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How putting $10M into UBeam illustrates what is wrong with tech investing (2014)
- 55555 11y agoOnly tangentally mentioned but I'm not sure "yogurt enemas" are the best example of an idea that has no legs on which to stand. That would entail putting bacteria directly into a microbiome. It would be niave and extremely ignorant-reductionist to conclude that that would have no effect. You need a peer-reviewed study before making it a procedure covered by insurance, etc. -- i get that -- but certainly not prior to it making sense.
- thewarrior 11y agoHave you heard of therapeutic poop implants ?
- 55555 11y agoYes, exactly my train of thought.
- thewarrior 11y agoI remember this being posted on HN before and many in the tech industry criticising HN's negative reaction and dismissal of the idea. Marc Andressen tweeted "Hater News" on that day. But still , noone really knows how this thing works but I assume that VCs aren't going to throw 10 million dollars at somebody without doing atleast some due diligence. Atleast they got a few PhDs to audit this device and its working. So maybe we don't have the full story on how this works. Here's a VC saying it works: http://www.quora.com/Is-uBeam-practical/answer/Ben-Parr?srid=3ZRI&share=1 http://www.quora.com/Is-uBeam-practical/answer/Ben-Parr?srid...
- tinco 11y agoIt should be very easy to debunk this article though. Just a single line tweet along the lines of "you discount xxxx". A bit weird to call it hater news without really engaging.
- corkill 11y agoThey might value that knowledge being kept private to them more than debunking the article in the short term.
- droopyEyelids 11y agoThis might be the time to drag out the old quotation "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" In general your point is correct, there is value to secrecy in some instances. And often people who really know whats going on can laugh at naysayers. But, for example, if someone said they have a perpetual motion machine, and laughed at people who questioned it, the laugh would seem more like delusion than informed confidence.
- ebbv 11y agoThey respond with "hater" and claiming the "criticism is unfounded" because they have no real response. If uBeam truly had a way of making this work, it would be a Nobel Prize contender. The credulous VCs are being taken for a ride by a charismatic, possibly naive but possibly purposefully misleading founder.
- BurningFrog 11y agoThe Nobel Prize is only $930k. There is a lot more potential money in building a company.
- ebbv 11y agoIf you would truly rather keep a Nobel quality breakthrough to yourself in order to maximize personal gain, then I worry about you.
- danieltillett 11y agoI am not sure English lit PhDs are qualified to determine if uBeam will work.
- dang 11y agoThat's a nasty thing to say, though flattering to local prejudice.
- danieltillett 11y agoSorry it was a bit snarky. I was making a serious point which is a phd does not make you an expert in an area outside your area of study. I have a phd and I know I don't have the expertise to judge the physics involved.
- ebbv 11y ago> I assume that VCs aren't going to throw 10 million dollars at somebody without doing atleast some due diligence. This is a dangerous assumption. VCs often trust founders more than they should, especially when it comes to areas the VCs are not knowledgeable. Add in an idea that would obviously be adopted everywhere, and the allure of a billion dollar idea overrides sanity checks.
- S4M 11y agoSo, why hasn't anybody raised millions for a company making flying cars or other crazy but wonderful technology like that?
- fredkbloggs 11y agoBecause people have been trying to build flying cars for a long time, haven't really had any success, and in the process have exposed most of the problems with the concept. Since most people understand flying cars and have a pretty good idea as to why they can't be built, it's much more difficult to bamboozle someone out of money by telling him you're going to build a flying car. Things that either haven't been attempted (at least publicly) before and/or rely on physics or other underlying behavior that isn't widely understood have a much better chance of getting funded. It's just easier to snow someone with something they don't understand.
- ebbv 11y agoPeople have raised millions for flying cars. It continues to bilk credulous investors. But that one's been going on for 40+ years so at this point most investors are wise to it.
- striking 11y agoThe tweet: https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/529079603482996736 https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/529079603482996736
- MathsOX 11y agoThere was already a lengthy discussion of this piece: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8542091 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8542091 The piece aside - which I won't make a commentary on - I wonder whether this is just the right level of snark and intellectual elitism (founded or not) to be consistently popular on HN. Why it's worth dredging up, with apparently no new or novel updates, is beyond me.
- yankoff 11y agoBut is there anything wrong with his arguments? I don't understand why people get upset at this kind of thing. Why is it bad to try to critically analyze someone's idea especially when it comes to an area of your expertise?
- MathsOX 11y ago"He starts with the assumption of 100dB as the max power but OSHA's ultrasonic recommendation[1] is actually 145dB which is 31,000x more power.. Even if you use 130dB, it's still 1,000x more power than he assumes." It's not bad, it's that this has already been done nine months ago. The linked post isn't updated - in which case I wouldn't have a problem with it - it's just another outlet for HN to vent at the injustices of the VC world.
- dang 11y ago> it's just another outlet for HN to vent at the injustices of the VC world Bingo—where the primary "injustice" is that they're giving money to others and not to me.
- david927 11y agoWe're at the end of a cycle, so there's a real sense of pop investing and other characteristics that come with it, such as what happened in 1999. That annoys some people, maybe for the reason you mention, or maybe because they like technology and are ashamed that it makes us look like fools. We both know that in a year from now (but no more than three) there will be 10% of the current number of startups, and investing will be much more grounded. It happens every 7-10 years. No need to take shots.
- meeper16 11y agoI prefer not to spend my time proving and writing about how something is impossible. Find a way and it will most likely be a solution or path you could have never predicted. This is a fundemental principle held by companies that innovate.
- ebbv 11y agoThis attitude is exactly the problem. It's magical thinking. Thinking "outside the box" when it comes to industry standards may be a path to innovation. Thinking "outside the box" when it comes to the laws of physics is a path to nowhere.
- meeper16 11y agoPostive attitude does equate to "magical thinking". Check with Einstein and others on what it takes to make breatkthroughs, discoveries and think outside the box in the context of science. With the attitudes of some, we'd never make discoveries! “Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited; imagination encircles the world.” ~Albert Einstein You might also enjoy these references as well: http://serenityhacker.com/2009/09/albert-einstein-problem-solving/ http://serenityhacker.com/2009/09/albert-einstein-problem-so... https://cultivatedpages.wordpress.com/2007/04/10/einsteins-brain-and-thinking-outside-the-box/ https://cultivatedpages.wordpress.com/2007/04/10/einsteins-b...
- ekianjo 11y ago> “Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited; imagination encircles the world.” ~Albert Einstein Still Einstein did not say that the previous centuries of physics were bullshit. He built on them to further the theory in specific cases (like his work on relativity). Taking quotes out of context is very hazardous and does not prove anything either.
- kuschku 11y ago“Only two things are infinite: The universe and the stupidity of manking. Although I’m not that sure about the universe” – Albert Einstein. This quote fits this situation far better.
- minthd 11y agoThis comment[1] , by bfritz , has another, reasonable view. [1]http://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/ubeam-ultrasonic-wireless-charging-a-familiar-fish-smell/msg495391/#msg495391 http://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/ubeam-ultrasonic-wirel...
- jotm 11y agoSo this is directed ultrasound? Frankly, I'd prefer not to use any technology that could directly affect one of my most important senses if I don't have to...
- harryh 11y agoTotally. All those pregnant women who want to have their fetus examined really shouldn't be doing that.
- fasteo 11y ago>>>> Except, here’s the problem. IT’S AN IMPOSSIBLE IDEA While I would agree with the general idea, I do not like the general tone of the post. It is as if this guy knew everything about ultrasound technology. A given idea does not seem to make sense ? Maybe it is just that you don't know enough about it. Happily concluding that Marc Andreessen, Mark Cuban et al. are just dumb investors pouring their money into impossible products is a bit short sighted.
- sharpneli 11y agohttp://fortune.com/2015/07/29/ubeam-meredith-perry-wireless-charging/ http://fortune.com/2015/07/29/ubeam-meredith-perry-wireless-... This article implies they were rather hasty in investing.
- moron4hire 11y ago> In the third grade she invented a pair of reading glasses with lightbulbs on them. In the fourth grade she developed a robot to carry firewood. In the fifth grade she cultured bacteria from her mouth and a dog’s to see which was cleaner. Sheesh, who didn't do that?
- dang 11y agoWho is "they"? The article does not imply that about every investor.
- zubairsaif007 11y agohttp://googler700.blogspot.com/2015/04/android-basics.html http://googler700.blogspot.com/2015/04/android-basics.html
- zubairsaif007 11y agohttp://googler700.blogspot.com/2015/04/project-list.html http://googler700.blogspot.com/2015/04/project-list.html
- curiousjorge 11y agoThis and add disruptive million dollar javascript websites that could've been built with jQuery and some HTML5, stupid shit like an app that sends two characters, and entire businesses built on the back of existing social network that almost always ends up getting the rug pulled under them. Money is flowing to people who don't need it and shouldn't have it (Because they don't know what they are doing) based on some weird self-fullfilling prophecies of naive investors (I know what I'm doing I rolled a dice a few times and got lucky) combined with idiots (I'll just burn all this cash and look for new ones or I'll get the most unrealistic valuation possible so I get kicked out of my own company). Quietly, many corners of HN, people are building and making money by bootstrapping. There is no money to burn here, only due dilligence. There is no bail out or connections, only yourself and your employees. There is no chance to make costly mistakes so you focus on making money today. But everywhere you look it seems like we've reinvented the value of money. Money that will be made in the distant unknown future seems to be more valuable than money made today. We are in for some major market correction that's going to evaporate a lot of dreams, jobs, and capital. All so they have a chance at another Uber.
- pjc50 11y agoMoney that will be made in the distant unknown future seems to be more valuable than money made today High political and economic stability has brought us to this point. The more uncertain the world is, the more people prefer money today to money tomorrow. But when people have accumulated more wealth than they could concievably spend, and feel safe enough to let it out of their sight, they want to invest. Hence the flood of cheap money. The capital flight from China helps too. Investors are also still believing that they can win the Apple lottery: buy an underappreciated tech company at the right time then watch it take over the world, and stay there forever. I don't think we're in for a 'correction' any time soon. Where else are investors going to put their money? Leave it in a bank earning 0%?
- arielm 11y agoI agree. I think the issue isn't that money is being spent but that it's being spent on the wrong ideas. Split that 10m into 5 and help five different founders who have taken their time to really prove their concept and build a real revenue model...
- ironch456 11y agoHere is another way to look at it: For this technology to actually take off, an industry working group will need to be formed to promote and share it in the same way we have working groups for existing wireless charging techniques. We already have the Wireless Power Consortium who currently foster the Qi inductive power standard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qi_(inductive_power_standard) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qi_(inductive_power_standard). Same sort of deal. What good is a new wireless charging technique that doesn't come built into my iPhone or Android phone? If it isn't included in every phone and gadget no one is going to bother with it. In the process of forming such a working group, some extremely smart people are going to take a very close look at this from both an engineering and business standpoint. If it isn't absolutely rock solid it is going to die. Until a working group is formed to share this technology with the likes of Samsung, Apple, Sony (major hardware device manufacturers), you can pretty much discount it.
- vendel 11y agowhat else would they be spending money on? money has to be spent. might as well do it on a low probability potential breakthrough
- raverbashing 11y ago$10M dollars? That's pocket change for VCs basically. It's the "ok, I believe you, now build me something" (but still cheap enough to risk it and lose 100% in case of failure) So, how many scientists believed that you couldn't get a train to go faster without suffocating the people inside? (and a load of other things) I am definitely doubtful of UBeam, but for every sayer that is right there are 10 naysayers.
- ThomPete 11y agoThat it's pocket change is exactly the problem especially when compared to how cheap it is to start and run most companies.
- pietrofmaggi 11y agoThis was on HN 9 months ago. Here's the original discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8542091 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8542091
- amelius 11y agoI guess that if you put enough energy in an out-of-hearing-range frequency, at some point you will start hearing the harmonic distortion.
- sharpneli 11y agoAnd that's how you can build something like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_from_ultrasound https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_from_ultrasound
- vonklaus 11y agoSo what? Those investors are pretty smart accomploshed people[0]. Obviously, clinkle proved that doesn't matter, but the company evidently has a working prototype and the VCs deemed it worth betting on. Funding isn't really zero-sum as there is a ton of capital in the market. Fuck it, it's small money chasing a big impossible goal. Exactly what I want to see in tech investing. [0]https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/ubeam https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/ubeam
- mixedmath 11y ago> I’m no physicist - oh, wait, I am - but I did a little back-of-the-envelope (ok, front of the paper) calculation this morning... I react very negatively to this sort of catty writing. I find it obnoxious. I understand that I shouldn't necessarily expect more from something from tumblr. On the other hand, I do like that the calculations were included.
- serve_yay 11y agoI don't care if VCs waste their money like idiots. Let them. Plus, the sad part isn't that they wasted $10 million on this worthless "idea", it's that $10 million is probably nothing to them.
- shah_s 11y agoIt's been a while since they invested in UBeam. Any updates? I can't seem to find any.
- ghshephard 11y agoDoes anybody seriously think, for even a second, that A16Z didn't do massive due diligence with extraordinarily intelligent and experienced individuals before investing? One thing that A16Z is not lacking is access to tons of Stanford/Berkeley physics PHDs....
- elektromekatron 11y agoFor spending $10 million out of the $4 billion they got kicking about? Probably not massive due diligence.
- jcfrei 11y agoSame thing crossed my mind. I can only assume that the company has long pivoted to another technology, left the ultrasound technology behind and just kept the old homepage (the mentioned WSJ article is from Oct 2014). Or the valley VCs might be really desperate to invest the huge amounts of cash Yellen is printing.
- raverbashing 11y agoThe possibilities you mention (pivot and cheap money) are very real ones in my opinion as well
- frankdenbow 11y agoCertainly its been vetted and if successful it will have a big impact. Will it work? Who knows, but it seems like exactly the kind of thing that should get investment. In the meantime we should let her do the work.
- yankoff 11y agoPeople make mistakes all the time. Even VCs (sic!) Argument in the form of "it must be true because they are very smart and have access to experts" is not a good one. The real facts and evidence should be evaluated.
- dang 11y ago
- shah_s 11y agoIt's been a while since they invested in UBeam. Any updates? I can't seem to find any.
- kmfrk 11y ago(October 2014 - this isn't a new round.)
- tomasien 11y agoDidn't we go through this before? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8542091 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8542091 Then there was this - http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/26/kill-the-cord/#.mdch08:KANb http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/26/kill-the-cord/#.mdch08:KANb It turns out it's ridiculously hard to evaluate what can and can't work about an idea just from reading the website you guys.
- vitd 11y agoIs it ridiculously hard to go to the nearest university and ask a physics professor if an idea is even plausible? If it is, then maybe investors should pass on stuff they don't understand.
- tomasien 11y agoUnless the extensive DD reportedly done did not include asking physics people, which would shock me, it appears that there may be some disagreement as to whether this is or isn't plausible. With reports of working POC's already, those disagreements may soon be moot...
- dang 11y ago> Is it ridiculously hard to go to the nearest university and ask a physics professor How likely is it that no investor asked any physicist about this?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- IshKebab 11y agoUnlikely. But how likely is it that some investors didn't ask, or didn't like the answer?
- IshKebab 11y agoIt's not hard to evaluate if physically impossible things can work or not.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- bane 11y agoIt doesn't matter, they'll burn most of it up, raise another round and pivot into a B2B client-customer IM app with patented business emoji or something. No lessons will be learned, nobody will understand physics more because the things they (re)learned about basic science will be lost behind the veil of "stealth mode" and all of society will be a bit poorer in the end. It doesn't matter because the money will vaporize, nobody will learn anything and we'll get another useless app that nobody will use (unless they do then they'll be lauded for great execution and their investors will be called visionaries, the pivot from ear shattering charge-tech to chat app will be just a footnote in everybody's success story). Then the whole thing will be acquired by IBM or something and will disappear into history.
- andersoncooper 11y agoThis may sound sobering, but $10M is nothing to VCs that have billions of dollars to throw around. So, they see a young attractive female founder, and may think "what the hell, at the very least we can use uBeam as an example of diversity in the companies we fund" or even more cynically, an attractive face at their annual parties. It's nothing to them.
- arbuge 11y agoI know of no long-term successful VC that thinks this way. None. Zero. Few have billion dollar funds to begin with by the way. Only an elite group of top tier VCs command that kind of capital and you should be prepared to be thoroughly grilled in due diligence if you want to raise money from those guys.
- hodgesrm 11y agoThat's not how it works at least in my experience. Real VCs are investing not just money but time. That's why they dump bad investments so quickly--bad ones take away time from the investments that might work out. Also, VCs are comp'ed on outcomes. Folks that don't deliver do not last very long.
- malisper 11y agoFrom [0]: > She connected me with Andreessen’s due diligence team who were surprisingly open with all the technical analysis they had done. [0] http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2014/10/30/the-audacious-plan-to-make-electricity-as-easy-as-wifi/ http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2014/10/30/the-audacious-...
- IshKebab 11y agoErr right... > Did the physics actually work? Check Ok I'm convinced? > Was it safe? Well … for starters it is just an inaudible soundwave being transferred – as in the kind also used for women during pregnancy. It also happens to be how your car likely tells the distance to objects when you park or if you have a side assist whether you can change lanes safely. Yeah just like bullets are made of the same metal you use for door knobs. Totally safe! This is a stupid infeasible idea. One of those things that maybe initially sounds plausible, but when you look at the actual numbers it's off by orders of magnitude.
- xacaxulu 11y agoDid anyone else think "10M is an absolute drop in the bucket"? I mean seriously, this is such a small amount of money that due diligence could have consisted of 'does the website look good?'. It's not like they can't write it off.
- BurningFrog 11y agoI should build a good looking web site...
- davidgerard 11y agoVenture capitalists investing in blatantly wrong and scammy pseudoscience is nothing new. Andrea Rossi (a convicted fraudster) got VC money for the E-Cat cold fusion scam. (Which doesn't really contradict the poster's point: that made-up BS >> tawdry physical reality.)
- Htsthbjig 11y agoSometimes things work even when they should not. We had a teacher in University that proved to us how bees could not fly, making the assumption of laminar flow of course, that is what we use for flying airplanes. Ever flying over terrain or water at small heights the physics are completely different than general flight (ground effect). So If a guy is fool and young enough to actually make a prototype(stay foolish, stay hungry) he could discover specific "special cases" that could make this invention useful enough for something. For example, probably when you put your telephone over a small 1 millimeter distance of the charger you could get some time of resonance and you could increase the frequency, making the amplitude necessary smaller. I don't know, some times our assumptions(generalizations) are just wrong.
- apsec112 11y agoIt's at least conceivable, from my amateur physics knowledge, that the safety issue could be worked around by having a very narrow beam that shuts off if anything interrupts it. The issue I haven't seen anyone mention is that you must have a continuous line-of-sight between receiver and transmitter. Realistically, under real world conditions, how often would you have that long enough for your phone to charge? Either you're using your phone, in which case your hand is covering the back, or you aren't, in which case it's in your pocket or bag. (I'm assuming that the receiver would be integrated with the casing, but the alternative is to have a big bulky thing sticking out the top, which carries its own problems.)
- jobenjo 11y agoAll these physics-debunking conversations seem to assume a single source. I naively assumed that UBeam will work sort of like the Gamma Knife (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiosurgery#Gamma_Knife https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiosurgery#Gamma_Knife), where there are many sources that intersect just at your phone or device. This completely changes all the physics assumptions, and is a good reminder to keep an open mind. That being said, I'd be highly skeptical of the health risks of this technology, especially given the only benefit is convenience.
- BRValentine 11y agoI still think remote in situ denture cleaning sounds like a billion dollar idea.