Last week a company we enthusiastically backed, uBeam, led by a very special entrepreneur, 25-year-old Meredith Perry, announced a $10 million round of financing. The press around the raise & company was fantastic and the promise of their technology – wireless charging that works as easily as WiFi – would positively affect many of our lives. What person hasn’t crouched at an airport to get 18% extra on one’s battery before boarding an airplane?
But then one person – who happens to be a physicist – wrote a back-of-the-envelop calculation of uBeam and said it’s not physically possible. His math was correct and I can hardly blame him for taking a guess at what uBeam does but every assumption that he used was wildly inaccurate. uBeam’s tech does work and I have safely seen it demo’d in the real life many times. Most of those that have been privileged enough to get a look at what they are actually doing have moved from skeptics to believers.
One is reminded of the famous quote often attributed Mark Twain
“A lie travels around the globe while the truth is putting on its shoes.” **
There is a battle between entrepreneurs who try to change the world and solve a meaningful problem and those who write take-down pieces with no apparent personal benefit other than attention.
