“It gets dug out of the ground in Africa, or someplace. Then we melt it down, dig another hole, bury it again and pay people to stand around guarding it. It has no utility. Anyone watching from Mars would be scratching their head.”
– Warren Buffett
I can fully relate to your frustration. You spent time, money and extra effort on your pitch and YC could have told you straight away. It sometimes appears that Y has its particular business model anyway: basically an attractive and ready product in which they can invest at a very low price and then just take it by the hand, polish it a bit and introduce it to their contacts in order to get a good valuation through either funding or sale and hence a significant return on their investment. Nothing wrong with that as long as one realizes it. Maybe one should just copy that business model - as some have done already anyway.
RE: Five Technologies That Could Change Everything
Monday, October 19, 2009 7:09 PM
From:
"Totty, Michael" <[email protected]>
To:
envitar
Sir,
Thanks for your note. Space limitations prevented me from mentioning Tesla, which indeed gets considerably more miles on a charge than a Volt. As I understand it, it does this by using some sophisticated electronic controls and a huge array of batteries, both of which help account for the Tesla roadster’s steep price tag. The point I should have made more clearly is that, when cost and weight are considered, lithium-ion batteries in production vehicles are going to continue have a much smaller range than comparable gasoline-powered vehicles. Not to suggest that makes them impractical – some 80% of all car trips are less than the Volt’s 40 mile range. But the grail remains something with even a higher power density than lithium ion.
You’re also correct about flywheels – they’re useful for a number of critical grid applications, mainly in maintaining power during brief outages. Most of the experts I talked with, though, didn’t include them as a solution for larger storage needs, or to handle storage for variable power sources like wind. Still, there’s a lot of interest in flywheels, and they probably merit a closer look in the reports.
As it says in the article: it is Taleb revisited! He's been banging his head about the issue and even discussed abolishing the Nobel prize with the King of Sweden
Excellent point!Add to this the fact that these old guys may well have a better understanding of what the customer wants and perhaps is prepared to pay for any service. Everybody is focusing on Google but how many like them tried and failed? You won't read about them. Someone who starts a business with his family attached to him thinks twice about each move and turn as any mistake may seriously affect not just his personal livelihood but his family's as well.A young twenty something who doesn't make it can always find a career afterwards something which is not necessarily the case for a forty something.
Amazing to read all these comments. One would have thought that whoever is part of the HN scene is highly educated and reasonably knowledgeable. Obviously not so. Research is only just beginning to copy the way real tree leaves operate:
In the meantime it is probably even better to just reduce CO2 out put rather than try and store it. But as people seem to be unable to kick a habit easily - even if it may kill them longer term see smoking - why not store it.
Probably not. Herd behaviour is not necessarily wise, mostly to the contrary. Buffett wasn't successful because he followed the crowd but the opposite.The "madness of crowds" is well documented. Wisdom of crowds? No thanks.
You sound a bit like a quant who lost his job, Scott.
And even if Taleb is right only in 50% of what he says that's better than most quant traders were/are most of the time...Oh and BTW on your Greek citatation: the Danaos ain't the Greek but the Danaos!
Cheers
What you are saying is what Taleb/Black Swan says: you never hear about the failures! There may have been a better Google out there before or after but it just couldn't get the funding/attention/coverage/viral attraction that was needed...
that's part of the risk of becoming an entrepreneur: pure random luck!
Nice idea/concept...the crowd sourced funding sounds a bit like start-up funds created around particular ideas...probably a headache to organize though...