Standard non-inverting opamp with a cap across + and - terminals...... Why?

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Cambridge Instruments did do one-offs, for people like IBM. It never made a lot of money but it was a fertile source of new products, in part because the Cambridge Instruments engineers involved in the one- off's spent a lot of time with the customer's engineers who were working close the the state of the art in a variety of exotic applications.

Not too different from what you are doing at the moment, in fact, though they got paid for it.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

They got paid once and didn't make a lot of money. We get paid over and over, for many years after we do the design, literally thousands of times, without much additional engineering effort. Why sell all that intellectual property once?

Scientific-instrument and aerospace type products can have very long lifetimes, 10 years or more, as opposed to consumer designs that may be obsolete in months.

The creation of fertile ideas from one-off projects is great unless that's all you do. Fertile ideas that are not commercialized esentially die.

John

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Whenever the one-offs seeded a new product, they got paid over and over, just like you, and they also got paid for doing the messiest part of the development work. It can be a way of getting part of new product development paid for by other people

I've noticed.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Right, but it's them who plunk down the money. He who pays the piper gets to pick the music. After all, they get to lose any and all of their invested funds if things fizzle, which they do at times.

I've been quite happy with VCs so far. They sure do appreciate good design engineers being on the team, regardless of whether employees or consultants. Quite different in academia.

Umm, I make a living that way ...

One trick I've seen: A VC finds an interesting startup that's trendy (like nanotech maybe) but running low on cash. They become pals, with the VCs stroking the founder's ego and assuring him that he's a genius and there will be lots of funding soon. So the founder keeps spending and "Soon" turns out to not be soon. The founder doesn't look elsewhere for funding (it would offend his new pals) and doesn't economize. The vultures wait until the founder is desperate, about to miss payroll and lose all the 3F (especially family) money, then shove a deal in front of him and say, basically, sign or die. Now he works for them, and none of the other investors are likely to see a nickel back. The other inverstors are typically forbidden from selling any stock for 18 months after IPO, so the VCs get all the upside.

Worms. I've tangled with some; they have their own weaknesses.

John

That's fine if you can do it. But you've got to keep hustling, and can get whipsawed by too much business or too little. Some people can't take that stress and after a few years start looking for a "real" job with a regular paycheck. To be a successful consultant you have to be able to do the technical stuff, plus business and politics.

I like manufacturing. Those good people on the 2nd floor keep cranking out products, whether I goof off this week or not. The stresses are much longer-term.

John

Then this founder should have never started a business in the first place. That is almost like trusting the banker who says "Oh, no problem, you just refinance before the ARM pops. The home will have appreciated so much that you can even take out some remodeling money at that time. Just sign down there, will ya?"

We all know where that has brought our country.

Then the other investors should not have been business investors. If they didn't put clauses in there that give them sufficient voting power for that scenario they either had no clue, a bad lawyer, or no lawyer. They also must have failed to monitor the business progress and finances properly.

Seriously, it can be done if investors watch their own investments. In business you can't just plunk it down like into a CD and forget about it until a month before maturity. When I took over the helm at a division that was in some trouble with production a visitor was announced. I was told I'd better take care of him. A very worried gentleman entered my office, a guy who must have put most of the eggs into one basket, ours. And the stock value sure was nothing to write home about at that point. I explained to him in great detail what I was about to change in the division and why, and what the risks are. Then I got into our automation plans for production. "Don't you want to close the door when we talk about stuff that affects labor?" ... "No need to, all our employees know what'll happen and why." ... "Oh!"

Then I profoundly thanked him for taking such an interest in the business where his money was invested in. This kind of surprised him and he left my office much less worried and a couple of years later he didn't have much to worry about anymore.

All I can tell you is that I was quite impressed with the VCs I've dealt with so far. Even down to tech stuff. During lunch breaks they often asked me "Now how does this xyz gizmo work?"

Yes, that whipsaw is most certainly there, all the time. But you get used to that, probably just like firefighters get used to the range of many days of nothing to full crisis mode. For a consultant that requires a financial lowpass filter with a substantial time constant. Spectrally this should be in the nano-Hertz region :-)

True. Although in the current business climate I would not want to be an employer in California. I know some local business people quite well and they sure have their stresses right now. One has actually told me that if the tax'em spend it mentality goes on much longer he'd just about had it with our state. The leftists might say this is just saber rattling but he already has the pertinent data for other states, in the south-east.

The case I got most severely tangled in, the founder was an academic and the investors, friends and family, believed in him. So did I for a while. I invested some time; they invested money.

The founder didn't know how to say "no" and tried to be too nice to everybody, made too many promises, spent too much money. Academia isn't the best background for running a business. He ran a major department (had his own big building) at a major university, but noted that in all his academic career he never had to fire anyone.

But by the time they were running out of money, it wouldn't have mattered how many clauses they had attached to their investments; it was sign or die.

Putty in their hands. The VCs reincorporated in Delaware, and the terms were draconian, to put it mildly.

John

There are some good ones. But there are some big-name rats.

John

Sounds like a clear case where someone should not have started a business. At least not by himself. I have been approached by people with deals like that, where I'd put in lots of sweat equity plus maybe money for prototype runs but would not be paid until royalties rolled in. Had to politely decline in all cases, so far. I would never completely rule it out to partcipate but the deal would need to be pretty darn good and almost look like a slam dunk. In my past cases the ideas were all good and sound but the market potential had been (IMHO) grossly overestimated. Many highly educated individuals without upper level management experience do not seem to understand that "1000-2000 units in the first year or two" is a recipe for disaster if this is stuff in the $10-20 range.

Again, weren't there regular board meetings? Why did nobody stand up and say "Now wait a minute, this looks like we are heading towards a train wreck here!" and then propose a few management "adjustments". We had something like that where the local airpark was heading towards their ultimate day of reckoning. I had to attend because we plus umpteen other local residents were in a legal tiff with them, had to formally lodge a motion with the board. I had to sit through the financials part and almost fell off my chair in disbelief. Then one of the stakeholders stood up and said "Guys, wait a minute here!" and later took over all their budget planning. Most likely the airport would no longer exists if it wasn't for that guy.

Did the founder walk away from it all?

No, he's still there, presiding over the slow wreckage. How depressing. Unless they are acquired in maybe 6 months, it's over.

I'd say more, but when I settled with the vultures I signed a non-disparagement thingie. They don't like their dealings being made public.

Anyway, what I learned is to be frugal, don't borrow money, and always own 51%. Too many engineers are too generous when they start their own thing, and give away too much equity to people who don't deserve it.

John

So the "evil" VCs might now lose their shirt as well ...

Understandable.

Yep. And those who are even the slightest bit insecure about the whole thing should have a finance guy look over their shoulders before _any_ major decision. Doesn't always have to be a super-expensive CFO. This could, for example, be a good and trusted CPA.

I think it's because they were scientists first, and scientists are trained to ruthlessly find and ignore 'small effects' that make the math harder. (That's the right approach in most cases, when applied carefully, but instrument design is not one of them.)

Untutored, they tend to assume that filters are brick walls, that most transducers are linear, and that Labview is a good way to take data. The good news is that most of them are smart and can learn how to do it a lot better with a bit of hand-holding.

Scientists who are also good designers without hand-holding are IME invariably found to have been hobbyists first. I've known a few, of whom the best was probably my late friend Roger Koch.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

(Going to bed now because I have a 6:30 AM plane to catch.)

I found that they often reject hand-holding or they don't have the liberty to spend part of the budget on getting help. Seriously, I have seen cases where they declined a few thousand Dollars worth of consulting help, bought some five-digits worth of "better" lab gear instead and the whole project fizzled (as expected).

At the RF institute at my alma mater scientists had the perception of hobbyists and ham radio guys being "kludgers". I hired on anyway as a project helper, that's the lowest pay rank, only option since I didn't have my degree yet. Still, for a student earning around six bucks an hour was like winning the lottery. Gradually my job migrated towards rescueing capsizing projects. Nobody talked about kludges anymore ...

One of the things that really irks me is that "amateur" and "professional" today have taken on the meanings of "kludgy" and "competent" rather than their traditional meaning of (something closer to) "unpaid" and "paid." :-(

Until professionals get hardcore stuck, then that changes rather quickly :-)