You may have seen on social media yesterday that Humane, a Silicon Valley startup, has just released a new product, a little device that sits on your jacket and does some AI stuff. No one can tell exactly what it does, other than after raising $230 *million* dollars they’ve created a device that does less than an Apple Watch, and costs more.
The product is a complete flop, and yet no one would admit to it. Why?
Even people who should know better that the market for this product does not exist are responding with things like : "I don’t know if this is it, but I love what they’re trying.” , or “congratulations to the founders for trying something hard, and to the investors who invested into this.”
This is wrong. We should be honest about successes and failures regardless where they come from. If a pair of 20 something college dropouts launched a product like this, they would’ve been the laughing stack of the Internet for days. Remember Juicero, a startup that raised millions to reinvent a juicer, and failed spectacularly. We all recognized that was a waste. We understood, embraced it, and moved forward. The are plenty other examples where founders get scolded for trying hard things. Media constantly bashes Adam Neumann for doing something hard, or Elon Musk for building not one, but multiple spectacular companies. So why not Humane then?
I think Silicon Valley has a vision problem, where they fund and celebrate people they like, regardless of the outcomes, and they ignore people they don’t like, regardless of the outcomes.
$230 million could’ve founded 500 different startups, scrappy founders, who would’ve worked hard to first identify a problem and test the market before committing millions in resources to build something that nobody wants. Instead that money was wasted on very high salaries that produced a very murky result.
Trying hard things should be celebrated, but doing it poorly should not be rewarded.
It is basically a cell phone with a different interface. You are supposed to be able to do most things by just talking to it and it can project visuals as needed without a screen. Hardware is difficult, so it makes sense that this gamble cost a lot to back and produce.
The real problem here is the analysis, though. You looked at some freaking left field bet and determined that Silicon Valley is represented by this thing. It is just a device. The lack of criticism you heard is probably because most people haven’t heard of it and don’t care.
If you were really interested in Silicon Valley and recent new devices then you might have looked at the newer ultrasound machines that hospitals are using. They are far better than the old units and cheaper while also being quite profitable for the makers. But you don’t actually care, you are just sniping for click bait. Whatever.