The inventor of everything
theverge.com
theverge.com
The full title (which doesn't fit in 80 characters) explains the story better:
The inventor of everything:
How an egotistical genius convinced Silicon Valley to
invest hundreds of millions in his shoddy science
The problem is that it won't produce near as much fuel as Cool Planet claims. According to the article, it turns out a lot of big technology investors don't actually consult engineers during due diligence.
If the game really is "extract the most money", then yes, we should hate the game.
I certainly hope most of us are playing the latter game, rather than the former.
The venture capitalists who’ve sunk tens of millions into
Cheiky’s startups have a lot to lose if his suspect science
is discovered — exposing Cheiky might stop him from raising
money again, but it would also tarnish their reputations.
None of the firms who backed Cheiky would speak with The
Verge about him on the record, but several shared negative
impressions on background. Unlike many serial entrepreneurs,
who return to previous investors for favorable terms,
Cheiky’s last three startups all have a very different set
of backers.
Cheiky says the because he secured a loan from Cool Planet to start V-grid, all the investors in one company are essentially backers in another. Yet when I asked those same investors if they had ever heard of or funded V-Grid, all adamantly and repeatedly denied it. But with the ink barely dry on Cool Planet’s recent fundraising, Cheiky’s already got another dream to sell, another round of investors to pitch. Seeing big-name backers already committed gives small investors confidence that someone has done due diligence on his claims."
I'd be shocked to find that any clever lawyer can't find fraud in this...
How many of you double check testimonials profiled on a site. But sales people seem to swear by them.
How does that work?
There is little science going on. It's mostly hocus-pocus business theater wearing a suit and tie and saying the expensive, semi-gloss prospectus in front of them mitigates risk when they're too dainty to understand how sausage is made in the sausage factory. This is exactly why some angels are now cutting 5 figure checks with zero due-diligence. It's mostly a CWOT apart from "just promise not to retire to Bermuda before you've given it a go."
For a moment I misread that as "Mostly a CMOT", which seemed appropriate. CMOT Dibbler is a salesman from the Discworld novels. Somehow he maintains a crude existence convincing people to buy the most terrible products.
Due-diligence is mostly a business theater hazing ritual so folks don't run off to Cuba nor cons fresh out on early release.
But yeah a few valley ceos are really good at pitching startups that they know have more fleas than teeth.
Beyond that, I can't see how this is anything different than most any company: the boss has some grand vision and hands-on people make the hand-waiving into enough of an economic reality to keep said the company afloat. Moller has been promising flying cars since I could read Popular Mechanics. We need more crazy, enthusiastic fools to keep trying.
The bizarre logic in that quote made me think of this laugh from the Scorpio episode on The Simpsons: http://www.snpp.com/episodes/3F23.html
------ > Hank: Good afternoon, gentlemen. This is Scorpio. I have the Doomsday Device. You have 72 hours to deliver the gold or you'll face the consequences. And to prove I'm not bluffing, watch this.
> [activates a remote]
> [an explosion occurs near the UN building]
> Man 1: Oh, my God, the 59th Street bridge!
> Man 2: Maybe it just collapsed on its own.
> Man 1: We can't take that chance.
> Man 2: You always say that. I want to take a chance.
----------
Also, anyway to validate Chelky's claim that Woz used his technology in building the Apple ][?
No wonder he's so successful - this is the sort of thing that will resonate perfectly with his target audience.
There is a reason some people refer to certain suppliers of money as 'dumb capital'. Playing the game well and moving on before the inevitable collision with reality happens is a strategy that can work for a long time. This guy seems to be so good at it that it likely will never catch up with him.
I've met people like this, I've even worked for one or two.
It's scary how they can use a combination of charisma, drive and self delusion to relieve others (including their co-workers) of their contributions, line their pockets with cash and move on before the crash.
Which of course is never their fault because they've already moved on. And if the company is successful in spite of them then they get to claim the credit.
I'd like to see the substantiation of the claim that Wozniak used 'some of Ohio Scientifics technology'. That sounds like patent nonsense to me. They both used a 6502 but that was an inmos general purpose cpu, nothing specifically made for Ohio Scientific.
The Apple I was launched in '76 (also using the 6502), the II followed in '77. The early ('75-'76) Ohio Scientific products were more along the lines of the KIM-I than the Apple I.
I wonder what the cost would be for implementing a transputer like architecture using the Rasberry Pi module.
It might be a very interesting alternative to the parallela.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio_Scientific
But his version of Siri was clearly waaaay earlier. ;-)
They are also very good at discrediting those who try to expose their fraud. I've dealt with people like Cheiky (albeit on a much smaller scale than him). As soon as I expressed skepticism in their idea, they knew how to respond to prevent that skepticism from spreading to other people. They immediately moved to discredit the person trying to discredit them.
And even after the house of cards does fall down, those who believed in them continue to believe that it wasn't the charismatic person's fault that it all failed.
Maybe someone with medical training can tell me if I'm wrong. But as far as I know, otherwise healthy people won't get any benefits from taking massive amounts of vitamins daily.
Kellogg's still sells tons of cereals with those pointless vitamins mixed in.
Both accomplished people, both were able to have brilliant ideas and ambitious plans, but when the rubber meets the road, they're delusional about the challenges they have and reject the reality that there are problems afoot.
I'm reminded of a quote: "Great entrepreneurs are stubborn contrarians and eternal optimists." [1] Maybe this stubbornness and optimism is exactly what leads them to build something great in the beginning, but also what leads them to ignore reality later on.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7584093
[1] http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20131015141133-15...
Clever trick, I have to admit. Unless you knew the guy was cheating by abusing a safety feature in a way that no sane person ever should do, there was no way of proving the cheat.
"They have a lot of investment guys, who are like bankers, and they don’t use their engineering talent to do due diligence."