The bit where the guy in charge repeats a factoid this thin as if it’s persuasive and illuminating, because he thinks it’s his vision that matters more than his money, is something that I think most reasonably experienced tech workers would recognize as an even bigger red flag than the parts where he’s like “And now I will use unrated equipment in a safety-of-life application against the strong objections of experts!”
@vruba another gem from that article:
“I had come across this business anomaly I couldn’t explain,” he recalled. “If three-quarters of the planet is water, how come you can’t access it?”
this business anomaly
@mendel “Oh, you want to know what the total addressable market for my business is? Great question. Let me answer it with a question of my own: Got a map handy? And the number of a good crime scene cleanup service? Because I’m about to blow. Your. Mind.” And then we cut to a reverse shot of a VC making lovey eyes.
@mendel “Something people don’t talk about enough is that the planet’s dry surface is basically flat. Most business there is happening on one level, effectively in a single plane. But the ocean is 3D. McKinsey predicts massive growth in immersive technology in the coming decade, and there are more than 1e18 m² of volume – that’s 3D volume – in the ocean, all of it potentially immersive. So the amount of room for business in the ocean is literally off this chart I made.”
@vruba here we simply multiply our annual revenue by the depth of the mariana trench, and…
It’s such a classic MBA-and-no-sense thing for an exec to say. It’s beautiful. It’s ten thousand times more damning than “One former employee said he seemed to ‘drink a lot of his own Kool-Aid’” or whatever. It’s the perfect quote. Sometimes doing things experts disagree with works, but the guy who’s like “Did you know Einstein failed math?” is going to cause more harm than a supervillain could.