Lies and Startup PR

Missing Meredith Perry and her uBeam trying to sell idea of ubiquitous wireless charging. Tedtalk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukgnU2aXM2c Analysis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1R9IQF0Y9s

"for each technological hurdle deemed insurmountable by the experts I

would spend just a few hours thinking about the problem from a variety of

approaches so I was able to solve problems when the PhD experts couldn't

with just a few hours of really simple research every single argument over why

the technology couldn't work has been indisputably wrong has taught me to be

skeptical of experts the expertise represented a narrow way of looking at things

engineers are inherently linear thinkers and tend to take a very binary approach

to solving problems as a non expert I had an advantage because I could look at

a problem from different angles because I just didn't know it was possible by

thinking outside the box by thinking around corners you can out think the top

thinkers and now eight months later I have four of the top ultrasonic

engineers in the world working for me we're working with me

it's going to work and it's going to be awesome and I can't wait to give the

middle finger and smiled all the engineers that criticize the crap out of me"

Spoilers: She is a fraud, it never worked, one of the ultrasonic engineers she boasted about hiring even ran a blog debunking her claims https://liesandstartuppr.blogspot.com. >$20 million from Andreessen Horowitz/Mark Cuban/Marissa…

https://liesandstartuppr.blogspot.com/2018/09/end-of-era-thoughts-on-ubeam-founder.html

> One meeting in particular pushed me over the edge, and I told the CEO that I was extremely unhappy, and we should discuss a way to amicably separate. I knew the transducer and acoustics side better than anyone, and would give the company as much time as needed to transition and pass over my knowledge. It was a tense meeting, and I went home after, and there were then a series of ... interesting ... emails and phone calls with Perry, that ended with no conclusion. Ironically, among the demands from the company was a statement for the press about how I still believed in uBeam's goals and the technology, but I declined. I got a text the next morning to come to the downstairs company conference room, and to bring my laptop, lab-book, and any company property - it was clear what was about to happen.

>I arrived and the room had CFO Hushen and CEO Perry. It was tense, and Perry sat at the head of the table in her position that she used when about to be CEO-like and give a prepared speech - straight back, leaning slighty forward, hands together. She looked at me and said:

>"Today will be your last day with the company. But before we go on to that, it is important that you understand that you are a quitter. You have quit on me, you have quit on yourself, you have quit on the company, you have quit on your team, you have quit on.... wait what are you doing?"

>At this point the speech was so…

Here are osha safety guidelines for ultrasonic sound:

https://www.osha.gov/dts/osta/otm/new_noise/appendixc.pdf

tldr: Maximum 115 dB

Here is a calculator to convert decibels to watts:

http://www.sengpielaudio.com/calculator-soundlevel.htm

tldr: ~0.3 watts per square meter

Surface area of a google pixel: 14.3cm x 6.95cm = 0.01 square meters

Therefore approximately 0.003 watts over the surface area of a phone at safe volumes. At 5v that's 0.6 mA. Barely enough to light up LEDs. It looks like they're working with larger holders, say 20cm x 20cm that's 0.04 sq meters or 2.4 mA at 5v. It takes about 10 mA to trip the "charging" indicator on an android phone:

http://liesandstartuppr.blogspot.com/2017/06/what-does-it-take-to-switch-phone.html

This is based on the raw power of the sound waves. There will be inefficiency converting from sound to electricity, so they are probably dealing with greater than 115 dB sound at the phone. They are probably just barely tripping the charge sensor for 100 hour charge times. If they are charging significantly then they are working with very excessive excessive sound levels (>125 dB).

Given imperfect transducers for 100% conversion of sound to electricity and the above dimensions they would have to be working with > 122 dB sound at the phone for 10 mA charge current.

So, it's either a scam or it's not safe. Jamming that much air pressure in a small space will cause problems and will probably be inefficient.

Sound is not a…

The blog that the article was sourced from (http://liesandstartuppr.blogspot.com/) currently has a biting post about how Theranos' failures are endemic in the tech industry:

"Companies in the new tech area tend to be a little lax when it comes to doing things carefully - Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, tells us all to "Move fast and break things", which I have to agree is a great way to innovate and learn when your product does nothing of actual importance at all. It doesn't matter if you don't get your silly cat videos, or can't post pictures of your holidays, because your business payroll doesn't run on it, your medication isn't delivered by it, nor is your aircraft navigation based on it. Real consequences of a Facebook blackout are near zero."

"[...] In both these industries [generator manufacturing and medical ultrasound] the mentality was "we must make sure this is safe" and the idea of reducing or skipping safety is never considered, but I do not see the same thinking in many of these tech companies. I have literally heard "what's the minimum we have to do?", "we don't have proof it's a risk", "that sounds time-consuming and expensive. We should do <pointless but fast/cheap thing> instead", and "well if it goes to court our lawyers say they have good arguments"."

I think that the much cheaper solution is neither to develop the technology nor fool people with fake research, but fund real research into areas where the economics probably won't work. (Which could be the whole field.) As we've seen with Theranos, and with plenty of smaller companies [1], it's easy enough to spend years taking investor money for things people want to exist but are probably or definitely impossible. That would get carbon polluters many years of delay. For corporate execs, that's plenty of time. And hey, a miracle might happen.

That said, fooling people is a well-established business of its own. It started with the tobacco companies, but it sure hasn't ended there. [2] So they might be sticking with the tried and true playbook here.

[1] E.g., this excellent blog on wireless charging companies: https://liesandstartuppr.blogspot.com/

[2] https://www.amazon.com/Doubt-Their-Product-Industrys-Threatens/dp/019530067X

http://liesandstartuppr.blogspot.com/2016/05/abandon-ship.html - 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."