Also possibly to fill diversity requirements.
I'm sure it would be. But what I don't understand is why not hire someone who knows what they're doing to try to pull it off? Why hire an inexperienced person with almost no domain knowledge just because she happens to have a very basic idea sketched out.
Imagine a hypothetical scenario. I'm a VC and some kid with a degree in biology told me we should make phones that use ultra capacitors instead of batteries.
Me: "That sounds cool, but it's probably not going to work because ultra caps just don't have the energy density."
Kid: "Yeah but if you give me 25 million dollars I can hire a bunch of engineers and figure it out."
Me: "Why do I need you? You're idea isn't novel. You don't have any experience or training, and you probably can't even do it."
Kid: "But if I do, you'll make billions."
Me: "I can give the same money to anyone of thousands of people qualified to actually run an R&D project, and I'll have a much higher chance of success."
http://www.newswise.com/articles/tune-in-turn-on-power-up
The Arizona research company is piezo energy technologies. http://gopiezo14.com
2011 patent: https://www.google.com/patents/US8082041
2014 patent: https://www.google.com/patents/US8974366
But I haven't seen anything commercially available in the medical industry
If the company fails, do the VCs take over? This could be their way of ensuring control over this technology.
It's not a new idea--ultrasound is already used to power pacemakers, and people have been playing with the concept for years. However, basic calculations shows that this is not likely to be practical as a consumer device. The founder has no physics or electrical engineering background, so there's no reason to think that she has some unique ability to overcome these hurdles. She's also hasn't demonstrated that she's developed any novel techniques to overcome the engineering challenges.
So why all the VC money? Why give VC money to a 20 something with no experience and no background with the hope that she'll hire enough engineers to figure it out? It just doesn't make sense to me.
I said the same thing about Theranos. They basically gave an inexperienced person who had no real domain knowledge millions of dollars to run a research lab. It looks very similar. Are VCs just desperate for a media friendly founder success story?
edit: Turns out there was already a patent covering something very similar filed in 2003 https://www.google.com/patents/US6798716?dq=ultrasound+power...