 years of lightly watching this is that you must retain total, like, totalitarian power over your company, to do whatever you want to do. Because uBeam did the hard part: getting the cash. It's practically impossible to fund a company. Really, go ahead and try it. I'll wait. See you when you're 45 and have been trying for 15 years across ten companies, and finally said fuck it and built your own organic revenues of half a million a month with 90% margin, and still aren't getting the checks. The hard part is the Series A. But the problem is signing paperwork that gives investors (such as Suster), any amount of control whatsoever. It's clear that Perry was smart enough to figure out the tech wasn't working. But she wasn't powerful enough to pivot to something that was. Her lesson, at least to me, is that you must retain almost total power to do whatever you want at the company. I'll never sign anything that gives investors any amount of power whatsoever. If they want to be along for the ride, go ahead. But you don't get to be Steve Jobs without negotiating enough power to be Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs has gone down a lot of rabbit holes that, uh, didn't lead anywhere. He could do that because he negotiated for it. If you're founding CEO, you need to negotiate for total power at your company. Or you will end up like Meredith Perry. The problem isn't with the tech. It's that she just wasn't powerful enough to keep doing whatever the fuck she wanted. Her lesson to me is: "Get more power." If you're the visionary CEO of a tech company, and aren't powerful enough to do whatever the fuck you want to do, including pivoting out of what you just sold to investors - then you didn't get the negotiations and the paperwork right. Be more powerful. ----- EDIT: downvoter, I'm happy to engage in a conversation about your opinion on this matter.

URSpider94 8y ago
This makes zero sense. If you prove that your tech won’t work, and you have a better idea, go back to your board. Because of the way venture investing works, they’d almost certainly rather bankroll you to pivot, than take their money back and shut you down. In any case, the board usually has no control over how you operate the company. Their only choice, if they don’t like it, is to fire you - and a majority of them would have to agree to do so. I see no evidence that the founder is somehow trapped inside her company, totally aware of her terrible idea and yet unable to pivot. All evidence points to the fact that she is still a believer. If anything, she’s now being pushed aside by her board, who are putting an adult in charge and looking for some kind of licensing deal or IP buy-out as a last-ditch exit.

deepnotderp 8y ago

Whenever the concept of wireless charging pops up, people always helpfully suggest the use of phased arrays or other beamforming methods. Directional waves are still subject to inverse square law, just like lasers.

Gibbon1 8y ago
Last time I looked at phased array technology it seemed like you need large number of elements to get real gain. At the same time you either need phase control and PA for each element, expensive. Or high power phase control which is inefficient. And still not cheap. One gets dubious real quick considering the incentive there is to develop affordable beam steering technology. And the lack of examples outside of a few niche area's.
- deepnotderp 8y ago
  You need lots of antennae to get high directivity with phased arrays. A millimeter wave (very small lambda) wafer scale (giant chip = super expensive) phased array integrated onto a chip achieves a half power beamwidth of around 6 degrees. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7747488 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7747488 For good millimeter wave RF you usually need either III-Vs or SOI. Those wafers are expensive.
chime 8y ago
How are lasers subject to inverse square law? > Laser light travels as a parallel beam spreading very little, so the inverse square law does not apply. https://www.reed.edu/ehs/laser-safety/1laser_basics.html https://www.reed.edu/ehs/laser-safety/1laser_basics.html Is the above wrong?
- foldr 8y ago
  It seems to be a perennial point of confusion, but as far as I can make out from googling, it's not strictly true that lasers follow the inverse square law. Why is the parent being downvoted? https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/sci.optics/P-8VmDlY45g https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/sci.optics/P-8VmDlY4...

grizzles 8y ago

Hah. It's incredible it took this long tbh. So much for the market allocating capital efficiently.

TeMPOraL 8y ago
Yup. uBeam is probably the longest joke in SV, and given this article, we're still not getting near the punchline. Apparently they want to license this nonsense now...

samfisher83 8y ago

This idea didn't make sense from a physics point of view. Tesla tried to do wireless power a hundred years ago. It left him broke. Sound would seem to be less efficient than EM waves. I mean how did she get this much money?

2_listerine_pls 8y ago
It's actually possible to have long range wireless power transmission using beams of EM waves with the thanks to phased arrays of antennas: https://newatlas.com/cota-ossia-wireless-charging-microwave-phased-array/29217/ https://newatlas.com/cota-ossia-wireless-charging-microwave-... https://www.geekwire.com/2017/intellectual-ventures-microwaves-metamaterials-beam-power/ https://www.geekwire.com/2017/intellectual-ventures-microwav...
- deepnotderp 8y ago
  Wi-charge uses lasers. Wanna guess how efficient and cheap high power IR lasers and GaAs solar panels are?
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- nradov 8y ago
  Sure it's possible. It's just not efficient, practical, reliable, or safe (at high power levels).
  - 2_listerine_pls 8y ago
    Might not be very efficient but it's practical if you need a 24/7 flying drone.
    - tzs 8y ago
      Airbus has a patent on that: https://patents.google.com/patent/FR3012923A1/en https://patents.google.com/patent/FR3012923A1/en

dbcooper 8y ago

https://liesandstartuppr.blogspot.com/2018/09/end-of-era-thoughts-on-ubeam-founder.html https://liesandstartuppr.blogspot.com/2018/09/end-of-era-tho... > One meeting in particular pushed me over the edge, and I told the CEO that I was extremely unhappy, and we should discuss a way to amicably separate. I knew the transducer and acoustics side better than anyone, and would give the company as much time as needed to transition and pass over my knowledge. It was a tense meeting, and I went home after, and there were then a series of ... interesting ... emails and phone calls with Perry, that ended with no conclusion. Ironically, among the demands from the company was a statement for the press about how I still believed in uBeam's goals and the technology, but I declined. I got a text the next morning to come to the downstairs company conference room, and to bring my laptop, lab-book, and any company property - it was clear what was about to happen. >I arrived and the room had CFO Hushen and CEO Perry. It was tense, and Perry sat at the head of the table in her position that she used when about to be CEO-like and give a prepared speech - straight back, leaning slighty forward, hands together. She looked at me and said: >"Today will be your last day with the company. But before we go on to that, it is important that you understand that you are a quitter. You have quit on me, you have quit on yourself, you have quit on the company, you have quit on your team, you have quit on.... wait what are you doing?" >At this point the speech was so ridiculous I had picked up my phone to start taking notes because this was too good not to write down. I looked up and she seemed shocked and demanded "Are you texting someone? I'm talking." and I looked at her and said "Just taking some notes." Sadly, this seemed to throw her off, and I never did hear the rest of that prepared speech. She simply mumbled then moved to telling me that I would now give an exit interview, and was again perturbed when I declined. She insisted and the CFO, acting as HR, had to step in and say that wasn't necessary. I handed over my laptop and the few items I had, and made a clear instruction that the company was not to make any statements or quotes that were to be attributed to me - I heard from the team that about ten minutes later they were all told in a company meeting by the CEO that "I wanted them to know that I wished them all the best and success for the company, and still believed in the company mission" or something similar.

copperx 8y ago
This is a disgusting look at Perry, the ex-CEO. She is as self-assured and voluntarily ignorant of the impossibility of the technology as the perpetual machine inventors of yore. But they've got millions of dollars this time around.

dbcooper 8y ago

LOL @ Mark Suster still in denial mode in the Techcrunch comments.

Trevor908 8y ago
He's trying to unload the company and save a bit of his reputation. Of course he'll still hype it.

pbreit 8y ago

Isn't this, like Theranos, a company where if the product works, it prints money?

TeMPOraL 8y ago
Yes, but unlike Theranos, it was known from day one that the product is bullshit, as the physics part doesn't add up.
- nikanj 8y ago
  One of the most ironic parts is Meredith Perry's TEDx talk, where she's proud about not having any education in the field. "I was not an engineer, and I did not have Asperger's(!!)" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukgnU2aXM2c&feature=youtu.be&t=240 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukgnU2aXM2c&feature=youtu.be...
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    Yeah, well. It shows. Also, I'm proud of my self-diagnosed aspie. I don't know of an engineer who isn't.

foobaw 8y ago

I used to have friends that worked here and told me horror stories about the CEO. I hope this technology works in the future in a reasonable amount of time without such a horrendous leader because it is quite an awesome concept if done properly.

copperx 8y ago
I wouldn't doubt that this post was written by her: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8543220 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8543220
- raverbashing 8y ago
  Might not be, actually that commenter has stopped commenting and the last comments are a bit worrying (though not in a personal level)

nhylated 8y ago

From 2014: > The Audacious Plan to Make Electricity as Easy as WiFi > https://bothsidesofthetable.com/the-audacious-plan-to-make-electricity-as-easy-as-wifi-45d9e26d81f0 https://bothsidesofthetable.com/the-audacious-plan-to-make-e...

deepnotderp 8y ago

Honestly ubeam makes me kind of mad, it makes it much harder for other non-PhD/"outsiders" who are working in hard tech fields but who are legit to convince others.

EpicEng 8y ago
Does it? It should be hard to convince anyone of something that goes against accepted and proven constraints. They don't and never have had the data/science to back up their claims. That should be the bar.

Illniyar 8y ago

Mmm... when you step down to get someone more suited for the new path a company is going to take, you have someone lined up to replace you - to ease transition and alleviate concerns. You don't put an interim CEO from HR and finance while your are searching for a "seasoned executive in the electronics field", that's what you do if the current CEO is hurting the business and needs to be pushed out quickly.

bookofjoe 8y ago

Nikola Tesla, where are you when we really, really need you?

fabricexpert 8y ago

I'm not sure the criticism at UBeam (especially at the CEO) is all that fair. Shouldn't we be encouraging moon-shoots that look impossible? Isn't that the point of VC funds? I'd rather see 100 UBeams than one more social media network or adtech company getting funding. VCs tend to invest in the team over the tech. In this case you have a young woman leading the team, which (sadly) looks great for your portfolio and makes it easier to raise the capital needed to make progress on tough engineering issues. Despite what she says, she isn't an engineer so she's not solving the hard problem. Actually she did quite a good job to raise 30m USD on basically nothing, it's not really her fault the physics doesn't work out. The problem is that they haven't built up any useful IP here to pivot with, it's fine if they said hey we failed at wireless charging at 10 feet, but we made 50% gains in improved efficiency of Qi chargers and we're going to still build the next gen of wireless chargers. But they haven't managed that.

kiba 8y ago
There's physically impossible and there's "impossible".
- mojuba 8y ago
  I remember people saying capacitive touch display is impossible on mobile devices because "physics". Not everyone and not always is right when they cite physics. Ubeam seems like a more clear case of physical impossibility, but who knows maybe someone improves this tech at some point. That probably won't be Ubeam though, the DNA of this company already seems to be broken.
gaius 8y ago
it's not really her fault the physics doesn't work That is an excuse on a par with “the black hole ate my homework”
- arethuza 8y ago
  Well at least that would generate some power... - although making it practical for mobile devices might require significant investment.

jacquesm 8y ago

The most dangerous founders are those that believe their own bs and that peddle an idea that would be so nice if it were true. Investors tend to push each other out of the way for opportunities to invest in such companies and lose all capability for rational thought.

sambull 8y ago
Her TEDx video [0] makes it clear, she just believes she knows better and within an hour of any subject matter that has experts she could revolutionize their field by just thinking outside the box. The experts too limited in their thinking to see how awesome it could work lol [0] https://youtu.be/ukgnU2aXM2c https://youtu.be/ukgnU2aXM2c
- copperx 8y ago
  Her condescending attitude towards engineers and scientists, especially the bit at the end saying she can't wait to "give them the middle finger" is appalling. If she has zero charisma and zero smarts, how did she convince so many people? That's what's worrying about VC culture.
- nradov 8y ago
  TEDx talks are mostly just feel-good nonsense. It's really disappointing how many people take them seriously.