EV battery size and cost

Being checking a bit on EVs now that Tesla is hot (I think >$2k/share is a joke, you read it here first :)). Still, the EV (which BTW were not invented by Tesla) are cool. Even Teslas are cool (just the stock price is a joke). Note: I am checking also FCEV (look super cool too). 

Anyhow, quick calculation from the offering on this site (they explain it really well so you just can read it there). A Tesla 5.3kWh (444 batteries as 74p6s) pack costs $1580 ($300/kWh) and is 68 x 28 x 7.5 cm. 10 of these packs would give you about 53kWh which is close to Model 3 smallest battery (50kWh) and can take you (if you believe the BS-EPA rating from Tesla) to 354Km. Would love to see you try that, Tesla fan ;) but still pretty good even if falls short of that (see bottom of this post). Assuming same "marketing" trickery, we can guess we can get about 275 km with that battery pack.

So, to summarize it, it takes about $57 and about 0.5 liter of volume per km of autonomy. 

Notice though that this is for the full Tesla module. In the same website we can check the price of the individual cells (Panasonic 18650): 200 cells (3Ah/cell, or ~2.3kWh) for $600. This is actually not much cheaper than just buying the Tesla module, about $1330 for the 444 cells on that module and you got everything else with it (cooling, assembly...), done on the Gigafactory.

So, what to do with this stupid battery? ;)

• Awesome, I repeat, really awesome video of how to make an electric catamaran. Warning: if you watch it, you may not be able to avoid building one. You've been warned...
• Or how about an eBike? :)
• Or an eFoil?
• Or an eWaterBike?

Seriously!

PS.: On the range (what I call BS-EPA), this video measures few cars in a real life scenario. The link should bring you straight into the results part. As summary:

1. Nissan Leaf: 62kWh, 208 miles in the test, 87% of the EPA promised range (what I call the BS-EPA range).
2. Jaguar I-Pace: 90kWh, 223, 76%
3. Mercedes EQ: 80kWh, 194, 75% 
4. Audi e-tron: 95kWh, 206, 81%
5. Kia e-Niro: 64kWh, 255, 90%
6. Tesla model 3 Long range: 75kWh, 270, 78% 

Based on #6, the real range would be 78% of 354km = 276km

Can you power for one day your house with the exercise from one hour bike ride?

A friend just posted this video in FB, from Billions in Change. I can't agree more with the philosophy of this group of inventors, but in the video/website, they claim to have developed a bike where pedaling for one hour would produce electricity for your home for the whole day. So, I had to check if this was close...

1. Pedaling for one hour at a very good pace, say vigorous spin class, burns about 1000 calories (this is no average person). These are actually 1000Kcal, or ~1kWh. Let's assume that all that energy is stored in the battery, i.e., 100% efficiency.
2. An average US household consumes about 30kWh/day. Of course, one can expect US to be a big consumer, so, checking around the world we find that the average would be 9.5kWh/day while a country like India you would still need about 2.5kWh per day.
3. Just to run a energy efficient refrigerator, it would take 1kWh every day.  

So, we could qualify the wording as quite an an exaggeration. One probably would need a few strong family members to get there :)... But as I said, I do appreciate their intentions...

Nevertheless, taking this a step further, what if the cost of the bike went simply into solar power? Say that the fancy static bike was about $500. Just a number although we know you can get much cheaper... How much solar power you can buy with that? Based on this 2012 article (price is probably much cheaper now) the installed cost of solar panels was between $7-$9 per watt. So, $500 would give you about 80W of solar power. Considering that you don't need to have a family of athletes and that many of the poor countries are in areas of long sun hours, it seems plausible that the more traditional solar panels would do at the very least the same job for the same cost.

Actually, after I wrote this I found a more recent source of information. Claims that the solar system once installed (in Q3 2013) is about half the above price ($4.72/W) with most of that going to installation, permitting, etc... which traditionally would be much cheaper in lower income countries. In fact, the panels alone were $0.7/W!

Conclusion, it is very likely that dollar for dollar, solar would beat by now the above invention. Nevertheless, the bike is a reliable source (you get the electricity when you need it) and certainly healthy. :)

Comments welcome!! :)

Engineering quotes that I agree with...

“The path to the CEO's office should not be through the CFO's office, and it should not be through the marketing department. It needs to be through engineering and design.”
-- Elon Musk, CEO and chief product architect, Tesla Motors

“The worst thing in the world that can happen to you if you’re an engineer that has given life to something is for someone to rip it off and put their name on it.”
-- Tim Cook, CEO of Apple Inc.

“So here we have pi squared, which an engineer would call 10.”
-- Frank King, cartoonist, creator of Gasoline Alley

“You go to a technology conference or an engineering conference, there are very few women there. At the same time, it’s a blessing in the fact that you do get noticed. People tend to remember you as the only woman in the room ‘who said that’ or the only woman in the room who was an engineer.”
-- Padmasree Warrior, CTO of Cisco Systems, former CTO of Motorola Inc.

“Let’s face it: Engineering companies in general have more men than women. Google has tried really hard to recruit women. On the other hand, we have a standard. Google tries to recruit the best engineers.”
-- Susan Wojcicki, senior vice president in charge of product management and engineering at Google

Source: got these from many others in the following link.

Few more:
"I do not know one millionth part of one percent about anything"
-- Thomas Edison

I do not know one millionth part of one percent about anything - Thomas Edison - See more at: http://www.youcaring.com/medical-fundraiser/team-isaac-/82832#sthash.dgvEZBq8.dpuf

I do not know one millionth part of one percent about anything - Thomas Edison - See more at: http://www.youcaring.com/medical-fundraiser/team-isaac-/82832#sthash.dgvEZBq8.dpuf

I do not know one millionth part of one percent about anything - Thomas Edison - See more at: http://www.youcaring.com/medical-fundraiser/team-isaac-/82832#sthash.dgvEZBq8.dpuf

Open access to publicly funded research

I always wondered why one had to pay those hefty prices for online articles... One could think that it makes sense, in general, but why, even for the ones which research had been funded by tax payers. There are lots of arguments (quality, reviews...) but honestly, I think they are mostly excuses to justify a business that in the past, with no Internet, made more sense...

Anyhow, this became a real issue for me when I was trying to research about some physical symptoms, that eventually, fortunately, proved to be nothing serious. At the time, I signed a petition to the government to solve this... And happily enough, things seem to be coming together. It seems to be fair to give this point to Obama administration although I am sure there were many folks on both sides behind this. It would be interesting to research that, but life is too short :)

I leave you with a video from Jack Andraka, a kid and a scientist, explaining what I felt few years ago...

How much waste goes into defending wrong things... Folks don't realize that eventually everything flows to the right state.

A friend asked me to invest on his idea

I had friends asked me for money because they simply needed it... more like a loan... but this is the first time somebody asked me to invest on their idea. We are talking here about a serious enterprise, with good professionals behind, which easily pass the simple questions covered by a full business plan, they got full law documents, 2 rounds of funding, small bank loans, potential very serious customers (with backing letters of intent), and big upside.

At the time of writing this I am not thinking to invest on the company. The following is just a list of thoughts that went through my mind and my reactions:

• I don't understand the idea well. It is in the Internet field, where valuations are difficult to comprehend and many times myself asks "why Facebook paid $1B for Instagram..."?
• I have never done such a thing. I would like to invest but this may be too risky to be the first and if it fails, it will kill my appetite to invest again, which would be counterproductive.
• I am afraid that this could be the first round, but may need further investments later to keep things going...
• This is the 2nd round of an old idea. Completely remodeled though, has little to do with the initial one... but I tried to use that one and I did not like it. Now  I still remember that feeling... although I know that this person has learn a lot for 2 years since the other idea was launched and also that they can fully reuse all that technology, which is a huge advantage.

Also, I am documenting myself on how to go about this kind of thing, when a friend or relative asks you for an investment. Searched the web and found this. Gives you some view on how other people treats these...

I also tried to become more of an expert on the idea, to try to evaluate it better. But can I really get anywhere meaningful? I think I came up with good feedback to turn it down, but certainly something could still get me if I had decided to invest. I.e., I can't become the expert in 2 days, but this is the reaction typical of an engineer, try to wrap your brain around to understand everything and get to the best possible conclusion.

Anyhow, I still hope he succeeds, but at this time, I will just pass...
Cheers!

PS.: And a view from the other side... what if you want to ask for people to invest on your idea? I think those are good suggestions...

Hyperloop

The other day I was thinking on a crazy way of transport... Not sure if that is the same that Elon Musk is thinking about:
http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-is-kicking-around-an-idea-that-would-send-you-from-san-francisco-to-los-angeles-in-30-minutes-2012-7

But I thought I would just put it here. How about doing one of this for humans :)

Well, as you can see on the same link, doesn't look like a new idea (my idea). So, I am curious to learn what Mr. Musk is thinking. Sounds impressive! I wonder if one could do a simple physics calculation to see even if it is possible. I.e.,  take the energy that would take to push a person from LA to SF in 30 minutes. Can that be powered just by solar? Specially just a small area (as he is saying it would be self-powered). Maybe interpreting things different than what he said...

Anyhow... Cheers!

Use of nanoparticles

The other day I met somebody who I would call a chain inventor. He has been creating inventions his whole life. Few succesful ones that sold out and others that broke the bank. The latest is a cheap way to create nano-particles. He actually showed me a sample and it was pretty cool. What is he going to do with that? Well, that I can't say here, but I decided to have a quick look at some other possibilities listed here and there:

1. "Further miniaturization of electronic devices". Not sure what that means, but I read it :)
2. Nanofluids: Eastman J A, Choi S U S, Li S, Yu W and Thompson L J 2001 Appl. Phys. Lett.78, 718
3. To enhance efficiency of heat engines,
4. As chemical catalysts: Maye et al 2000, Kuang W, Fan Y and Chen Y 2000, Langmuir 16 5205
5. Lasing materials Huang M H et al 2001Science 292 1897
6. Using nano particles as fuels
7. Improved thermal conductivity with nano-fluids (better for instance that engine oil)  But I thought the main function of engine oil is lubrication, so, not sure why exactly they bring this up... Nevertheless found this
8. And a small list of apps

I hope he is successful :). Will keep you posted!

Some start-ups to follow

Plan is to track these over the years (first post 5/4/13):

http://3drobotics.com/ Making drones/copters.
http://www.foldimate.com/ Machine to fold clothes
http://momentummachines.com/ Robotic Fast Food

http://revolverobotics.com/  Creators of the Kubi, a fix robotic holder for table/smartphone controlled remotely (for videoconferencing).
Update (4/16):  https://angel.co/revolve-robotics. Nice design, they seem to have gone through few rounds of financing. Selling a bit too pricey ($500).

http://www.gosphero.com/ R/C ball. A friend of mine and me had been talking about this for very long (he did a similar master thesis and I wanted to use something like this for hand grenades... yeah... not very peaceful :P )
http://www.ubooly.com/  A case with the shape of a stuff animal. Leaves a space so that the phone can show up and be the face of the stuff animal. I would qualify it of dummy but it may sell...
https://angel.co/harvestgeek May get interesting between hobbyist but doubt it.
https://angel.co/kinsa-1 Thought of many angles but doubt that it will catch up with enough community... Got to get easier for parents. Patch?
3Doodler let's you draw in 3D by hand. Comes from this company, with other cool stuff.
Epos This was actually bought by Qualcomm by the time I wrote this.
Aerofex: hovercraft+bike. If this works, this will really take off (no pun intended :) )
Hoverbike: this is a better looking one but doesn't fly yet.

Accessory Dwelling companies: put a mini house where you garage is or on the space you have in the yard, and rent it out. I think this should be super successful. 

1. United Dwelling
2. EcoSmart Builders
3. HomeStead

A way to find start-ups:
https://angel.co/jobs

Robotic Lawn Mowers

[Note: this post needs cleaning but a friend wanted to have a quick look to it so...]

I looked at this market back in the 2005, when I was leaving my job to go study (play with?) robotics. After all these many years, I have not seen many (none) of these and I wonder what is the issue. Maybe because I seldom go around on residential neighborhoods? Yeah, that could be the case, because now that I am thinking, I seldom see anybody mowing their lawn, period. The article in Wikipedia says that actually the market is booming.

Long story short, looks like there is actually a lot of activity on this area. Read mostly this and this (with prices). Robots are on the $2k range, they navigate/recharge by themselves, set the perimeter with a wire. Other things to take into account:

Safety

"All of the mowers keep safety as their first priority. The designs above all but totally eliminate the possibility of objects being thrown from beneath the mowers. Projectiles like rocks, sticks and balls launched by traditional mowers result in a large number of serious injuries each year. As of the date of this page being created, there are no recorded emergency room visits at all related to robotic lawn mowers."

Many (all?) robots have also tilt sensors.

Definition of covered area

All of the mowers presently in production use a thin wire placed around the perimeter of the lawn to contain the mower. I think you don't need to bury it but just place it around with sticks. The lawn mowers follow it to provide an edge trim. Self charging models also follow the same wire to locate their docking station." They usually use some kind of dummy algorithm to cover that area...

Notice that the example below from a university uses GPS, IMU and magnetometer for the navigation.

Autonomy/worry free

How autonomous they really are. This includes things like getting avoid getting stuck in corners, walls, trees, water hoses, toys, tree branches, rocks, sprinkler systems, water faucets, poo...Some complains in that area, but in general, they seem to be doing ok.

Also self recharging...

Getting stolen

This has been addressed in general by alarms, lock pin and sheer weight (not so easy to pick it up and run with it).

Price

They are affordable when compared to what you save, but still pricy ($1k-$4k for consumer type), which probably holds people up.

Reliability/Maintenance

Stuff like blade breaking because it hits a rock or... Haven't seen negative comments about that but there is some estimates on the web on estimated maintenance costs per year.

Finish

This would cover the individual cut of the blade or the overall look of the grass. But overall, only saw one negative comment on this.

Noise

Speed

I think this is more a safety issue. Standard travel speed is about 60 feet/minute.

Do they need to collect the grass they cut?

Many do, but no need!!   It is actually better. But make it mulch.

Stop under the elements

Avoid mowing after heavy rains, as this will make mowing more difficult and cause clippings and mulch to bunch.



Then, we just had a look to what is out there:

Traditional mowers: electric weed trimmer and reel mower (~$100). Didn't check the motorized ones. Note: check out the video on sheep getting trained to eat only a given type of grass...

Robotic manufacturers:

Wolf-garten
Honda, http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/21/honda-miimo-robotic-lawn-mower/
Husqvarna
Lawnbotts


There is a robotic lawn mower competition. Found this paper from one of the participants. Also this and this

Overall, feels that the products out there are pretty good. Below a "negative" feedback from customer, but in general, not sure why we are not seeing more...

Feedback:
"again with the buried line crap...   There was a GREAT system available about 5 years ago that used a series of positional sensors outside the home, and software on a PC to manage the mowing process.  Why it this not in use?  Buried lines create dumb mowers, the system I was about to buy (I aborted when my company informed me i was being relocated, and i have not got back looking) not only mowed, it reported back issues in the yard where fill dirt was needed, grass height information (which could indicate water or fertilizer changes are needed in some areas), etc.  Whole thing installed was about $2500, including a secure outdoor charging station and all the sensors.  It needed 1 sensor on the center of each facing wall of the house, and 1 on each corner, and the robot used positional triangulation for movement, which was accurate to the inch.  It also included an edger attachment, and would not just mow, but left clean edges where you told it to. 

These things are glorified roombas still requiring me to manually interrvene weekly in the maintenance of my lawn.  They provide no real value."

A quick thought about using a laser to cut the grass:
http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?279367-Laser-lawnmower
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2001-07-21/news/0107210078_1_clippings-grass-laser
http://grounds-mag.com/news/grounds_maintenance_youve_seen_mower/

Crowdfunding

I was just thinking of ways to have the money that goes into treatments go to the pockets of those who really created those treatments. The day to day researchers everywhere. It goes to the pharma sales folks. To the doctor. To the advertiser. Etc. Till it trickles down to few $$ on the pocket of the researchers. It is also well known that many of the funding non-profit collecting organizations take a good chunk of the money they collect to pay for their overhead. I am not going back now and checking this data, but if I remember right, the CEO of the ACS (American Cancer Society) gets paid about $1M. So, one way I thought was if scientists directly asked for money to the public to pay for their research. That would also give a chance to people outside the status quo (young researchers, etc...). But what could they give in exchange, though, of that money? A thought was information on the topic. The researcher is an expert on that topic, so, how about he contributed part time to a blog/a web/etc... on that topic? Or even more targeted. How about he answered emails from the donors? Anyhow, the following post talks about this topic. Not on the return to the funders, but on the way to select/attract funding:

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/03/startup-science/

Which mentions:
http://www.petridish.org/
http://www.sciflies.org/
http://myprojects.cancerresearchuk.org/  This is specially interesting and focus on cancer.
http://scifund.wordpress.com/about/
http://www.rockethub.com/

Still a lot to be done but it is a beginning.

PS.: For more entrepreneurial kind of projects, check www.kickstarter.com

Ownership of an invention by an employee in Spain

Straight from the law 11/1986, BOE núm. 73, de 26 de marzo de 1986

http://www.oepm.es/cs/OEPMSite/contenidos/NORMATIVA/NormasSobrePatentes_MU_Topografias_CCP/NSPMTCCP_Patentes_Modelos/NSPMTCCP_Patentes_Modelos_Nacionales/Ley11_1986de20demarzo_dePatentes.htm#tit3

The relation is covered under Title IV:

1. Article 15: Inventions related to the work the employee does are company's ownership, and company does not need to pay anything extra unless the effect of such an invention is way beyond what the employee was paid for.
2. Article 16: Everything else belongs to the worker. Notice that there is nothing in there on "an area where the company has or may have interest in the future". Only limit is what the worker is paid for, NOT what the company is working in or has interest in.
3. Article 17: If the inventor uses the company on any way for the invention, the company has the right on the invention. Use the company means, not only using company facilities/tools, but also acquired knowledge within the company.
4. Article 18: The inventor has to provide all the info related to an invention under articles 15 and 17 to the company in 3 months.
5. Article 19: This law still applies to inventions filed for patent even a year after the employee has left the company.
6. Article 20: Details in the University context.

Conclusion: bottom line, this looks to follow the "fairness concept" defended by me in previous posts.

Razors and blades strategy

While talking to a friend of mine on Intuitive Surgical, we discussed their business model of making a killer on the disposable portions of the DaVinci robot. I can see that with patents all over, and with a high barrier of entry, it would be hard to be a competitor for a while, so, that is a place where the famous "razors and blades" strategy would work. Same for instance, on glucose meters. This is a market (health care) also were quality prevails over cost (some times too much). But then, I wonder how Gillete, the named inventor of such a strategy was surviving today? So, I did some digging:
http://www.slideshare.net/rupakfeb7/gillette-final

You can skip the whole thing and jump to page 26: "Gillette no longer had that lock after the 1904 patents expired in 1921, and yet the strategy toward which it was unwillingly pulled worked. Whether that was consumer habit, or the superior quality of the Gillette blades, or something else is something that we cannot divine from the catalogues."
And last page: "And that leaves a hole in the analysis. Gillette had not played razors-and-blades when it could have during the life of the 1904 patents and did not seem well situated to do so after their expiration, but it was exactly at that point that Gillette played something like razors-and-blades, and that was when it made the most money. Razorsand-blades seems to have worked at the point where the theory suggests that it should not have. Why is that? Did Gillette succeed because of quality, or were there powerful, even if hard-to-discern-now locks—psychological or otherwise—between the razors and the blades?"

So, basically the author himself does not know. He proposes couple of thoughts, that maybe are confirmed in slide 24 of http://www.slideshare.net/rupakfeb7/gillette-final. Advertising, branding, etc... Bottom line, it could be quality or it may be beyond quality, the people simply got too much inertia to change or simply is stupid (assuming again there is no quality difference). Seriously, has anybody done the work of evaluating the two to justify paying for the more expensive one? Why would you go through so much trouble, anyhow? I guess that you simply assume the answer and pay for what theoretically is right (more price, better quality). I wonder what would be the strategy of a competitor to take market share away from Gillette. The competitors are not small (Wilkinson, BIC...), and I think the first actually tried (more advertising), but not sure they took market share away. It would also be interesting to check their advertising budget and how much of that affects the price of the blade.


Anyhow, the following article basically seems to say that the shaving experience is truly much better and people will be willing to pay for it. It also says that there will be a huge marketing campaign.
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/sep2005/nf20050915_1654_db035.htm



My next thing to investigate ink jets... :)

Pre-assignment of Inventions - SOLUTIONS

This is a follow up post to the previous post on Issues of Assignment of Inventions (AOIs). My point there was that AOIs hurt the companies applying them as much as they hurt the employees. It is a lose-lose situation.

The question is if there is a better system than this? And as the company is the one imposing these today, a better question would be "Is there a system that benefits more the company than the current one?" Here is what I think would be a potential formula, based on 3 pillars:

1. Restrict the ideas protected to ideas related to current or past positions of the employee. I.e., with the most aggressive terms used today, if the employee works in a broad multinational company, in say, the medical department, but comes up with an idea about a bathroom product, the company has all the rights as long as bathroom products are part of the company interests. With my proposal, unless a clear link was established, the default is that it would have employee ownership.

2. Even when outside the case #1, employee has to grant to the company a free non-exclusive license to the idea, in exchange of being able to work on it while in the company. If the idea can bring benefits to the company, a program could be in place where the company offers help to the inventor in exchange of a share or even incorporates that as part of their products in exchange of a reward. That way, this becomes a win-win. Company getting ideas from their employees beyond the people working on those teams, while employees getting in exchange an easier path to commercialization than going solo.

3. If the idea outside case #1 is related to any of employer's customers, employee should quit to pursue it. Company lawyers admit that AOIs are there to protect company customers from getting sued by/competing with the company employees. For instance, imagine the case where an employee working for National Semiconductors sues Apple for an idea he had patented, and Apple was one of National Semiconductor's customers. This could hurt the employer business with that customer. I don't feel this is a strong legal, moral or ethical reason whatsoever for the AOIs used today, but still, a clause could be added that in such a case the employee should quit the company.

With what to me looks like 3 fair rules, besides the immediate rewards for the company described above, there would be two more positive side effects:

1. Competitive advantage when comes to recruiting creative people. I.e., better talent.
2. An ethical practice/culture always pays off, likely resulting on employees sharing even the very good ideas they got as long as they are related to the line of work they were or are involved with. Today, even those (which the company is actually paying for) are sometimes hidden as a retaliation practice.

Thoughts? Why this wouldn't work? Why it is not there today? Is it because "everybody" does it?

Pre-assignment of Inventions - THE ISSUES

Usually, assignment of inventions are presented as hurting the inventor/employee of a company. I say that they hurt, in equal size the revenue of the companies which use them (the vast majority). The issue is that either no one cares in a big company ("it's not that individual's problem") or maybe they are the less bad of all solutions. I have not thought that far, so, on this post, let me just prove why they are such a bad solution:

[Note: The thought is to follow up with a 2nd posting with potential solutions]. In the interest of time I won't explain here what this document is but feel free to Google it (and also, scroll down this posting to read the main paragraph of the one I had to sign).

- Unethical practices: say you are in a foreign country and get this nice employment offer letter from a well respected Fortune 500 US company, including salaries and a bunch of conditions that you have to meet for the offer to be valid, like passing a future drug test, proof that your qualifications are real, etc... but one little paper is missing: the assignment of inventions (AOI). The paper is then presented to you on your orientation date after you had quit your job and moved to US. And either you sign it or you can go back to your home country! Believe it or not, this is actually not a strange practice (I know for a fact). Note though, that actually. this has little to do with the AOI and has more to do with simple ethics. The issue is that not many pay attention to this and as such, things are ugly maybe without real intention behind. Curiously, we are talking about companies that rank very high, if not the highest, on ethical practices. The funny part is that when I brought this fact up with the ethical officer on my company he simply choose to ignore the email! Bottom line, this hurts the relation between company and employee, and as such, the outcome for both.

- Unfair: On what grounds can somebody ask you to give them any idea your brain has, as long as it is interesting to them, specially if it has nothing to do with the work you are getting paid for, even if it is coming from a discussion with 3rd parties, even if "whatever", for FREE. Yeah, you will get paid the same regardless you give them an idea or not, regardless of the relevance/creativity/value..., regardless if they do anything with it or not!.

- Stupid: regardless of anything, the idea is not going to get explained unless the inventor decides to and no one would ever know! What kind of contract would rely on that? Actually the contract practical application says more like: "if you have a really good idea, please, quit our company and go do it outside"

Therefore, the result is that the better the idea is, the less likely to end-up inside the company, hurting the company who created the AOI in first place. On a future post I'll try to find out if there is a better practice around this...


A sample of an AOI:
"I agree to disclose completely, promptly, and in writing to employer and I hereby assign and agree to assign and bind my heirs, executors, or administrators to assign to employer or its designee, its assigns, successors or legal representatives, any and all inventions, processes, methods, apparatus, diagrams, or any improvements (all hereinafter collectively called “inventions”) whatsoever, discovered, conceived and/or developed either individually or jointly with others, during the course of my employment with employer (including any and all inventions based wholly or in part upon ideas conceived during my employment with employer), or using employer’s time, data, facilities and/or materials, provided the subject matter is one within a field of interest of employer. My obligations under this paragraph apply without regard to whether an idea for an invention or a solution to a problem occurs to me on the job, at home, or elsewhere. I further agree that all such inventions are employer’s exclusive property, whether or not patent applications are filed thereon."

Kayak story

Kayak is one of those ideas (I may post here others) that I had long time ago but never got to do. As foreigner living in US, I used to travel every year back to my country and I still remember the pain of checking different airlines/combinations, etc... I still remember checking Travelocity and Expedia, and then, using Orbitz when it came up, and all that time thinking: what the heck, can't you guys do that simpler?

Note: somehow I think Orbitz came after the other two, but not sure why made so much news... It is the same kind, isn't it?

Anyhow, this post wants to be a lessons learned so that I can apply this to future ideas. Mental note: one day hopefully I'll stop learning lessons and move my ass. But anyhow, let's analyze what went on my mind and why I didn't do it, and what if I would have...

1/ The idea came from a basic need and suffering. I.e., when you find something that bothers you, instead of getting upset at it, think that this may be your opportunity to create a solution. I actually think that this is a great source for ideas. Only issue is that it is not really creative, so, out of all the other people getting bothered by the same issue, few ones can come up with the idea and become your competitors.

2/ So, who become my competitor? You can find their story here:
http://bostinnovation.com/2010/10/25/boston-tech-mafia-mondays-the-kayak-crew/

Interesting to see that:

1. This were really experienced people on the travel agency field.
2. Lots of funding went behind to start this. So, my biggest question is why? Why so much funding? I can't see really why some of these ventures take so much money. Look (ignorant myself) that one could program an application like this really easy. Yeah, I agree that you would have to have access to the database but still. And I agree the filters are nice and the application fast, but still, we are talking about 100's of million of $$$$.

3/ And myself was trying to do this on my spare time!!

Oh well, I don't think I regret not to have done this myself. I probably would have failed as I have little experience on this field. The biggest lesson is probably that I should have approached some deep pockets with the idea, and probably they would have said "thank you", give me something, and let me move to something else. Again, back to #1, I don't think the idea was that "creative", so, maybe I would not have got even change, but at least, I have to thank Kayak for their site and making my life much easier, because I know that years would have past for me to move and do anything about it (probably the biggest lesson of all).

Mental note: I've never approached external funding, so, that is something I haven't learned (no experience).