On the positive side, this group is
targeting a more realistic scale for a first product. Start with
powering one home, not hundreds or thousands.
Notice, they are not claiming they will power "X hundred homes in remote area Y".
Still,
I see familiar red flags: They're already offering a product for
sale, but they've never built one. Ding ding ding. Their
promo is sometimes worded in such a way as to indicate an existing
system, but then you read further and realize it's just a dream at this stage.
They've
got the obligatory "group selfie", as though the power of their
personalities, visible through photography, will carry the project
through any difficulties, or at least they can show actual people
involved in some way. Are they good-looking?
Well-dressed? Posing properly? The right mix of
entrepreneurs and nerds, from a visual standpoint?
What
I've noticed in the current "climate" of "climate change" is anyone
wanting to become an entrepreneur is "pushed" into a dishonest system,
especially by "business incubators". I remember the distraction
of leaving the workshop to interact with these incubator/angel-investor
types at their special events. They were stuck in neutral,
repeating the same tired clap-trap over and over: What's your
"elevator pitch!?!?" Let's see your "business plan". As
though the same person with the idea is going to automatically
understand business. And the business people don't understand
technology - all they understand is crafting a good-sounding story,
with an impressive website, to raise money, so they can hire more and
more "really smart people" - or so they think.
I can't tell
you how many times I've heard the "really smart people" excuse for
funding one more "sure-thing" vertical-axis turbine, for example.
These
incubators, classes on how to apply for government grants, etc., even
NREL, subtly push people toward a dishonest approach. Their forte
is "how to raise money". They think how much money can be raised
is what determines the success of a technology. The talk of a
"valley of death" for tech startups, where funding becomes scarce as a
research program gets too expensive while floundering, or an early
product struggles. They never acknowledge that failure may occur
due to a flawed concept or bad product design. Just like a viable
seed only needs water, soil, and sunlight, viable business or
product just needs a free market to thrive. The problem with
"push-a-rope" funding for "breakthroughs" is when they finally are
exposed to that same free market.
I remember
when Southwest Windpower, formerly the world's largest manufacturer of
small wind turbines, "scored" 10 million in financing from GE
Capital: Or was it 20 million? I saw that as "the end" of
Southwest Windpower, which it was. Why? Their turbines were
failing all over the place due to a single bad design feature,
meanwhile they produced a few cents per hour of electricity on a good
day, while shaking themselves apart. Insiders knew of a
warehouse, increasingly full of broken returns waiting to be sent back
out so they could fail again in a few more months. An
unsustainable sustainable-energy business.
For
a turbine powering a single home, the value of the electricity produced
per hour is often so small you would not bother to bend over and pick
it up if you saw it on the ground. Today, Southwest Windpower is
long-gone, and even GE is about to possibly go bankrupt from bad loans
of yesteryear. They've recently been dropped from the Dow
30, after 100 years. Their stock is in the single digits nd they
show zero profit. Their quarterly dividend has been reduced to
one cent. That's the world's largest manufacturer of jet engines,
and the US largest manufacturer of wind turbines today, And that
all happened during the peak of global warming hype.
Meanwhile
the incubator crowd often mentions a business notion of "fake it til
you make it". Key term: "fake it". Ya know - like Barry
Madoff was doing? What if your turbine that will produce a dime
per hour can't be operationally-supported at a dime per hour?
What if just your pilot kite will wear out faster than a dime per
hour? What if it requires attention during operation? So
much for a dime per hour making a difference.
Let's
look at all the wind energy breakthrough success stories coming from
incubators and government-funding. Let's see, there's... ummm,
well OK I just can't think of one right now, but there must be quite a
few, right? Or, well, come on, there must be at least one,
right? Hmmmm...