I personally don't at all think spending $10M in solving a challenging problem is the issue at all! I'd say it's more worthwhile than spending money in doing another snapchat! Who knows - there could be many wireless applications where even for short distance, you'd not want to use say inductive charging. National labs spend millions on solving problems the solutions of which aren't used for years. You can almost think of startups trying to push some fundamental engineering - based on a similar model- but at a faster pace than in academia. Even if it doesn't get immediate ROI, I think it's worth investing in them!

What I think is the problem- and there are many parties to blame is---

(1) Press and some new tech founders are so obsessed with selling a good story rather than a good "real" impactful product- that they overhype WAY too much, claim way too many UNREAL things, stomp their feet with arrogance, talk about how the world is against young naive people (not true)- rather than just projecting some realistic expectations and just be enthusiastic about what they want to do(Sure, some level of optimism is needed, but don't go so much overboard!). But I guess, non tech or VC people get demoralized if you don't claim you can be a >$1B company overnight. The unicorn fallacy. May be that's what encourages this.

(2) Problem with overhype is-- when it doesn't work out, it creates skepticism for genuine companies. When a founder of a tech startup says "It can charge faster than wire"- that worries me.

(3)The world/press is obsessed about finding the next Steve Jobs/Tesla/Musk. You listen to Perry's TED talk- she keeps criticizing the PhDs and the engineers, how they cannot think "out of the box". Perry is very good sales person, she can bring in money and you certainly need that in a company. But, you don't need to bring someone down to rise up the ladder. http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/TEDxNashville-Meredith-Perry-...

(4)The media wants to find the good story of how a "dropout" or a "non technical" person turns out to be the next Tesla- and solving the hardest physics/bio problem. Worries me, cause I feel this might not be the best picture you want to portray to the young ambitious kids. Inventions and real disruptions involves lots and lots of hard work,and in-depth understanding of how things work, and I think the engineers and scientists who ACTUALLY make it work should be appreciated. Instead it is projected as if all these engineers are dumb ones who Perry has to keep telling what to do.

(5)People want the world to change overnight, and some people want to believe that. People who "actually" work to create that change, know its not true.

And I think at HN many of us are tech people. We don't like to be told - "oh you guys are way too stupid and cannot think out of the box" or "you wasted your time learning engineering, and I can just solve the big problems by just reading up wikipedia"- when obviously she had no clue. Good luck building it with no engineers?

http://liesandstartuppr.blogspot.com/2016/05/abandon-ship.ht... - Interesting that the CFO left less than one year after this article. http://techcrunch.com/2015/09/28/electric-liberation/

Also another fun point- every techcrunch article on ubeam is by Josh Constine

Turns out the VP joined because of Merc Berte - the MIT/Raytheon engineer, who also left right after series A fund raising. Both Merc and this VP guys seems amazingly sharp. But what's surprising is nowhere in the media you see any credit given to these guys.Perry is branded as a sole genius.

The VP writes-

"And the point of this story? In my opinion, don't take the presence of smart engineers as confirmation of a technology's viability (either way), and don't think the engineers at a company you find questionable aren't smart and are fully aware of the technical issues of what they're working on. They just want to play with fun toys."

>> every techcrunch article on ubeam is by Josh Constine

Techcrunch is just a PR channel for startups.