> competition will ALWAYS be there

Yup, that is VC catechism. But, let's see:

What competition did Xerox have for their
model 914 copier? Gee, someone else had
a license to print money?

What competition did IBM have for their
line System 360? Another license to
print money.

What competition did Boeing have for their 707?
It dominated transportation between the US
and Europe, drove out of that business both
steamships and piston powered airplanes.
And, it was a license to print money.

What competition did HP have for their HP-35
scientific calculator? Elegant and powerful
beyond belief, especially for the time.
Some of the best STEM people in the world
nearly worshiped the thing. Price no
object. License to print money.

What competition did IBM have for their
DB2 relational database system with SQL?
You want to use network, hierarchical?
Gotta be kidding. Maybe if you pay
your database application developers
10 cents a hour and want projects to
run a few years instead of a few weeks.

For the first IBM magnet disk storage system?
Otherwise you want, what, punched cards?

The US have for A-bombs starting in 1945?
A big tragedy is what the US lost taking
Iwo Jima and Okinawa when just
two B-29s from Tinian were all that was
needed.

The US have for the proximity fuse during
WWII?

The US have for the SR-71 -- Mach 3+,
80,000+ feet, 2000+ miles without refueling?
One never got shot down.

The US have for Aegis phased array radar?
Aim the thing nearly instantly, just
electronically, and track some huge
number of targets all from just one
radar.

The US have for Keyhole, basically a Hubble
but aimed at the earth and before Hubble?

The US have for the first atomic powered
submarines?

The US have for GPS, the first Navy version
and the first USAF version?

The US have for the Abrams tank,
shoot 2 miles, at night, through fog,
while moving against a Russian tank
with range 1 mile that needed a clear
day and had to stop to fire. Which
tank do you want to be in?

The US had for the F-117 -- fly through
the Baghdad anti-aircraft artillery and
anti-aircraft missiles for the whole
of Gulf War I without a single scratch.

The US have for the B-2?

> Your back will always be against the wall, it'll never be perfect, and please don't ever expect an overnight success story the day that you launch.It'll be a long dreadful process, ...

Ah, guess that somehow the Lockheed Skunk Works
never understood that lesson. Instead, Kelly
Johnson showed up in DC with a pile
of papers, outlined the SR-71,
got the project approved, built the thing,
and essentially everything went as planned.
Same for essentially all the projects I
listed.

My conclusion: Poor Peter has spent far too
much time with poor projects.

Peter, here is a simple lesson for you:
Go to a golf course that has a
par 3 whole and for a year or so
get the list of players who made
a hole in one. Then notice that
really expert players are only a
small fraction of the list.
So, you want to conclude that being
an expert player is not important
in making a hole in one?
Sorry, Peter: Mostly the list has
poor players who got lucky, but
there were so many more poor players
than expert ones that lucky
poor players dominated the list.
So you conclude that actually
planning and intending to make
a hole in one is pointless.

For the projects I listed, each was
like a hole in one that was planned,
really better than making a hole in one,
where the project leaders,
called their shot in advance.
They didn't just get lucky.
Indeed, such US DoD projects have
much higher batting average
than Silicon Valley.

Peter, you've just got to take
a two hour course on "STEM Project
Planning 101". For a reading list,
read about each of the projects above.

Want to get the ROI of your fund up,
way up? Well, go only with projects
like the SR-71 -- a STEM project
with a powerful, valuable result,
with essentially no competition,
and that can be executed with
high reliability from the initial
plans just on paper.

Of course, to do this, you'd have to
be ready, willing, able, and eager
to read and understand technical
project plans, and you'd have to give
up on your idea that college dropouts
are the best STEM
project leaders.

And you'd have to give up on your
criterion of flying cars -- any
competent STEM project leader could
tell you that the energy, power,
control, and cost required are
way too high. And, safety would be
a disaster.

Thankfully for US national security,
the US DoD follows ideas on projects
much better than yours.

Peter, for STEM, SV is a grand disaster;
everyone on Sand Hill Road should
be ashamed. If they had any
comprehension of just how
incompetent they are, then they
would be just humiliated.

Instead, got a bunch
of lawyers, MBAs, history majors,
stock market analysts, biz dev
marketers, etc. Hopeless.

The problem sponsors at NIH, NSF,
and DARPA can evaluate projects
just on paper. Apparently there is
not a single VC in SV that can do that.

Peter, net, your advice just sucks.
For better advice, draw from the
magnificent, unchallenged,
unique world-class,
grand successes of the US DoD
for the past 70 years or so.

Peter, go back to school and get
a good Ph.D. in a STEM field,
do some serious projects,
and then revise your advice.
In the meanwhile you are just
your
wasting time, effort, and money
and that of anyone following your
advice. You should be ashamed.
At first I was really shocked
at the grand incompetence of SV.
Now I just laugh, but it's
getting to be no longer funny.

There is hardly a single IT VC in
SV that could get job in
a serious and competent STEM
project for the US DoD. Total
bummer.

The US DoD has done fantastic things --
e.g., won Gulf War I with more
injuries from R&R, e.g., softball,
than from enemy action. Meanwhile
SV IT VC ROI just sucks:

http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2013/02/venture-capital-returns.html...