my feeling when people raise a quarter of a billion dollars for an idea i’ve moved beyond game on
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e.g. "we never built a low pressure stage" we started with a low pressure stage, to prove the physics, then upgraded the size of the machine, doing the high pressure stage first because that was were the physics was unexplored. we were developing the low pressure stage at pivot
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re. "tesla" -- after raising more than $40mm for the company I got a loan for an electric car (since without a credit core banks wouldn't loan to me...), my cofounders approved it and I paid it all back on an accelerated schedule. after I invested in tesla personally & it 20x'd
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re. pay -- after being paid less than all of the other executives and being pushed to bring on a big company executive as a COO (big mistake) we increased our pay cap, and our FF board member suggested & everyone agreed I should make what the others did.
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(i used this to subsidize entrepreneurs in researchers, who went on to do a lot of great things!)
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re: they paid for *fresh fruit*, *thursday lunches*, and *kombucha on tap*. they had an employee that would assemble ikea furniture -- such mismanagement. my response: what the fuck, basically. you petty, sullen little shit. why is this even a problem.
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eric pissoff at gtm, now cαnary media, stuck his lies behind a $200 a month paywall, after calling our employees and claiming that he'd spoken with 10 of them. he literally told them after they were uncomfortable talking "oh it's ok I just need to claim I spoke to you"
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he then sold the company to an oil and gas media conglomerate, and took down the paywall. take down complete? why was this shitty journalist spreading lies to take down good companies. our board member said it happened to his company too. avoid cαnary media; not to be trusted
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why did I not respond back then? well, frankly, a) wanted to avoid the Streisand effect, didn't appreciate that *years later* people would still be reading and believing a transparently petty takedown. double bind, apparently b) despite disagreements about scaling the co down...
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...I didn't want any of our investors (or the company) to look lame, which I thought was the inevitable outcome if I expressed the facts of what happened we weren't actually directly solving the energy storage problem -- we didn't want or need the press to solve it, but...
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...I didn't appreciate that in the hype driven world of VC, a takedown could and did essentially kill future fundraising prospects, and the decision to shut down tech dev and pursue licensing we forced as a result. big mistake, imo, still, but the majority shareholder's decision
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c) I knew that I'd have another swing at the energy storage problem, attacking it from a different angle, extremely high performance, high energy and power density, in a way that would make this whole bullshit storyline branch irrelevant. and the time to do that is now
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...I've said very little publicly, because frankly, pointing fingers around a defunct company seemed petulant and lame, and it would not honor the achievements and efforts of those who were part of it. the only resolution that seemed worthy would be a new effort to solve storage
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...which I am now doing, and will start to reveal this year.
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