Non-Profit Micro-Contributer Approach?

[Kyle]

Greetings FFS! 🙂 I have been following the dpf approach, and in particular the LPP project, for several months and have appreciated this community and the quality of thought and effort that so many of you have put into advancing and clarifying our understanding of the physics and engineering for this solution. Anyway, it is my pleasure to be here and I look forward to meeting you.

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What finally prompted me to register and comment was the thread in this forum entitled “List of Billionaires and informational packet.” I had some thoughts and two questions.

It seems that the conversation did not consider using the not-for-profit approach to the project fundraising: only the for-profit micro-fundraising and “anchor” investor approaches. Is there a reason that the non-profit approach is not considered?

Part of what I find so very attractive to the DPF project is the relatively small monies required for the proof of concept (not to mention the eventual production environment). I am confident that a non-profit micro-contributor approach could, through several low-to-no cost marketing approaches, raise these monies for the non-profit and the non-profit could, through a grant process, help fund the LPP proof of concept.

Advocacy groups from environmental lobbying organizations to space advocacy groups use this approach; in particular, the planetary society raised seven figures on multiple occasions for its “Solar Sail” projects. I imagine that a number of the regular posters to this forum might, like me, have received the many requests for funding for this project the planetary society put out in the past several years. Obviously, a focus fusion 501c organization would not benefit from the decades long and lengthy existing donor base the planetary society had to call on for its project, but this project would likely have two things going for it: one, broader, ‘sexier’ appeal; and two, a much smaller financial target. (A six-figure target is much easier to raise than seven.) Additionally, don’t forget the tax advantage with the non-profit approach for the micro contributors; we wouldn’t have the possible roi, but I suspect most of us would want to contribute for more altruistic and scientific reasons anyway.

Is the primary problem with the above solution just the lack of expertise and the money for office supplies and shipping?

Respectfully,
Kyle

[Warwick]

Kyle wrote: Greetings FFS! 🙂 I have been following the dpf approach, and in particular the LPP project, for several months and have appreciated this community and the quality of thought and effort that so many of you have put into advancing and clarifying our understanding of the physics and engineering for this solution. Anyway, it is my pleasure to be here and I look forward to meeting you.

<>

What finally prompted me to register and comment was the thread in this forum entitled “List of Billionaires and informational packet.” I had some thoughts and two questions.

It seems that the conversation did not consider using the not-for-profit approach to the project fundraising: only the for-profit micro-fundraising and “anchor” investor approaches. Is there a reason that the non-profit approach is not considered?

Part of what I find so very attractive to the DPF project is the relatively small monies required for the proof of concept (not to mention the eventual production environment). I am confident that a non-profit micro-contributor approach could, through several low-to-no cost marketing approaches, raise these monies for the non-profit and the non-profit could, through a grant process, help fund the LPP proof of concept.

Greetings Kyle, you are very welcome.

I’ll be honest and say that I did not fully understand what it is you are suggesting.
My understanding was that LPP didn’t need any more cash to finance proof of concept but now it’s not clear for me? Rezwan?
I’m a bit confused as to whether what you have in mind, Kyle, is literally non-profit (as in, zero profit) or actually altruistic (net donations)??
My immediate reaction is, yes, 6 or 7 figures is the most anyone could probably raise on a “free loan for the good of humanity” basis. But if it’s for proof-of-concept, they might never see the money again, so I think it would run into the same problems as trying to issue for-profit debt.

How much investment (in total) would be needed for manufacture of FF units to replace the world’s current energy consumption (however this would be used)? Well, back of an envelope …. World consumption rate is 1.5 x 10^13 Watts (according to wikipedia).
At 5 x 10^6 W per unit, that means 3 x 10^6 units and at a cost (we’ll ignore any markup that would represent an extra need of credit to the consumer) of $200000 per unit, that makes $6 x 10^11 (unless I made a mistake, I’m not very good at arithmetic). Or, in American trillions, about $0.6 trillion or $600 billion. In context, world GDP is $60+ trillion.
Fortunately it’s possible for people to borrow against future income (if they have any) to buy their shiny FF units sooner … as long as all that credit is available.

So I think 3 things.

1. A lot comes down to a question I have wondered for a while – of the predicted $200k cost per unit, what is marginal cost and what is the overhead of setting up a facility (whoever it is that does it, whether LPP or a third-party)?How can funds for building facilities be raised?
LPP itself going public, in the traditional sense, would be madness for sure. The big boys will snap it up in an instant. I guess it could be good for the developers – they’ll be sailing private yachts for the rest of their lives, as opposed to being found in a field, which is what always might happen if you successfully rock the big boys’ boat. But in 10 years some filmmaker will make a documentary called “Who killed Focus Fusion?” and that will be all that ever happened.
I understand that preference shares are not a great solution in that the financial situation is there the same as with bonds, according to wikipedia. Never knew that before.
Brealey and Myers “Principles of Corporate Finance” book* gives a list (p.934) of defenses against hostile takeover. The most well-known is the “poison pill”. For this it says “Existing shareholders are issued rights which, if there is a significant purchase of shares by a bidder, can be used to purchase additional stock in the company at a bargain price”. It’s not immediately clear whether that might work. Imagine a big utility comes along intent on paying whatever it takes to snuff you out. Will the existing shareholders really be able to beat it even at bargain rates? Probably not. Maybe if a big purchase of shares triggered automatic free distribution of shares to existing shareholders it might work. “Cyanide pill”.

2. Who will the customers be? It seems fairly obvious from the above simple arithmetic that it wouldn’t be that sensible for LPP, or the manufacturer, to own the units themselves and sell electricity. (Am I right? What say?)
So as customers for the units, I think non-profit firms is a likely answer. Sure there will be some industrial consumers that are one big for-profit entity – no problem there. But residentially?
I can certainly imagine a network of cooperatives, each owning and operating one or two units, each independent and owned by the consumer-members. I guess there would be between 1,000 and 2,000 members per co-op and this means a joining fee of $200 – not inconceivable at all that someone would pay that in exchange for no electric bills.
This would be amongst the most democratic forms of power plant ownership.
By contrast, big capital has other avenues. Plant that already exists will not be rendered worthless, not unless and until the price of electricity were to crash. Marginal costs at most large power plants are very small; you could say that due to government subsidies (in the UK anyway), marginal costs at fission plants are in effect negative.

[Warwick]

3. Anyway, so given how easy it would be for such non-profit customers to come up with the funds if the markup were small, the question becomes this: how much faster can manufacture be performed if retained earnings are initially greater, and could it be rushed if costs (and prices) were then to be higher?

Well it’s all speculation on my part.

*awesome book used in Warwick business school

[Rezwan]

Warwick wrote: My understanding was that LPP didn’t need any more cash to finance proof of concept but now it’s not clear for me? Rezwan?

What gave you this understanding? Let me know so I can clarify it elsewhere on the web.

LPP has partial funding. They will need more funding to complete the proof of concept.

Kyle wrote: I am confident that a non-profit micro-contributor approach could, through several low-to-no cost marketing approaches, raise these monies for the non-profit and the non-profit could, through a grant process, help fund the LPP proof of concept.

Advocacy groups from environmental lobbying organizations to space advocacy groups use this approach; in particular, the planetary society raised seven figures on multiple occasions for its “Solar Sail” projects. I imagine that a number of the regular posters to this forum might, like me, have received the many requests for funding for this project the planetary society put out in the past several years.

Kyle, you’re right on with this. It’s a very good approach to take. We tried this initially, but not in an organized fashion as a nonprofit would. Just as a website, with a linked paypal account, and no dedicated person or team of people following through.

We now have some seed money to try and develop into a fully-functioning, effective nonprofit to do what you have suggested here.

Is the primary problem with the above solution just the lack of expertise and the money for office supplies and shipping?

Money isn’t just for office supplies and shipping. It’s mostly for expertise. The major budget of a nonprofit organization is staff salaries. The staff raises money to cover their own salaries, and the programs. Programs also usually involve salaries. Like, if you want to give healthcare to people, you pay the people delivering the health care. If you want science to happen, you pay scientists to work.

Unfortunately, it takes money and time to raise money. Like fusion, the nuclei don’t want to fuse unless you hit them with a lot of energy. And once they do, they give back energy. More out than in makes it sustainable – I’m not expressing this analogy well.

The nonprofit development goal here is to turn FFS into an effective, resilient fusion advocacy organization that reaches out to everyone it can, and attracts action and money for the pursuit of fusion.

Obviously, a focus fusion 501c organization would not benefit from the decades long and lengthy existing donor base the planetary society had to call on for its project, …

Yes, we don’t have their well developed donor base. That is our number one goal! Although it’s really cool that we have a core group of consistent donors (more than 40! Thank you all! You’re the best! The only folks on this site who actually pay cash! Your names will go down in the book of Fusion!) From this base, we raised over four thousand dollars this year.

Doesn’t sound like much – but over the years it’s kept the site afloat and attracted investor $ to real research. Think what we could do with more typical nonprofit organization funding. FFS’ goal is definitely to grow along the lines of the planetary society. It’ll take expertise, and building on our strengths – on all the folks who are interested in FFS now.

What is your own expertise in this field?

but this project would likely have two things going for it: one, broader, ‘sexier’ appeal;

Sexier appeal? How do you figure? Do elaborate.

What I get from most people is that fusion is just impossible, a pipe dream, so we can’t do it (a lesser problem is the group that thinks this is so self-evident and simple, it must already be funded and done).

When you think of other nonprofits, they offer something with immediate and risk-free benefits. Food for the poor, job training, pictures of stars and planets…Fusion research is pretty risky. It might not work.

This is why we have to make the quest itself sexy, and the successful resolution of the quest – well I think that reward is pretty self-evident.

Yes. The real challenge here is how to make the quest for fusion as sexy as a net-energy result.

I’m wondering how Edison kept up his spirits after the 50th useless lightbulb. Maybe after the 600th worked, he looked back fondly at lightbulb 263 and thought – “that one was really my favorite”.

and two, a much smaller financial target. (A six-figure target is much easier to raise than seven.)

I think LPP needs a low 7 to complete things.

But you’re right. Once we develop into an effective nonprofit with all the mechanisms of fundraising that come with that, the money could be raised. Humanity needs fusion, and we have to pull together to make it happen. It’s a collective endeavor. Perfect for a nonprofit to champion.

Additionally, don’t forget the tax advantage with the non-profit approach for the micro contributors; we wouldn’t have the possible roi, but I suspect most of us would want to contribute for more altruistic and scientific reasons anyway.

Ugh. Taxes. We’ll have to be careful to maintain our 501c3 status. We can’t be a fundraiser for LPP which is a private company. But if we do start raising serious money, I’m sure there are ways to be compliant and still achieve these goals.

[Rezwan]

And I believe last year there was a single donation for $10,000. It was sent anonymously, so we don’t know who to thank. But that was great as well!

[Kyle]

Thanks, Warwick and Rezwan. Warwick, I hope the below will clarify the scope and details of the proposal I am making.

From the top down, conceptually, I see five broad phases to any fusion energy project:
I. The science/physics theory:
a. For the DPF experiment, this was largely done, as I understand it, between the loss of NASA fusion grant monies in 2001-ish and the resumption of DPF engineering in 2008-ish.
II. First prototype and engineering (‘proof of concept’):
a. This phase sometimes iterates with the theory phase, obviously.
b. This is where we are now with the LPP DPF experiment.
III. First Production unit deployed
IV. Rapid business expansion; “new market formation”
a. Significant competition enters the market
V. Established market

Warwick, your comments are very applicable to (and great ideas for) phases III and IV; my comments were more directed at phase II—which is where money is most needed and hardest to come by and is where I would like to focus our immediate discussion.

The above phases are intended as a general statement, as specific completion/stage-gate conditions apply to each phase. For example, in the case of the DPF experiment, and its subsequent business model, phase II would have two likely completion criteria:
I. The prototype experimentally (and independent peer-review) demonstrates net energy gain: Ep > Ec, where:
a. Ep = Total usable (by the grid) energy produced; and
b. Ec = Total energy consumed by the DPF.
II. Based on the above experimental results, Cdpf < or = Calternative, where:
a. Cdpf = Amortized unit cost for DPF = (Cp + Cu + Cf)/El
i. Cp = Purchase price of the DPF generator
ii. Cu = Fixed upkeep for generator, housing and personnel over the lifetime of the generator
iii. Cf = Marginal fuel costs over generator lifetime
iv. El = Energy produced over generator lifetime
b. Calternative = Amortized unit cost for existing energy solutions ~ $1200-2400 per (what was the unit Eric gave here in his google talk?) (Coal at the bottom of that number and wind/solar at the top – if someone has better numbers, please let me know.)
i. Calternative has the same conceptual equation as Cdpf, but as we already have the numbers, it’s easier to simplify here.

Strategic note: it is possible to shift the second complete/stage-gate criteria from phase II over to phase III; however, bear in mind that as risk is shifted from phase II to III, funding will be harder to come by for phase III and you will likely pay more for that funding (especially if you do a private, for-profit equity round). (Aside: venture capitalists like nothing more than a huge ROI venture with just enough risk that they can negotiate substantially higher equity positions for themselves, while not having so much risk that it is perceived as “fatally flawed”.)

Further, for purposes of clarity, there are two legal organizations here about which we are talking: Focus Fusion Society and Lawrenceville Plasma Physics (they are perhaps sibling organizations, but distinct nonetheless).

The Focus Fusion Society is a non-profit organization with the purpose of creating a community of people who want to bring to reality “Unlimited Safe, Clean, Low-cost Energy for Everyone.” This could be interpreted broadly to mean any alternative method of generating base-load power that is environmentally friendly and inexpensive, from all types of fusion to biomass to solar, and etc., so long as they meet the above criteria.

Lawrenceville Plasma Physics is a for-profit organization: a high-technology research and development corporation specializing in applications of plasma physics, including fusion power and high-power X-ray sources. (C or S-corp, do you know, Rezwan?) As we all know, LPP’s primary activity at present is the DPF project.

The primary question I think that needs to be resolved is: “How do we best fund phase II for the LPP DPF project?” In my opinion, the answer is to fund the project with a grant from FFS. Follow-up questions to consider:
I. What should the strategic mix look like in order for FFS and LPP to adequately fund phase II?
II. To what extent should private equity funding (venture capital firms and accredited individual investors), private grants (non-profit and foundation) and public grants (NASA, DoE, etc) be sought?
III. What is ‘adequate funding’ for phase II?

Proposal Proper in next post. 😉

[Kyle]

Micro-contributor non-profit proposal (The slightly more fleshed out version.)
Therefore, in order to address the previous posts questions, I propose that FFS consider the following:
I. Emphasize raising monies through tax-deductible donations from many, small contributors in order to fund a (multiple) grant(s) to promising technologies that will further the mission of the organization.
a. Expand ‘contributor’ member list for the purpose of funding research grants and covering operating expenses. (Huge emphasis on the former—FFS would want to be a non-profit where 90+% of donations went directly to ‘the cause’.)
i. Develop the ‘marketing plan’ (I don’t like that name, as it is too “for-profit oriented” and buzz word sounding, but that is what it is.)
1. Online
a. Establish an “onboarding” process by which FFS welcomes new members and encourages their participation in discussions (details to be developed by FFS and vetted by current members in another string)
b. Identify one or two established “parent-figure” personalities from existing members to own the above onboarding process for new members
2. Drive new members to the FFS community
a. Viral posts to drive eyeballs
b. Partnerships with appropriate organizations or blogs
c. Etc.
3. Mail campaigns?
b. Increase internet “fun-item” sales (I think the t-shirts and etc are great)
i. Details on this to be developed and vetted
c. Establish a board of directors and/or board of advisors for FFS composed of three types of members:
i. 3-5 Serious science types;
1. Bring the gravitas and technical weight to FFS
ii. 3-5 Wow factor types;
1.Household names that bring ‘sex appeal’ and bring weight for fundraising pushes for particular projects
iii. 5-8 Serious business/money types
1. These individuals would be expected to bring, personally or through their network, certain funding levels to FFS (say $50,000/year).
d. Consider hosting one or several events throughout the year for presenting the progress and current understanding in alternative fusion physics approaches; these events would focus on both the science and the business, but emphasize the science.
i.These kinds of functions can be great revenue streams for non-profit organizations from both the conference fees and new members’ donations from conference attendees, but only if a good theme and presenters are constructed.
ii.One of these might be an evening event with ‘big fish’ philanthropy types, an attraction presentation (like The Canadian Brass play for a dance night, or a Hollywood comedian type does a stand-up, etc), and Eric Lerner giving the “look at what we are doing now and with your contribution this evening, we will solve world hunger!” presentation. (Well, “solving world hunger” might be a bit of an oversell, but you get the point. 😉 )
iii. Another might be a more serious industry conference with science papers being presented.
II. Consider adding a secondary objective to FFS’ mission: to provide funding for substantive science that advances the common good. (or some such language)
a. In this discussion, we could potentially address a significant gap in current science research funding between government grants and private, for-profit funding.
i. To potentially include a more social sciences discussion around: why would we, as a society, want the generation of power to be conducted by for profit businesses? (Like Enron: enough said, imo.)
ii. This also allows for using the social benefits derived from the research to drive interest in and contributions for FFS and the DPF
b. This second discussion is related, but not directly to point; for that reason and the one below I will leave a more detailed conversation here to another string.
III. This post has already gone WAY too long and many of you may not read this far, so I will curtail additional ideas; suffice to say that I think you get the idea around the proposal. (Questions or thoughts/reactions always welcomed, of course. 😉 )

The one outstanding question I have is: why not fund LPP’s phase II through a more traditional angel or venture capital round of financing? (I suspect that the answer here has something to do with a combination of: too much risk (too early in the research/engineering phase) for most funding sources; and too little is known, even by specialty energy VC firms, of fusion that is aneutronic—and what is known about fusion is that it is very risky, VERY expensive, not well understood by scientists, and has long development times. To summarize: I think VC firms will feel unable to properly conduct their due diligence and risk assessments prior to considering an investment. Eric would be the best source for anecdotal insight to this question, I think.)

[Aeronaut]

Excellent thread, Kyle. Don’t worry about length- some of these threads wander all over the solar system.

I like the idea of the FFS grant(s) to LPP to keep things straight regarding equity. As for risk, nothing succeeds like success. We need to target the Twenteens- those in high school and only a few years out in order to get a true viral campaign. Truly viral means spending little to nothing on promotion, since each of these early adopters would spread the word to an overall average of hopefully at least 2 more people. Some may get 1 or none to look us over, some may get 100 or more. As long as the overall average is 1.0 or higher, the campaign is viral.

Colleges and universities are the best places to seed viral movements, due to the localized society and the physics departments. And these societies’ members are in touch with those of other schools. This is how FaceBook got started. The viral campaign would have two major purposes, imo-

1. Get every candidate in the 2010 and 2012 elections to justify his/her energy positions and policies due to recognition of a wildly spreading public movement.

2. Bring in a manufacturer with the balls to invest $20M in a license and perhaps $100M total across a year or three (probably more counting engineering the X-ray converter) for an as-yet unproven technology. In short, a visionary who leads a visionary board of directors. But if we get one, we need no VC vultures polluting the culture.

3. Get manufacturing trade journals buzzing about how to fabricate all the parts and sub-assemblies, and integrating the modules into companies, machines such as boilers and ovens, and local transformer yards. Urban planning rags could discuss how a few FFs in their jurisdiction would begin healing their economies. And helping with the political environment at the NRC.

Two books about this are Viral Loop (viralloop.com) and The Tipping Point. I recommend them in that order because Tipping Point takes wayyy too many pages for the amount of useful information in it.

My votes for the authority figures would be Rezwan and Aaron, as if they weren’t busy enough already.

So we need to seed at least one viral message (there are several that we could use in a rolling barrage) that FF is clean, cost-effective, will your university be the first to confirm Eric’s results? Do your energy policies reflect (our) reality? If not, please elaborate in detail… and we need to get literally almost everybody figuring out how to integrate FF into their local grid, and be in the first 100 municipalities to do it.

As for producing 20 million units per year, I’ve worked in several auto plants over the years. As long as our supplier networks can produce 400 million collector panels for the X-ray converter per year, there should be no major problem with that much production. Imho, the biggest single problem is politics.

[Kyle]

Thanks Aeronaut, I appreciate the understanding, though I must say, I want to wander all over the solar system; how do you do that? 🙂 I think you provided some great ideas for the viral portion of the approach; as well, I think Rezwan and Aaron are good suggestions, though managing the website is already a large time commitment for Rezwan, I would guess.

I wanted to give a few thoughts around the second “marketing plan” bullet, as I think it also has a lot of potential. I also wanted to provide an overdue analysis to Rezwan as to why I made the claim that I think that the DPF is more “sexy” than other projects that have managed large funding; in this case, I’ll start with an analysis of what the DPF has going for it and then compare to the Planetary Society’s solar sail as an example.

Best solution for the environment
This research has a serious chance of resulting in the single, best energy solution for global warming of all current and “in-the-works” production solutions in the next 5-10 years. This is attractive to both “liberal” and “conservative” US organizations on the issue; and, not to rip on the US here, but would obviously be attractive to the rest of the world. (Without getting too political, it never ceases to amaze me how you have to always make specific comments to address the often unreasonable positions of certain elements of the US political spectrum.) Anyway, I would expect FFS could partner with several of these organizations; again, this would need to be part of a strategy conversation before we would want to get down to specifics.

Solution for Aid Organizations
Here, I am speaking of the availability of significant amounts of energy at prices that would make it feasible for use in the production of quality food and water in developing nations. Dozens of significant, respected organizations with long contributor lists populate this space, not to mention potentially foreign governments.

Between 1 and 2 billion people in the world lack access to clean, drinkable water (depending on the source, and definition of “clean water”, but that seems to be the range). For example, Bangladesh is currently suffering from significant water shortage due to arsenic in the ground water. There exist several inexpensive up-front solutions for cleaning any type of polluted water that would substantively address almost all of these types of water issues, but in every case, they require electricity. (For example, Dean Kamen’s portable, enclosed distillation system that produces 10 gallons of clean water per hour on 500 watts of power is too expensive an ongoing cost for villages in Bangladesh that already have power lines.) With the reduction in cost of power by one-to-two orders of magnitude, these solutions become immediately viable and therefore of great interest for these organizations. A $1-2M total price tag is peanuts compared to the amount sought by other solutions: for example, $30M in VC funding is being sought by the founder of the Grameen bank/phone to deploy 1 kw “cow-dung” generators to be coupled with Kamen’s distillation device.

In any event, we should be able to negotiate with a significant number of organizations about partnering to fund this project on this benefit alone.

Patriotism
Dependence on “foreign oil” is a hot button issue, politically right now and this is a non-trivial matter when appealing to our demographics.

Create Jobs
Research and innovation have always been the primary means of creating jobs—if you have any questions there just look to the rail road jobs of the 19th century or the computing industry from 1980-2000. While production of DPF devices would not create as many jobs as those two examples, we would certainly be looking at the creation of tens of thousands of jobs directly and by suppliers.

In summary/conclusion
All of these approaches will combine to present a very compelling case to many potential partner organizations able to contribute in meaningful ways: from small to large possibilities. On the smaller side, perhaps a supplier could be convinced to provide a 10-20% reduction in the price for machined/manufactured parts that the DPF project needs as a tax write off for a contribution in kind, or by means of a commitment of first-right-of-refusal on possible future production contracts. On the larger side, FFS might approach some car manufacturers to fund part of the research as part of their brand and marketing efforts; if they can differentiate themselves as innovators in the electric car race, they position themselves for significant profit from initial sales and ongoing brand awareness and differentiation.

Exploration of the “Final Frontier”
In reality, while the DPF project provides attractiveness in all of the above areas more so than the Planetary Society’s solar sail projects, this is really the only area where their project is more “sexy” than the DPF, in my analysis; would love other opinions, if you see more areas where the solar sail project has more “sex” appeal. However, undoubtedly this is very attractive for certain target markets, more markets representing a larger portion of the population are attracted by the above “DPF sexy-list”.

Again, it cannot be underestimated that when comparing the entire package, the planetary society has a LARGE, existing donor base and huge names like Carl Sagan as the founding president. The claim I made, however, was that the DPF project is more “sexy” than the solar sail projects; corollarily, I think it is NOT true that funding the DPF project will be easier than funding the solar sail project for the above organizational reasons.

[Kyle]

Bummer, I ran into post length maximum by 200 characters on the last post. So, in conclusion to that previous post:

Bottom line opinion: we should give this approach some serious effort, as an organization, as it has huge upside to advance our mission, with only moderate downside (initial money investment—when this money could instead go directly to the DPF project).

[Brian H]

Kyle wrote: Bummer, I ran into post length maximum by 200 characters on the last post. So, in conclusion to that previous post:

Bottom line opinion: we should give this approach some serious effort, as an organization, as it has huge upside to advance our mission, with only moderate downside (initial money investment—when this money could instead go directly to the DPF project).

Lots of ground.

The core issue has always been “plausibility”, IMO. As Rezwan says, getting beyond the “Pie in the Sky” reaction is very hard. FF fulfils so many wish-lists that it sounds made-up. Yet the claims are all real … as long as the base science and tech is feasible! And that, of course, is where things are right now. Getting enough data and results to swing a few opinion-leaders would be the key to all the rest.

As far as “solving world hunger”, no exaggeration at all. Agriculture is a very energy-dependent enterprise, and there are several ways in which FF would impact supply, distribution, affordability, and availability.

As Aero implies, I’d put very little hope or effort into Venture Capital. Even if they deny it, what they REALLY want to to is get an early run-up of share value, dump quickly for a hefty profit, and on to the next stock flip. In order to achieve that, they want voting control over the corporation. They fully expect 8 or 9 out of 10 of their investments to fail, but want to milk the winners big-time.

As for corporate backers, the only auto company I’d trust for an instant is TeslaMotors, because it is fully invested in pure electric vehicles. The others are just covering their butts. Maybe Mitsubishi, which is going to start pushing the Leaf this year, might be safe to deal with, I don’t know.

As for Aero’s $100Million dream, I see no place for it. It is unnecessary in the design phase, and once the proven generator is available for license to manufacturers, it is unnecessary. I don’t believe Eric wants to turn LLP into a manufacturing conglomerate; it’s a distraction from getting as many FoFus as possible made and used world-wide ASAP.

[Warwick]

Rezwan wrote:

My understanding was that LPP didn’t need any more cash to finance proof of concept but now it’s not clear for me? Rezwan?

What gave you this understanding? Let me know so I can clarify it elsewhere on the web.

LPP has partial funding. They will need more funding to complete the proof of concept.

It was around the time of the Economist article, something just before that. In fact it was the impression I got from this site I think.

I’m a bit mystified. How could it make sense for a large-scale private investor (was it an investment fund?), that could afford to back the whole thing, to pay for half the development work, with no guarantee the other half will ever take place?
Surely that’s a much worse risk for them than just the risk of the design not being successful?
Or do they invest some and then wait and see whether the results look any good before investing more?
Hard for me to understand their course of action.

Rezwan wrote:

Is the primary problem with the above solution just the lack of expertise and the money for office supplies and shipping?

Money isn’t just for office supplies and shipping. It’s mostly for expertise. The major budget of a nonprofit organization is staff salaries. The staff raises money to cover their own salaries, and the programs. Programs also usually involve salaries. Like, if you want to give healthcare to people, you pay the people delivering the health care. If you want science to happen, you pay scientists to work.

So, your intention is raise $1m in donations. Maybe that could happen, you know better than I.
But if that proves difficult, and the main problem is LPP salaries, LPP could always just offer to make their staff junior partners. Offer a share in the profits and a low salary in the meantime, rather than paying out at the market rate upfront.

It also seems more likely that LPP could raise more backing if it were possible for micro-investors to invest through an investment fund rather than through donations to FFS. Though who can say for certain.

[Rezwan]

Hey Kyle, just left a message for you. I love the direction you’re going in.

On a related note, I looked into Sage nonprofit software. Brilliant stuff, but it’s over $3000! The lady mocked our organization. Well, not really. She just said they work with nonprofits that have at least a $500,000 operating budget, and she knew we couldn’t afford them until we add a couple of zeros onto our budget! Nonprofit industry, who knew.

But she did suggest I go to techsoup.org, which I did, and I’ve just signed up. Check it out and tell me what software you think we should get for administrating our (soon to grow) donor base.

Warwick – interesting post. This reminds me of your comments elsewhere about the end of poverty being more due to the ideas of the enlightenment than the raw energy unleashed. Without money, energy and time, good ideas remain just ideas. Ideas, can, of course, make things more efficient, thus reducing the amount of energy, money or time required. But action is ultimately physical. And physical things eat time, energy, money.

The goal shouldn’t be to figure out how to better exploit the people who are working on a solution, but how to support them. You don’t want them worrying about their rent/mortgage/children/health etc. You just want them worrying about the problem you want solved. Also, we want to get people to support this avenue of research for aneutronic fusion in general – draw more money to it from all around, and for other aneutronic projects. Investment + support, not auto-exploitation.

And, about the micro-investors – you’d have to change a lot of laws.

[Warwick]

I still don’t understand why someone would want to invest a partial amount if they could finance the whole development process.
Is there any prospect of further investment from that source?

[Warwick]

By the way, I didn’t assert that the Enlightenment (freedom/capitalism) would bring about the end of poverty.
But I happened to see this the other day
http://fora.tv/2007/06/21/Judea_Pearl_Science_and_Human_Freedom
… a fellow Bayesian claiming that it is what led to the industrial/technological revolution, which I think is very plausible.

[Author]

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