I'm sorry, but as much as I respect people both on Reddit and Hacker News, I wonder where does all the enthusiasm come from, when:
* demos show nothing new from a technological perspective
* the presenter sounds like a door-to-door salesperson
* as it seems to me, the only purpose of the demo is to raise a hype and somehow (I still don't understand) they succeeded
Euclideon got financed by Australian government.
I really hope the board took a critical approach and relied on at least /some/ technical expertise to grant these people A$ 2m. If they made this decision based just on a demo - I'm moving to Australia at once, where I will invent a technology you have never seen in your whole life before. Ever.
Terms in that program are you have to match the government funding 1:1 so they must have (or raise within 2 years) $2mil to put against the government's.
They also have to pay it back "on success" (5% of revenue once that reaches 100k total) and are monitored closely for "fast failure" (they are expected to succeed and repay within 2 years, they have to repay even if they fail after 5 years).
Euclideon claims to have had a 2010 funding round so maybe that's how they got into this program. It also says this program is not to be used to "Prove to the applicant that a certain technological problem can be overcome (R&D projects)" so they must have shown it as a viable product that just needs to be packaged up for sale.
What strikes me most is anything under a Commonwealth funding agreement has to have the words "Funded by Australian Government through the XYZ Program. An Australian Government Initiative" in all their promotional material. Yet the shining star of Commercialisation Australia's portfolio forgot. Ouch.
* demos show nothing new from a technological perspective
* the presenter sounds like a door-to-door salesperson
* as it seems to me, the only purpose of the demo is to raise a hype and somehow (I still don't understand) they succeeded
Euclideon got financed by Australian government.
I really hope the board took a critical approach and relied on at least /some/ technical expertise to grant these people A$ 2m. If they made this decision based just on a demo - I'm moving to Australia at once, where I will invent a technology you have never seen in your whole life before. Ever.