Almost being the operative word here. Compared to the eventual payoff, yes, almost nothing. But I'll bet Tew actually spent quite a bit of time working on the idea, time he might've spent on something else with much better prospects for success. He's a classic case of survivor's bias: we only know about him because he was successful. We don't know about the thousands of others that pursued similarly dumb ideas (maybe even the same one) and failed.