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Re: A Sequel to The Google Talk

Posted: Sun Feb 01, 2015 9:15 pm
by johndaly
it's probably safe to say that maybe $30m will answer the questions between what exists now and what it would take before anyone asks for $300m.
I think there is a spot for that kind of thing in the slides.
just sayin'...

Re: A Sequel to The Google Talk

Posted: Sun Feb 01, 2015 9:42 pm
by MSimon
johndaly wrote:it's probably safe to say that maybe $30m will answer the questions between what exists now and what it would take before anyone asks for $300m.
I think there is a spot for that kind of thing in the slides.
just sayin'...
I'm thinking $30m to $50m - in case directions have to change. But you are in the right ball park.

Re: A Sequel to The Google Talk

Posted: Sun Feb 01, 2015 9:44 pm
by mvanwink5
And I'm agreeing... nothing in the slides says otherwise. Standard structured risk minimization.

Re: A Sequel to The Google Talk

Posted: Mon Feb 02, 2015 7:38 am
by Robthebob
I swear people on this forum always finds a way to complain about something.

What? Proven WB effect isn't sexy enough anymore?

Re: A Sequel to The Google Talk

Posted: Mon Feb 02, 2015 8:47 pm
by choff
Even if it never made fusion, it would be fascinating to see the 2 meter radius machine at work. In what other device does atmospheric pressure go from total vacuum to ground floor on Venus using only magnetic fields.

Re: A Sequel to The Google Talk

Posted: Mon Feb 02, 2015 10:38 pm
by CherryPick
Venture capitalists look for return on investment, the ROI. High risk is balanced with high returns if the venture is successful. Good and committed people are important because it is likely that plans change when research and design goes further. On successful exit the VC sells his shares with huge profits which allows 90% of the ventures fail.

I would look for smaller than 300 M$ investment. Where does the money go? Is e.g. decreasing the radius of the device somehow a feasible solution?

Re: A Sequel to The Google Talk

Posted: Mon Feb 02, 2015 10:50 pm
by MSimon
CherryPick wrote:Venture capitalists look for return on investment, the ROI. High risk is balanced with high returns if the venture is successful. Good and committed people are important because it is likely that plans change when research and design goes further. On successful exit the VC sells his shares with huge profits which allows 90% of the ventures fail.

I would look for smaller than 300 M$ investment. Where does the money go? Is e.g. decreasing the radius of the device somehow a feasible solution?
If you can keep the number of turns and the current through the coils constant power goes up as 1/linear dimension. So yes. Making the device smaller - in theory - gives you higher power out. But a smaller device also makes the "holes" for electron injection smaller.

Can all that be balanced? Remains to be seen. Not counting losses power is (B^4)*(R^3). I had worked out the 1/linear dimension thing some years back. It is on a thread here somewhere. It might take me an hour or three to recreate the whole line of thinking.

Re: A Sequel to The Google Talk

Posted: Mon Feb 02, 2015 11:20 pm
by GIThruster
CherryPick wrote:Venture capitalists look for return on investment, the ROI. High risk is balanced with high returns if the venture is successful. Good and committed people are important because it is likely that plans change when research and design goes further. On successful exit the VC sells his shares with huge profits which allows 90% of the ventures fail.

I would look for smaller than 300 M$ investment. Where does the money go? Is e.g. decreasing the radius of the device somehow a feasible solution?
From my exploration into what is required to get funding, the issue of leadership is not necessitated by the technical requirements, nearly so much as the business requirements. Yes, all investors need to see a huge ROI opportunity for a large risk, but there are many risks when it comes to a successful business venture and technical risk is only one of these.

One of the points well made in lecture 9 in the HTSASU series:

http://startupclass.samaltman.com/

is that one can look at risk management from the investors point of view as peeling an onion. You start a project with all the risk there will be and as you remove risks, you gather new funding levels. So for example, the original risks include the risks that the founding team itself will not work out. Normally, that risk is handled before seed money comes, or when the first seed money comes. In the case of Poly however, the project has outlived the involvement of two founders, both Bussard and Nebel; so the team is a critical issue so far as funding is concerned and therefore EMC2 ought to be looking for cheap, easy wins to demonstrate they can function as a team. This is why I am arguing that a $300M funding goal is unwise in the extreme. I just can't imagine anyone going in for that sort of risk when the current team hasn't yet proved itself. I'm not talking abut technical skills. I'm talking about what investors want to see, which is leadership in general, and the ability to execute. Investors generally do not consider technical challenges as the largest challenges and be they right or wrong, they are the people holding the purses.

Note too that one of the other tests for leadership is the rate at which they execute. Investors are not like USG in that the pace of a civil servant will do just fine. Investors want to see stuff get accomplished at every investment round, new milestones, technical and others, accomplished with breakneck speed. Poly is not doing breakneck speed. This is a vote against it. And it is easy to presume that like any government funded project, the pace does not matter. What one needs to recognize is that investors are exactly opposite of USG when it comes to work pace. Investors want to see everyone get paid and they'd be very happy were they to all get paid minimum wage. They want everyone working hard all the time and milestones achieved regularly. EMC2 isn't doing any of this so its hard to see why any investor would give them money.

Re: A Sequel to The Google Talk

Posted: Tue Feb 03, 2015 3:14 am
by Ivy Matt
Each year Microsoft Research hosts hundreds of influential speakers from around the world, including leading scientists, renowned experts in technology, book authors, and leading academics, and makes videos of these lectures freely available.
I don't think William Gibson gives lectures at Microsoft Research because he hopes that Microsoft Press will publish his latest novel.

Re: A Sequel to The Google Talk

Posted: Tue Feb 03, 2015 4:32 am
by MSimon
Yes, I think 95% of investors would want the details that GIT talked about. But I also think that only a part of investors would not get interested in the idea if those details were not presented in this kind of presentation. The others would be hooked by the general idea and would REQUEST those extra details afterwards, before investing.

Don't forget that there are projects with sex appeal. So to speak. Cocktail chatter investments. "I just invested in a fusion reactor. It is a project run by a bunch of crazy scientists and engineers who talk about things I barely understand. Do you have any idea what a fusion cross section is? Me either. But these people are strange in interesting ways. And who knows? I just might make some money off it and change the world. Besides it is only costing me $10 million for a flier. And if you want a piece of the action I know the developers. I could introduce you to them."

Not everything in the world is about making another buck. Sometimes people will pay a lot for prestige. I had a friend in my youth who had a Rodin just inside his front door. You could feel it up every time you entered or left his house. Exquisite. Tasty. What was it worth? Heck if I know. But it was just for show. A sign of culture and wealth.

A picture of a Polywell exuding beams on the wall signed by Park might be of similar value. "How much do you think that picture cost me?"

Re: A Sequel to The Google Talk

Posted: Tue Feb 03, 2015 5:04 am
by Tom Ligon
Bob Guccione supposedly backed the Riggatron because his wife talked him into it. He was pretty much despised for having gotten rich on smutty magazines, and she was hoping to clean up his act. The "save the world" aspect of it was appealing to them.

Classy lady, I'm told, and smart. She was also behind Omni.

The perfect project gets all your green liberal friends to think you have saved the world, and all your conservative business friends envious of what a great business plan you have.

Is this the project? I'm guessing anyone to put the money forward will probably do their homework first. Very carefully.

Re: A Sequel to The Google Talk

Posted: Tue Feb 03, 2015 6:16 am
by D Tibbets
Microsoft investing in EMC2? The talk by Dr Park itself doesn't imply much. Reading between the lines though, I wonder about the host of the talk. What is his status in the organization? He did mention that he researched the topic enough to make his head hurt (my words). If that means anything at all...

Dan Tibbets

Re: A Sequel to The Google Talk

Posted: Tue Feb 03, 2015 3:21 pm
by Tom Ligon
Remember, the Google Talk produced a light-hearted question "Should Google go nuclear? No, really ...." And they didn't. It must have crossed somebody's mind, at least briefly. But speculating on this from out where we sit is just for fun, and the only way we'll know is in hindsight from some future perspective.

It is fun to think about, though. For that matter, Google could still decide to "Go nuclear."

True visionaries are rare, but if you want to find examples, Google and Microsoft are among the places to look. SpaceX is a headline topic on the TP News page. It started in 2002, and, other than Elon Musk and a small handful of people the rest of the world no doubt would classify as deluded nuts, nobody would have thought they had a snowball's chance in Heck. Opinions would not have been much different in 2007 when RWB started his big push to get EMC2 back in business. SpaceX blew up a couple of Falcon 1's before getting one to work, and with each explosion the world snickered. They're not laughing now.

Visionaries are rare, but they are not myths. If you treat this as a matter of luck, EMC2 will need a lot of luck to hook up with one. But visionaries make their own luck. They don't turn vision into fact by a roll of the dice, it is a deliberate series of actions. What would take luck is for us to sit here and wonder about where a visionary will magically pop up. In truth, the visionary lies in ambush, sizing up the possibilities and making careful plans about which opportunity fits their plans.

I'd not want to spook them. Finding the visionary in its lair, as it plans its coup, could be highly counterproductive. Sometimes you WANT to be caught.
D Tibbets wrote:Microsoft investing in EMC2? The talk by Dr Park itself doesn't imply much. Reading between the lines though, I wonder about the host of the talk. What is his status in the organization? He did mention that he researched the topic enough to make his head hurt (my words). If that means anything at all...

Dan Tibbets

Re: A Sequel to The Google Talk

Posted: Tue Feb 03, 2015 4:09 pm
by JoeStrout
This has been an interesting, and possibly useful, thread polluted by off-topic vitriol.

At the request of users whom I greatly respect, I'm going to try to go through and delete the off-topic posts and leave us with a nice neat thread that (apart from this message) will be on-topic.

Remember, don't say: "I'll behave when you behave first!" Each of us is responsible for our own behavior, and the correct thing to do is ignore (and possibly report) any irrelevant behavior, without engaging in it yourself. That will eventually result in a healthy, informative forum that may actually contribute, in some small way, to making practical fusion power a reality — which I assume is why we're all here.

Thanks,
- Joe

Re: A Sequel to The Google Talk

Posted: Tue Feb 03, 2015 4:25 pm
by mvanwink5
I used to say that it is never 'The one thing,' contrary to 'Curly' on 'City Slickers' (with Billy Crystal) - sort of a reverse 'Jack and the Bean Stalk' story. 'You have to find the ONE thing,' but it is never the one thing. I had a rule of 5, where I would not stop looking until I found 5. The point is that investors rarely want to go it alone, but at the same time investors are like herding cats which is like making fusion work economically, investors each want their terms and conditions, with the result of multiple cooks working on a soup. Still, when the Microsoft talk organizer compared the investment to a couple of McMansions, I took that to be a positive sign on his point of view towards Polywell and also that he was looking to fill out his flush (card metaphor), but did not have it yet.

I am a bit more positive now than I was as the Polywell story gets more investor exposure, and there may be a period where these guys look over the whole field and start picking one, or perhaps more than one to place their bets (why just pick one?)

So, the plot is truly heating up and at some point some group will get the jump on the rest as the prospects look more enticing, as there is always the fear of losing out by waiting too long.