vlovich

In theory the PSD file format could be patent encumbered. Realistically I don't think it is.

Isn’t glass chemically/biologically non-reactive? My understanding is that plastics + long term salt water exposure means the plastics leach off into the biosphere. However I don’t know anything on this topic so I’m just hypothesizing put my ass. Happy to be corrected on the subject

Having done some occasional angel investing, since you asked, here are my reasons:

1. No clear path for what happens if your technology R&D doesn't pan out & you're still another 3 years away from figuring that out. What is your alternative exit strategy that doesn't lose your investors money if your R&D doesn't pan out or you run out of runway?
2. You said you have 3 years until you figure out if it works but $1M seems like a pittance to actually help execute that. You've burned through 5 of the 6 million you've raised so far & you admit your burn rate is probably going to only increase as you hire more people/have more capex, so I'm struggling to see how $2M is going to see you through.
3. Age risk. As the chief scientist & CEO you are setting the vision & strategy for your company. At your age (70) you have an even greater medical incapacitation risk. Is your team actually capable of continuing this research & executing on your vision without you & how will they do so?
4. Have you approached institutional investors that specialize in Series B? The apparent lack of institutional investors is a negative signal that one or some mixture of these is true: A) you're looking for uninformed investors who are effectively doing low-stakes betting on you taking off massively (i.e. FOMO) B) you're not willing to put in the difficult, time-consuming work (that most CEOs hate since it's viewed as a time-waste) of raising from institutional investors C) you're unhappy with the terms you'd get from institutional investors (e.g you'd have to give up board control). However, institutional investors would help a lot with larger follow-up rounds when you inevitably need it (as you see you're already reaching your limit with small investment amounts). In my experience most successful entrepreneurs, especially after the seed round, care more about the quality & value-add of the investor beyond just the cash whereas it seems like you're being much more indiscriminate. Since you still have a massive & ever increasing burn rate, your apparent lack of institutional investment & existing crowdfunding struggle means your difficulty to attain it in future rounds is only higher (i.e. it seems like your perfectly set up to have a down round next time, at best).
5. Your company was founded in 1976 & is located in NJ. How is your company structured (C-corp? S-corp?)? Is it still in NJ and if yes, why haven't you moved it to Delaware? Since your company has been around since 1976, how many investors do you have total at this point? AFAIK SEC regulations haven't changed regarding 500 investors so crowdfunding seems like the perfect approach to get you real close if not over the 500 limit & force you to become a public company.

Probably the single largest concern is #4. It doesn't seem like you're set up to successfully raise large amounts of cash from experts who can guide you through growing your company & help with future rounds. The company is set up to burn through increasingly large amounts of money since you need more headcount & capex to do a lot of ancillary R&D work beyond just your basic fusion research (e.g. heat dissipation). Crowdfunding is limited to $1m/year & to me this poses significant risks for down rounds if you hit any schedule problems since you're not buffering your cash reserves and you have no path to revenue for the next 3 years.

Of course, all of this is just 1 amateur's opinion & I wish you all the best of luck.

EDIT: Some other reasons I forgot to put down although it's more a due diligence/curiosity thing than anything that would stop me:

1. How do you plan on handling the regulatory risks that might prevent you from placing massive bombs in the middle of huge population clusters?
2. Why are you planning on charging such a small percentage of sales? You have the ability to provide power at a fraction of the cost that anyone possibly hit so why not charge way more & bring it down over time as you recoup your R&D costs?
3. You say that wind & coal are at ~8 & ~10 cents/kwh. However, Wikipedia says power purchase agreements are available at 2 & 3 cents/kwh respectively. Is your math off/outdated or are these power generation companies actually losing massive amounts of money?
4. You've proved out the x-scan technology in 2011 but still apparently haven't found a buyer. What's stopped you & why will other technology you develop along the way to your final goal not suffer the same fate?

I never said I was concerned about meltdown or radiation hazards or that it was riskier than fission. However, it's not unreasonable to ask the domain expert what happens with all the plasma & energy being generated if things go catastrophically wrong & what the chances of such a catastrophic failure are. Are you an actual domain expert on the specific fusion technology they're building or are you just guessing?

EDIT: For context, when I say "bomb" I count lithium batteries as bombs too. It's all energy that can all be released at a moment's notice so the larger amount of energy you're storing/generating, the larger your bomb is & it needs to be counteracted by mitigating the chances of catastrophic failure or making sure that during catastrophic failure it can only fail in a "safe" way (i.e. can't release all the energy at 1 moment).

I’m confused about your point on control. Your examples of Facebook and Google in fact seem to contradict your position, at least as I understand it; both those companies (and many others) have taken on institutional investment while retaining voting control of the board. However I understand voting control isn’t everything - board members still have soft power since they can help you with future rounds. That still seems like a good trade-off; you can raise greater funds so you can staff up your xscan technology spinoff to demonstrate to future investors there’s profitable innovation along the way even if the fusion doesn’t pan out or it takes longer than expected. It’ll also mean that if unexpected things happen (as they always do) the company is on safer footing financially.

Re your desire to positively impact the world. I applaud it, I truly do. There’s a massive energy crisis that’s been building for over half a century that threatens our species. However, this is a for-profit venture and it’s a competitive world. Just because you get there first doesn’t mean people won’t catch up quickly and out-compete (bonus - they won’t have taken your risks and will be more than happy to accept institutional funding to ramp up). Patents are great but they only stave off competition for so long, if your competitors even care about it (hint - you’ll have enormous legal fees enforcing that they do care).

Regarding the bomb, thing I didn’t mean to imply that it was going to be a hydrogen bomb. I simply meant: a) is there any possibility for any kind of runaway reaction b) can you convince regulators to actually not get in the way of you executing your vision (cause there will be public uninformed concerns) c) is there any possibility for weaponizing the underlying science (if yes that could actually be a good thing - edit: not to get misconstrued - good thing in terms of ensuring the government has a vested interest in helping you enforce your patents)? D) is it possible to weaponize the actual device or use it to help weaponizing (if yes that’s not so good). Like I said that was more technical curiosity than anything material about why I may or may not invest. My investment concern is that aside from the risk of the science not planning out (which wouldn’t prevent it per se), I’m not getting a lot of confidence you’ll be able to execute on the business aspects of the company.