UBeam CEO Meredith Perry steps aside amidst B2B pivot
I&#x27;ve often thought about this predicament.  The original inventor made a demo and raised a lot of money.  It&#x27;s clear that after they went ahead, they didn&#x27;t quite get it working due to the physics involved.  (It&#x27;s not viable.)<p>Around the time that this was becoming super clear to everyone (around three years ago), I wrote them this (not sure if they got it):<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;WQicmGS" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;WQicmGS</a><p>Since then I&#x27;ve thought about this so much.  Here&#x27;s Suster&#x27;s glowing praise when handing them a huge check, a year earlier:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;i2zIslW" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;i2zIslW</a><p>What I concluded in the past 4 years of lightly watching this is that you must retain total, like, <i>totalitarian</i> power over your company, to do whatever you want to do.  Because uBeam did the hard part: getting the cash.  It&#x27;s practically impossible to fund a company.  Really, go ahead and try it.  I&#x27;ll wait.  See you when you&#x27;re 45 and have been trying for 15 years across ten companies, and finally said fuck it and built your own organic revenues of half a million a month with 90% margin, and still aren&#x27;t getting the checks.  The hard part is the Series A.<p>But the problem is signing paperwork that gives investors (such as Suster), any amount of control whatsoever.<p>It&#x27;s clear that Perry was smart enough to figure out the tech wasn&#x27;t working.  But she wasn&#x27;t <i>powerful</i> enough to pivot to something that was.<p>Her lesson, at least to me, is that you must retain almost total power to do whatever you want at the company.<p>I&#x27;ll never sign anything that gives investors any amount of power whatsoever.  If they want to be along for the ride, go ahead.  But you don&#x27;t get to be Steve Jobs without negotiating enough power to <i>be</i> Steve Jobs.<p>Steve Jobs has gone down a lot of rabbit holes that, uh, didn&#x27;t lead anywhere.  He could do that because he negotiated for it.<p>If you&#x27;re founding CEO, you need to negotiate for total power at your company.  Or you will end up like Meredith Perry.<p>The problem isn&#x27;t with the tech.  It&#x27;s that she just wasn&#x27;t <i>powerful</i> enough to keep doing whatever the fuck she wanted.  Her lesson to me is: &quot;Get more power.&quot;<p>If you&#x27;re the visionary CEO of a tech company, and aren&#x27;t powerful enough to do whatever the fuck you want to do, including pivoting out of what you <i>just</i> sold to investors - then you didn&#x27;t get the negotiations and the paperwork right.  Be more powerful.<p>-----<p>EDIT: downvoter, I&#x27;m happy to engage in a conversation about your opinion on this matter.