I am not a physicist and have no clue about the viability of the startup. What I do know is that an awful lot of the comments here are begging the question.
They tend to be of the form: "Since they were invested in, they must be good/viable/work!" What the fuck, folks? Have you lost your collective minds? You should know better than this.
It's more along the lines of: "Smart groups gave them money, so they must at least have a response to the first objections that pop into everyone's head."
Whether those responses represent approaches that will work or not is unknown, but I feel quite safe in assuming they have some sort of plan for them. It's insanely arrogant to assume otherwise.
Exactly. The claim isn't that ubeam is viable, it's that investors like a16z with competent technical staff are more than capable of doing back of the napkin physics before investing, so there is surely more to the story here-- either the company tech can be argued to be viable with more non-public info, or the investors are aware of the impossibility of their current claims but decided to invest anyway.
Smart people are often irrational when reasoning about something outside their domain expertise. If it sounds like uBeam is physically impossible or unwise, then I'd rather bet against them than simply assume that other investors have done the scientific vetting.
What I'm saying is that it's crazy to assume the investors didn't ask the questions that popped into the heads of every Tom, Dick, and Harry on HN in 10 seconds.
Therefore, it's safe to assume the company team must have had some kind of response to that.
Was it valid? Did it snow the investors and their vetting teams? Who knows?
But certainly that first level of conversation must have taken place.
They tend to be of the form: "Since they were invested in, they must be good/viable/work!" What the fuck, folks? Have you lost your collective minds? You should know better than this.