Ask HN: Selling disruptive technology
I'm posting on behalf of an acquaintance, who approached me recently with several major ideas in the field of ceramics. He has publications and patents to back his claims, but he has trouble with investors. His website with more explanations is http://rokhv.com. Quick summary: he invented several new types of ceramics, and knows how to manufacture them. Uses: containers for nuclear waste disposal (cheaper and safer than Yucca Mountain); cheap and thin superconducting wire; incinerators which produce clean electricity.
Investors get excited, refer him to experts in the ceramics, who reply "no way." Except some of these experts work on competing ideas, or have other vested interests. This is the disruptive technology problem which PG wrote about: people either outright don't understand what you're doing, or they don't want to understand it.
I personally have no stake in this, but I'm always interested in pushing for clean energy sources. I wonder if crowd here has any suggestions.
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Unfortunately... extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence. And patents and publications in peer-reviews papers do not constitute extraordinary evidence.
Moreover, there is a bad bad smell form his claims and web site:
- Nuclear waste disposal, cheap superconducting wire, new incinerators... This technology solves too many problems, it seems too powerful. Does it cure cancer too? Hey, no, he does not claim that; but he does claim (from his web site) that this could reduce worldwide GHG emissions by 15%. That’s almost as good.
- From his web site: one plant for manufacturing radioactive resistant packaging would bring owners $265MM/year. One plant manufacturing 15,000km/year of his new electric wire will cost $49MM. Some other plant would cost $51MM.
WTF? It would take months or years of experienced people to make estimates like these, and they would be much less precise. My guess is that these numbers are totally random. Moreover, some of the quoted ROI are 500%. I would guess that historically, industrial projects with projected ROI that high did not work out as planed (to put it mildly)
- He speaks about "room temperature" superconductivity without giving any more details about what "room temperature" means.. Hum, he seems to be skipping some important details there.
I could go on.
I hate being harsh, but my guess is that this guy is either lying or delusional.
Investors get excited, refer him to experts in the ceramics, who reply "no way."
How do you know they are not right?
Patents in and of themselves are not proof, as we all know.
Want to keep up with times? Make sure to wash your car in "Nano Carwash" (two dudes with buckets). How about some "Nano chocolate" if you are hungry? Or perhaps "Nano operating system" is your thing? Please have two.
I kid you not, it is this ridiculous. So anything coming out of Russia with "nano" in it should be treated twice as suspiciously.
(edit) Tangetal to what I said above. The About page on the site says
This "Conveyer" invention being one of top 100 greatest inventions of 20th century has from zero or one hits in Google depending on whether it is misspelled or not. While I don't think the above statement is an outright lie, but this looks a lot like an unsubstantiated cheek puffing, and it makes me wonder if the actual subject matter is of the same quality.Also, the Business Development guy also designed the website with his separate company. But that company's website (jkmarketingspecialists.com) was designed by some company that is a green company directory?? I would definitely encourage an effort of legitimacy. No one can fund that website.
You mention that he has been published in peer-reviewed journals, could you put those links or articles on the website. I have never seen an academic extract mention money or be formatted like this:
~ $265 MM/year pre-tax net income and liberates US Government budget from > $15 billion/year expenses. The U.S. market for the RCC packages is about $10 billion/year.
The technology could be as awesome as you say but this lack of clarity could be why the experts say no way. It usually isn't a conspiracy or a vested interest conflict. A smart investor would be aware of these and would probably only refer you to someone whose honest opinion he could get.
Find a situation where there is a guy who is looking for a solution to his problem at least as hard as you're looking for a customer for the product. Don't try to convince a bunch of people who don't seem to want to be convinced, that is a really painful process that leaves you disillusioned and makes you wonder if you should quit. Find one of the few guys who is going to love you when he sees your stuff. And if your stuff works for him, he'll probably help you expand.
Bottom line: spend more time thinking about applications and finding people, and less time trying to convince them
How can he show that their money won't fund a science experiment but will be applied to making them more money? Traction in a market seems key.
In peer-reviewed journals? Has someone independently duplicated his results (in effect is able to manufacture nuclear waste containers and cheap superconducting wire using his methods)?