And how exactly can you piss away $30m and have nothing to show for it...?
I see you've never worked on a defence contract.
True indeed.
I've worked on military projects that have pissed away >$10M and never saw the light of day. And that's chicken feed.
But in the case of uBeam, from what I have gathered, it seems they have set up their own class 100 cleanroom, their own transducer manufacturing facilities, all the latest high end manufacturing toys etc. Not to mention the high end staff for several years etc.
Wouldn't be too hard to spend that money if you bet big time by designing and setting up high volume custom manufacturing based on faith that it's all going to work as intended.
The 30 odd patent also would have cost a pretty penny, probably half a mil right there.
So they certainly won't have "nothing to show for it", they'd have considerable asset that could be sold off. or combined with the patents and know-how of whatever staff is left holding the bag, it would be worth something to a buyer for a niche application.
Odds are though it'll all be sold for pennies on the dollar when the merry-go-round eventually stops.
They are obviously starting the death spiral. All the signs are there:
a) Apparent loss of significant staff
b) Starting what sounds for all the world like a major R&D and production staff reboot
c) Going for the crowd funding after having raised $30M (and presumably spent with nothing publicly to show for it)
d) Both Meredith and one the key investors personally looking for and putting out potential media fires on twitter recently.