uBeam has me puzzled. I do DD for a living and I've learned over quite a few years not to reject ideas out of hand. The best start-ups are the ones that do something that everybody else thinks is impossible anyway.
That said, from the patent application I'm not getting anything novel or interesting, the comment linked above - assuming that's pointing in the right direction - makes me wonder if there is more to uBeam than meets the eye at first glance, defocused beams combined with a feedback mechanism and phased arrays of transducers might be viable (but would not require much in terms of mechanical aiming devices which is why I wonder if they're aware of such tech, and even though hardware requires more capital than the next photo sharing app I do wonder what they'd need $10M for).
If they do not have that particular rabbit or one very much like it up their sleeve then I'd happily bet against them. Since a bunch of high flying VCs went on and invested after doing proper DD you'd have to assume there is something non-obvious about all this. If they have a proof-of-concept and DD was done then you can bet that (assuming the DD team was halfway competent - which is what should be a safe assumption but I've seen a train-wreck (or two)) the practical efficiency for conversion of that proof-of-concept was measured and found to be good enough to warrant further investment.
If no 'proof-of-concept' was shown capable of delivering the required power then this project falls into the basic research with unknown outcome category, which translates into very low probability of success, but that does not jive with their time-to-market prediction, nor does it warrant the barrage of PR.
Even if the tech is viable I don't mind the inconvenience of plugging in my phone at night, and besides it lasts for many days anyway (old tech > new tech in this case...) so it doesn't really mean much to me, but I can see the mass market appeal and that's what drives investment.
If uBeam fails to deliver it will be a serious black eye for a lot of people with high visibility and it will be a set-back for any future hardware start-up that wants to push the envelope.
Personally I wouldn't bet on them but one thing is for sure, if $10M can't get them to create a working device then likely it can't be done at all, given that they've already over-run their initial time-to-market predictions they're not looking good.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8542479
uBeam has me puzzled. I do DD for a living and I've learned over quite a few years not to reject ideas out of hand. The best start-ups are the ones that do something that everybody else thinks is impossible anyway.
That said, from the patent application I'm not getting anything novel or interesting, the comment linked above - assuming that's pointing in the right direction - makes me wonder if there is more to uBeam than meets the eye at first glance, defocused beams combined with a feedback mechanism and phased arrays of transducers might be viable (but would not require much in terms of mechanical aiming devices which is why I wonder if they're aware of such tech, and even though hardware requires more capital than the next photo sharing app I do wonder what they'd need $10M for).
If they do not have that particular rabbit or one very much like it up their sleeve then I'd happily bet against them. Since a bunch of high flying VCs went on and invested after doing proper DD you'd have to assume there is something non-obvious about all this. If they have a proof-of-concept and DD was done then you can bet that (assuming the DD team was halfway competent - which is what should be a safe assumption but I've seen a train-wreck (or two)) the practical efficiency for conversion of that proof-of-concept was measured and found to be good enough to warrant further investment.
If no 'proof-of-concept' was shown capable of delivering the required power then this project falls into the basic research with unknown outcome category, which translates into very low probability of success, but that does not jive with their time-to-market prediction, nor does it warrant the barrage of PR.
Even if the tech is viable I don't mind the inconvenience of plugging in my phone at night, and besides it lasts for many days anyway (old tech > new tech in this case...) so it doesn't really mean much to me, but I can see the mass market appeal and that's what drives investment.
If uBeam fails to deliver it will be a serious black eye for a lot of people with high visibility and it will be a set-back for any future hardware start-up that wants to push the envelope.
Personally I wouldn't bet on them but one thing is for sure, if $10M can't get them to create a working device then likely it can't be done at all, given that they've already over-run their initial time-to-market predictions they're not looking good.