3 ms·

I don’t think this is (was) a money maker at all. There’s a clip on YouTube where they invited a CBS journalist to join. The CEO, to me, seems like a passionate

by klabb3 3y ago

I don’t think this is (was) a money maker at all. There’s a clip on YouTube where they invited a CBS journalist to join. The CEO, to me, seems like a passionate dreamer who definitely 100% ate his own dog food (ie took huge personal risk). He was onboard this likely final voyage. They didn’t make any profit, at least back then. It’s obviously incredibly expensive and near-impossible to scale such an operation. Look, I despise VCs as much as the next guy, but this doesn’t smell like a typical cynical VC money grab, like at all. To me it smells like an ultra-extreme sport. To ordinary people, it’s extraordinarily stupid, they’re certainly in over their heads, but nobody casually signs up to go to 4000m depth without being well aware of the risks.

jazzyjackson 3y ago
VCs are all about finding someone with a genuine passion and pushing enormous expectations of profit onto them.
- klabb3 3y ago
  The enormous profiteering of deep ocean exploration is certainly an interesting angle, but I highly doubt it. If you want money from that, I think you’d want to be a military contractor instead, or consult for offshore oil. A $250k “leisure” trip to titanic would be an… unusual anniversary gift.
  - cratermoon 3y ago
    How is it all that different from companies selling seats on spacecraft to visit ISS? Or just to be in orbit or above the Kármán line and experiencing microgravity?
    - vkou 3y ago
      Space is sexier, there's a lot more space sci-fi that people can get excited about, than there is deep-ocean sci-fi.
jacurtis 3y ago
Yeah my understanding is that it was not profitable either. The founder claimed he was losing money and to his credit, he ate the cost on the previous failed missions (of which there are a shockingly high number of). There was one article I read last year (don't have it here) where he claimed his hard costs were $1M per voyage to cover fuel and consumables. So the $250k buy-in was literally a break-even on his expenses (he carries 4 passengers paying the fee, plus himself in the sub). None of that covers any R&D and he had some very respectable people working for him, including engineers from Boeing, NASA, and Northdrop Grumman. So we can assume those were hefty salaries for his R&D team. I'm sure they were scrappy too, hence the "cobbled" together nature of things. But it does seem like this was a true startup in ever sense of the word. Unfortunately it might be leaning closer to the Theranos type of startup where he might have oversold his capabilities to keep the ball rolling and investors happy.
- calf 3y ago
  So they hired big-name aerospace experts and still failed? That's intriguing.

by klabb3 3y ago

jazzyjackson 3y ago

VCs are all about finding someone with a genuine passion and pushing enormous expectations of profit onto them.

klabb3 3y ago
The enormous profiteering of deep ocean exploration is certainly an interesting angle, but I highly doubt it. If you want money from that, I think you’d want to be a military contractor instead, or consult for offshore oil. A $250k “leisure” trip to titanic would be an… unusual anniversary gift.
- cratermoon 3y ago
  How is it all that different from companies selling seats on spacecraft to visit ISS? Or just to be in orbit or above the Kármán line and experiencing microgravity?
  - vkou 3y ago
    Space is sexier, there's a lot more space sci-fi that people can get excited about, than there is deep-ocean sci-fi.

jacurtis 3y ago

Yeah my understanding is that it was not profitable either. The founder claimed he was losing money and to his credit, he ate the cost on the previous failed missions (of which there are a shockingly high number of). There was one article I read last year (don't have it here) where he claimed his hard costs were $1M per voyage to cover fuel and consumables. So the $250k buy-in was literally a break-even on his expenses (he carries 4 passengers paying the fee, plus himself in the sub). None of that covers any R&D and he had some very respectable people working for him, including engineers from Boeing, NASA, and Northdrop Grumman. So we can assume those were hefty salaries for his R&D team. I'm sure they were scrappy too, hence the "cobbled" together nature of things. But it does seem like this was a true startup in ever sense of the word. Unfortunately it might be leaning closer to the Theranos type of startup where he might have oversold his capabilities to keep the ball rolling and investors happy.

calf 3y ago
So they hired big-name aerospace experts and still failed? That's intriguing.