Not sure if the tech is the same but Cleveland Whiskey does something similar and is already on the market. Disclaimer: I invested through YC company Wefunder.
I'm not sure they would go that well together; high pressure inhibits cavitation, I'm pretty sure, and cavitation is the primary mechanism by which the ultrasound method extracts the various compounds from the wood. Maybe if you used higher energy ultrasound?
I'm a big fan. Have invested in over 100 companies through FundersClub/Wefunder/Angel.co over the last 4 yrs. Most of them YC companies. Startup investing is a long game, don't really expect meaningful returns until the 7 to 10 yr timeframe. Have backed off a bit recently with a need for more liquidity (kids entering college in the next few years).
Not the parent, but open source seems like a terrible investment if you expect a return, but I think we definitely need to figure out how to fund open source, given how much benefit it brings to our industry.
I would be super interested in a Kickstarter for open source, though I wonder if it would suffer from the same issues that Kickstarter itself suffers from (lots of ambitious projects, most not being delivered on time).
> I would be super interested in a Kickstarter for open source, though I wonder if it would suffer from the same issues that Kickstarter itself suffers from (lots of ambitious projects, most not being delivered on time).
I signed up for your site already, I'm interested in seeing where this goes. I'm particularly interested in funding libraries, rather than finished products.
Kickstarter still does fine, despite this problem, but it has lead to people using Kickstarter as the final fundraising for manufacturing, which doesn't make a tonne of sense for software.
One option is a milestone-based system where the project author splits the work up into various chunks, and the funding gets released as they are done (as voted on by contributors within a few days of completion?) where if things start diverging too much from expectations the funding stops?
One thin that may be interesting besides developer-driven proposals, but community-driven requests. Sort of how bounties exist already, but potentially on a different scale. People could put their money where their mouth is and pre-commit to their dream open source self-hosted whatever. Maybe even pre-committing money to specific features.
Something like Patreon could exist for software people if people want to fund a maintainer, though that's less clear.
The technique reported in the NPR article uses ultrasound, apparently at ordinary pressure. The original journal article (pdf) is open sourced at [2].
[1] https://www.thrillist.com/drink/nation/the-pressure-aged-cle...
[2] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1350417716...