[extropy-chat] Nanotech startups are the latest technology gold rush. One company is making a killing selling pans to the prospectors.

[Giu1i0 Pri5c0]

Waves of investment in new technology are often likened to gold rushes
in their cycles of boundless enthusiasm, frenzied activity—and
disappointment for the vast majority of people for whom things don't
quite pan out. Entrepreneurs bear the most risk in that they wager
years of their lives (not to mention personal savings) on individual
claims, whereas investors can spread their bets around in the hope
that at least one promising property will make good. Even the
certainty that a budding technology will change the world is no more
help in making money than the certainty that there really is gold
somewhere in them thar hills. The typical hundred dollars invested in
Internet startups in 2000 would barely pay for a snail-mail stamp
today. Clearly, transmuting raw hope into net profits requires
investors and entrepreneurs to place extremely prescient and/or damn
lucky bets on those rare companies that will actually convert
cutting-edge research into commercially successful products.
Or does it? Brian Lim, founder and CEO of Santa Barbara, CA-based
Atomate, believes he has found a unique way of capitalizing on the
latest gold rush, nanotechnology. Rather than attempting to develop
specific nanotech products, such as nanowires or nanomachines, Lim and
his colleagues are selling fabrication systems to other nanotech
researchers. "We're selling the pans to the prospectors," he says—not
trying to do the prospecting.
Atomate's "pans" are a bit more sophisticated than those of yore.
Fabricating nanotech devices is intrinsically difficult and requires
specialized machinery. "Nanotech researchers have been purchasing
equipment designed to fabricate microchips on silicon and then
customizing it for nanotechnology," Lim explains. He and his team,
which includes several experienced nanotechnologists, realized that
they could provide a tremendous boost to researchers, many of whom
operate on constrained university budgets, by producing equipment
that's already adapted for the nano world.
According to Lim, a researcher might spend $100,000 or more on a
silicon fabrication machine and then invest another $50,000, plus
several valuable months, modifying it before he or she could carry out
any nanotech experiments. Instead, the researcher can purchase a
ready-built system from Atomate and be up and running much more
quickly for "about the price of a Volvo."
http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/04/10/chung1004.asp?p=1