I worked at a small kite power startup in 2019. Unfortunately we couldn't secure funding to keep operating. It became quite difficult to secure funding after Google suspended their Makani moonshot project - potential funders were like "well, Google got out of this so why do you think we should fund you?". (though our kites were much smaller than Makani's and we didn't need a huge amount of funding to keep developing)
It's a very difficult problem keeping a kite flying in a figure 8 pattern allowing it to rise to the end of the tether and then effectively stalling it to pull the line back in - repeat over and over and while you're at it try to maximize power output for the weather conditions (and then there was the problem of automatically launching - we were leaving that for last). We were starting to look at reinforcement learning for the problem, but it was going to take a lot more data and a very accurate model of our kite and weather conditions.
Definitely one of the more fun jobs I've ever had even if it was short-lived.
I know nothing about kites but as someone who currently works at Google and knows a bit about how projects are funded, the first argument doesn't really make a lot of sense to me. At Google's scale, a materially impactful opportunity needs to have the opportunity to generate billions in revenue and have high margins. That's just a function of Google's size and opportunity cost (people can otherwise work on Ads, Cloud, etc). However, just because something isn't a Google business for Google doesn't mean there isn't an opportunity for a (very) profitable or successful business. Sounds pretty weak - perhaps the VCs you guys were pitching to were more focused on SaaS vs hard tech.
I think they saw Google's decision to defund Makani as a sign that kite power wasn't viable. We certainly weren't in the same league as Makani - their "kite" was essentially a largish 4prop airplane. Google must've spent in the several hundreds of millions on that project. Our prototype kites had a ~8' wingspan and we were operating on a shoestring budget.
> I think they saw Google's decision to defund Makani as a sign that kite power wasn't viable
I am very disillusioned with VCs in general.
They aren’t as clever as they make out to be - they have herd mentality, they allow themselves to be bamboozeled and sometimes they outright don’t do their homework and invest in Theranos
It's a very difficult problem keeping a kite flying in a figure 8 pattern allowing it to rise to the end of the tether and then effectively stalling it to pull the line back in - repeat over and over and while you're at it try to maximize power output for the weather conditions (and then there was the problem of automatically launching - we were leaving that for last). We were starting to look at reinforcement learning for the problem, but it was going to take a lot more data and a very accurate model of our kite and weather conditions.
Definitely one of the more fun jobs I've ever had even if it was short-lived.