Vlad Savov’s 02017 article about the closing of Sense, James Proud’s borderline-fraudulent company preceding #Substrate.
on 02025-12-11why Fox Chapel Research thinks #Substrate’s claims of cheap #lithography are #fraud because it’s probably direct-write e-beam lithography (rather than anything with X-rays), describing James Proud’s previous company Sense as a “Kickstarter scam”: “It raised $2.5 million dollars for an alarm clock that did not function as advertised, and that—despite a flashy marketing effort—did not actually do anything it was marketed as doing when the Kickstarter launched; rather, it was a con.” Quoting The Verge: “More than 19,000 backers bought into the Sense idea, so it was clearly hitting on a hot area of consumer interest and demand, however the one thing the company forgot to do was develop a robust device that actually did what it promised.” More damningly: “Buyers were also told they could use their own API for the tracker so that the device could still be useful if servers were ever shut down. This was also untrue.” Fox Chapel Research makes some boner mistakes about electrostatic chucks, but I do believe their claim that patents wouldn’t be able to stop TSMC or “China” (SMIC) from duplicating Substrate’s performance if real.
on 02025-12-11Cyan Banister explains why she invested in James Proud of #Substrate on April Fool’s Day in 02022, and got their logo tattooed on her spine (in addition to the #Anduril logo on her left shoulder). This article also looks like AI slop: “This isn’t Chick-fil-A. This isn’t Hobby Lobby. This is the company that holds Western civilization together through its semiconductor monopoly, saying atheists need not apply to their scientific positions.” Also talks a little bit about the failure of Proud’s previous startup, Hello, the one that was going to revolutionize sleeping by gamifying it.
on 02025-12-11Article from 8 years ago about Hello, the previous venture by James Proud of #Substrate, which sold “an orb the size of a tennis ball that sits on your bedside table and uses a variety of hidden sensors to track your movements and the surrounding nighttime atmosphere. The $149 gadget, called Sense, grades your sleep on a scale from 0 to 100--and tries to help you improve that score over time. Proud claims that the Sense holiday rollout at Target is the biggest the retailer has ever done for a startup's new electronics product (Target says that's incorrect). (...) He fed himself by faking hole punches on loyalty cards from a British chicken chain, Nando’s, or else schmoozing venture capitalists and other European techies over lunch, quietly praying that they would pick up the check.” Part of Forbes’s “30 under 30”.
on 02025-12-11Lee Jacobs explains why he invested in James Proud of #Substrate. Looks like AI slop
on 02025-12-11James Proud of #Substrate supposedly has a history of #fraud and, at Folsom Street Labs, overambitious research claims
on 02025-12-11