I've often thought about this predicament. The original inventor made a demo and raised a lot of money. It's clear that after they went ahead, they didn't quite get it working due to the physics involved. (It's not viable.)
Around the time that this was becoming super clear to everyone (around three years ago), I wrote them this (not sure if they got it):
What I concluded in the past 4 years of lightly watching this is that you must retain total, like, totalitarian power over your company, to do whatever you want to do. Because uBeam did the hard part: getting the cash. It's practically impossible to fund a company. Really, go ahead and try it. I'll wait. See you when you're 45 and have been trying for 15 years across ten companies, and finally said fuck it and built your own organic revenues of half a million a month with 90% margin, and still aren't getting the checks. The hard part is the Series A.
But the problem is signing paperwork that gives investors (such as Suster), any amount of control whatsoever.
It's clear that Perry was smart enough to figure out the tech wasn't working. But she wasn't powerful enough to pivot to something that was.
Her lesson, at least to me, is that you must retain almost total power to do whatever you want at the company.
I'll never sign anything that gives investors any amount of power whatsoever. If they want to be along for the ride, go ahead. But you don't get to be Steve Jobs without negotiating enough power to be Steve Jobs.
Steve Jobs has gone down a lot of rabbit holes that, uh, didn't lead anywhere. He could do that because he negotiated for it.
If you're founding CEO, you need to negotiate for total power at your company. Or you will end up like Meredith Perry.
The problem isn't with the tech. It's that she just wasn't powerful enough to keep doing whatever the fuck she wanted. Her lesson to me is: "Get more power."
If you're the visionary CEO of a tech company, and aren't powerful enough to do whatever the fuck you want to do, including pivoting out of what you just sold to investors - then you didn't get the negotiations and the paperwork right. Be more powerful.
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EDIT: downvoter, I'm happy to engage in a conversation about your opinion on this matter.
If you prove that your tech won’t work, and you have a better idea, go back to your board. Because of the way venture investing works, they’d almost certainly rather bankroll you to pivot, than take their money back and shut you down.
In any case, the board usually has no control over how you operate the company. Their only choice, if they don’t like it, is to fire you - and a majority of them would have to agree to do so.
I see no evidence that the founder is somehow trapped inside her company, totally aware of her terrible idea and yet unable to pivot. All evidence points to the fact that she is still a believer. If anything, she’s now being pushed aside by her board, who are putting an adult in charge and looking for some kind of licensing deal or IP buy-out as a last-ditch exit.
And here is the control he said he exerted at the time (same link):
"It’s true the some VCs have started writing so many checks that they resemble stock pickers but the majority of us still have less than 10 board seats at any time and tend to go pretty deep so the result is that we care deeply about where we commit our time."
In my personal estimation, Perry saw the limitations of the technology years ago, but was not in any position to pivot her company single-handedly.
You can disagree with me if you want. But have you built a prototype that demonstrated functionality that got a VC to write you a check for $10 million?
You can go grovel to your board about a pivot they didn't sign up for. Or you can be Steve Jobs and lead, letting others follow or be left behind. The time to do that was three-four years ago (when Perry would have clearly seen the limitations of the technology at scale, and still had loads of money in the bank.)
If there were really some kind of new beamforming tech it could find use in sonar, defense, imaging etc. If it can do milliwatts in air without radiating painfully loud harmonics in every direction that's something too
Well, there is still the possibility of removal, it should just kind of be all or nothing.
>I could write the equal and opposite rant that you'd be absolutely mad to invest money in a company that you don't control.
It's hard to reply to a hypothetical rant, but I've imagined one (I think charitably) -- can you then further imagine, if I wrote a reply, that you'd be mad to invest in a CEO who was a pushover, that you could just push around and get to do whatever? Because if you can push them around, how about people whose interests aren't even as strongly aligned as yours and theirs? Therefore anyone you can control, you'd be mad to invest in. J:D
Around the time that this was becoming super clear to everyone (around three years ago), I wrote them this (not sure if they got it):
https://imgur.com/a/WQicmGS
Since then I've thought about this so much. Here's Suster's glowing praise when handing them a huge check, a year earlier:
https://imgur.com/a/i2zIslW
What I concluded in the past 4 years of lightly watching this is that you must retain total, like, totalitarian power over your company, to do whatever you want to do. Because uBeam did the hard part: getting the cash. It's practically impossible to fund a company. Really, go ahead and try it. I'll wait. See you when you're 45 and have been trying for 15 years across ten companies, and finally said fuck it and built your own organic revenues of half a million a month with 90% margin, and still aren't getting the checks. The hard part is the Series A.
But the problem is signing paperwork that gives investors (such as Suster), any amount of control whatsoever.
It's clear that Perry was smart enough to figure out the tech wasn't working. But she wasn't powerful enough to pivot to something that was.
Her lesson, at least to me, is that you must retain almost total power to do whatever you want at the company.
I'll never sign anything that gives investors any amount of power whatsoever. If they want to be along for the ride, go ahead. But you don't get to be Steve Jobs without negotiating enough power to be Steve Jobs.
Steve Jobs has gone down a lot of rabbit holes that, uh, didn't lead anywhere. He could do that because he negotiated for it.
If you're founding CEO, you need to negotiate for total power at your company. Or you will end up like Meredith Perry.
The problem isn't with the tech. It's that she just wasn't powerful enough to keep doing whatever the fuck she wanted. Her lesson to me is: "Get more power."
If you're the visionary CEO of a tech company, and aren't powerful enough to do whatever the fuck you want to do, including pivoting out of what you just sold to investors - then you didn't get the negotiations and the paperwork right. Be more powerful.
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EDIT: downvoter, I'm happy to engage in a conversation about your opinion on this matter.