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
