Tag: Venture Capital

Laser – TOF Mass Spectrometer – Humanoid Baby – VCs – Dream 08-09-2025

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Here is this morning’s dream. It is has no commonality with what is going on for life on the compound nor my current thought streams.

The dream starts pulling up by car at an out of town high technology science park, there is a large brick built sign holder made of light sandy coloured bricks. On it there is a darkened bronze name plate announcing the name of the science park in a raised lettering which I cannot read. The country is unspecified and generic. There is sun shining on the grass next to the “welcome” sign. There are loads of high technology companies and start-ups.

The scene changes and I am in a very white ultra-high technology laboratory with instrumentation on benches. It is a biotechnology start-up. I am with two young Ph.D.  / Postdoc aged women. One is brown Asian in colouration and she has a brightly coloured Muslim headscarf on. Which contrasts her bright low fibre loss white lab coat. She is with a European woman of slight stature who has a clipboard. The Muslim is the boss. They are showing me around their facility.

My eye catches a ring dye laser encapsulated in a Perspex box. The dye being used is one of the orange Rhodamine dyes. There are multiple fine jets intercepted by pump laser beams. I know that this is an ultra-narrow-linewidth laser. It is part of a very sophisticated laser desorption laser ionisation time of flight (TOF) mass spectrometer. It has a mass resolution of better than 1 part in 10,000. I know that this is brought about by intracavity absorption of the ring dye laser ionisation beam.

The women are unsure as to how to explain things to me. I explain that I used to do mass resolved resonant multiphoton ionisation of mixed isotope deuterium hydrogen water clusters. I am familiar with isotopic ratios and high mass resolution. Relieved they explain that this is very important to them. They need the resolution to probe the nature of human tissue lab grown in other parts of the facility. They are using isotopic labelling to monitor the tissue growth parameters. The intracavity absorption has enabled an ultra-light gentle ionisation regime, no sledgehammer.

In walks two men in around their forties. One of them is a suit the other a scientist. Before we go to the next stage we must all don ultra-low fibre loss lab boiler suits with  pale blue elasticated cuffs at wrists and ankles. It is fibre loss from the clothes which is bad. Skin and hair do not matter.

Suitably attired the scientist man flicks a switch and I can hear air filling. He raises  a clear plastic dome to reveal a humanoid baby about the size of a two-year old. It is a male and completely naked. It has a large umbilicus containing many wires and tubes. The man holds the baby in blue lab gloved hands and turns it towards me. I understand it to be an artificial baby, an android. It is clothed in very human like flesh which has been grown in the facility. They currently have a license to do this. The flesh is very life like and convincing. The baby is moving slightly and I can see an artificial heart pumping inside. There are veins and arteries.

The suit distracts my attention and talks about their programme. Out of the corner of my eye I can see the smaller woman take an arterial blood sample. They put the baby back into its dome and seal it. I can hear gases being evacuated from the dome. We all disrobe out of the lab coats which we hang on hooks by the door.

The suit gestures to the women to take me to one side. A short while later the scientist returns and says to the suit that the dissolved carbon dioxide in the blood was too high. I can hear him say 3. It is not clear what units he is using. I go over to the suit-CEO and the scientist and ask them what this 3 means. They say that it is nothing to worry about though a little high. They are bullshitting. I know that I am a part of a venture capital (VC) inspection team sent into the facility. There have been concerns from the investors and the next funding round is due. I can tell that the men are worried. I press them about the programme and they say that some of the earlier prototypes showed similar and higher carbon dioxide levels. This needs to be reduced before the humanoid can be autonomous. They don’t know that I have a large personal investment in the VC fund and that I am highly sceptical.

The dream ends and I think “that was fucking weird”.

Investor Incognito – Quantum Modules – Sociopolitical Problems Dream 19-08-2025

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Here is last night’s dreaming sequence.

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“If you want my future, forget my past
If you wanna get with me, better make it fast”

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The dream opens in a splendid mansion and grounds of Italianate design situated somewhere like Lake Como or Lake Maggiore. It is upper class, rich and very swanky. It is an investor event for high net worth individuals and venture capital (VC) funds of diverse type and scale. It is late evening drawing into night. There is a string quartet and finger food. Presentations will be given in an outdoors setting once it has become fully dark. There is a stage and seating. Seating is round “ten” seater tables. In the meantime a pre-event wine tasting is going on. It feels European.

I am working incognito as one of the wine waiters. I am in black and whites with a white wine apron. I am opening a bottle of vintage red wine and offering to taste before decanting. I then fill a decanter with the rest of the wine. The idea being that they also taste after half an hour. I pour a taster around the table. Each in turns swirls the bright red wine and tastes. I move onto the next table who are trying an ice cold New Zealand white. In general the interaction is professional but I can tell that I am “staff” and not one of them. I am of no significance. I am not the main event.

Heading back to the kitchen an American woman who is a VC accidentally bangs in to me, she is partially drunk and is very rude to me. I apologise even though it is her fault. She is brash and convinced of her own importance. The event suggests to me that these are not the kind of people I seek.

The scene changes and I am at a booth in a trade show and technology event. On the table in front of me is a quantum module. It is a slot in for a 19 inch electronics frame wider unit. I have the side panel off the module. In it I can see a photonic circuit processor which is air-cooled by fan. Connected to it are several tight circle bundles of fibreoptic cable. These are cable tied and attached to the motherboard. A number of them lead to optical-optical low loss interconnects on the rear of the module. To the top of the board is a diode pumped fibre laser which I know to be single mode. The whole unit is a modular quantum logic gate, a plug and play module for an in-principle demonstrator. With me in the booth are Geri Horner and her husband. As a hobby he has led the engineering team and has managed to attract some not standard funding from Red Bull. I replace the side panel to the module and screw it in using a jeweller’s screw driver. I slot the module into the wider 19 inch parent rack. I then mount the whole unit into an electronics rack and attach the computer interface. Geri is excited and waiting for people to visit our booth. There is a Red Bull logo. The module is a large-scale building block prototype for a room temperature quantum computer. I have had to seek non-standard funding, hence Geri and Red Bull.

The scene changes and I am in my workshop / shed on top of a low rise several storey building. To my surprise a text message arrives on my ‘phone. The message asks “why, why am I packing it in?” I am very surprised that there is both a ‘phone and a text message in the dream. {A very rare thing} As I am dealing with this surprise a man appears at the door of my shed. He is older than me, very English and of the UK science hierarchy. I let him in. He wants to know why I am dropping this line of research / investigation. I explain to him that the establishment does not accept me and has difficulty interacting with me because I am not usual. I do not belong to any famous company / institution. He does not believe me. I explain to him in more depth and he starts to get offended imagining that I am attacking the entire science hierarchy. I ask him if he is personally offended. He says, yes.

“Now do you see the sort of thing I am up against. How resistant to me people are?”

“Yes, OK , I get the idea.”

He then asks me to hang fire for a while. He wants to know who I am working with. I explain that it is just me. On my bookshelf he see texts on superconducting and quantum circuits. He says that he might be able to get someone to work with me. I doubt it. There is no money.

I say to him that there is little which can be done. It is as it is. He does not like this.

The dream ends and I have the Spice Girls “Wannabe” to mind.

Venture Capital – UCL – Dream 20-07-2025.

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Here is last night’s dream, unusually had early in the night ~1 AM. It seems contextually out of the blue.

The dream starts outside a swish urban building similar in style to The Ritz or Berner Kantonalbank, with a partially covered walk way. The feel is European, Germanic or British not French. There is a sense of commerce and business. The building is like a TARDIS much more spacious on the inside than the outsides suggest. It is high rent, posh and opulent.

In the atrium on a meeting area to one side I am sat in an alcove with Mark. There are antique like chairs with coffee tables  arranged facing each other in a semi-circle. Mark is there with his team from the Venture Fund. They are all suited and well dressed. Mark is a bit younger than he would be now. We are discussing the funding opportunities for my project. He is quite enthusiastic. The event we are at is some kind of inventor-investor meet-up.

He stands up and ushers me to follow him. I note that I do not have a suit on simply a white collarless granddad shirt which is immaculately pressed. I cannot see my lower half. I can see the fine grain of the cloth.

He leads me up a grand staircase to the event dining room. In a wall-mirrored room sat around large round “Louis XIV” gilded tables are diners in groups of around a dozen. Mark ushers me to a table where Debbie and Sue are sat. Sue is the far end of the table next to the wall and Debbie is nearer the walkway. She stands up to greet me  and we hug. Sue is more reticent as if she is embarrassed to see me for some reason. Debbie is at the event to promote technology transfer from her university. She is keen to hear what I have been up to. She says that I can stay in her room overnight if I would like. There is a very faint sexual overtone. She is roughly as she was thirty years ago when I last saw her. She addresses me using the nickname “George” which was in use then. She says that if I stay with her, I can get one of the most excellent breakfasts put on by the event. The wanting to feed motif is much stronger than any faint sexual overtone.

I ask her if she recognises the dress I am wearing. In the dream I show her the material of an exquisitely patterned grey floral female dress which I am wearing on my top half. It is very expensive and high quality with petite floral designs interspersed with doves. I say that it used to be her dress. She does not recognise it. She hands me her technology transfer / business development card. I make my excuses and leave the posh event.

As I am leaving the lobby of the building, I see a news broadcast about a man who is promoting cross channel intellectual and business collaborations between France and England. His ‘phone number and email flash up on screen, which I write down on the back of the business card.

I continue out of the building and into a suburban train station car park. It is very dark and raining slightly. I walk over a partially covered bridge over the rails to the station on the other side of the tracks.

The dream ends and seems incongruous.

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  • Mark, Debbie and Sue were in my Chemistry degree class at UCL in the early eighties. I have spoken to Mark on Teams in the last year, before that not for forty years. I have not spoken in person to Debbie for thirty years and Sue for probably forty years.

Patents-VCs-Dream-19-02-18

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Here is this morning’s dream. Last night we watched Dragons’ Den on TV and I had another dream of its ilk earlier in the night which I cannot recall.

I arrive at some swanky offices in London and go into reception. It is plush and modern with a glass fronted airy atrium. The security guards at the desk take my name and give me a badge to wear. They direct me to a holding area / outer office. I am suited and booted but with no tie.

The PA greets me. In the holding area there is another man sat. He is clutching documentation and a tablet computer. I tell the lady, who is smartly dressed, that I am here for a 10 o’clock appointment. It is 9:24AM. The other guy is about to go “in”. Knowing that I am, as per usual, early, I ask the PA how the timing and schedule is going. “Is it Swiss?”, I ask. She says, “not quite” with a wink. So, I say that I will pop out for a coffee and come back. She points me in the direction of the canteen. I say I would rather go to a coffee shop; she is unhappy about this as it threatens her scheduling. She doubts I will be back on time.

I head off into town and find a coffee shop. I sit at one table and am joined by three other people. They do not notice me and are deep in heated discussion. I can see that they have a design for a beam steering column to be used in conjunction with a microscope. They are discussing a possible patent application. The younger one is talking the others through the design drawings which are in clear view on the table.

Just as they are about to leave, I say that the design looks OK but that is doesn’t look all that novel to me. Anyone “skilled in the art” might have come up with it, they need to find a better angle or way of doing it. They are a bit shocked.

I look down at my watch it is 9:55AM. I had better leg it back. I get in my car and drive fast through the traffic back to the office.

As I arrive the other guy is coming “out”, clutching his documents. I wish him luck.

I sit in a chair close to the open door which leads to the inner office it is now 10:02AM.

Through the ajar door one of the posh geezers says that I had better come in. In the room there are a number of men (~4-5) dressed in expensive suits and “Rolex” type watches. They are having their coffee refreshed. The first man ushers me towards some chairs facing the men whom I know to be rich VC types. I say that I would prefer to stand. Which I do facing the semi-circle of investors. I have no documentation or IT. Just me. I am very relaxed.

The PA leaves the room and one of the men there says that I should tell them about myself.

I start off on the cancer and tutorial story. I can sense their eyes glazing over and the thought “time waster” starting to manifest. One says, “That explains why we haven’t heard anything from you or about you!”

I then say that I have also been looking at and delving into patents. I know a patentable idea when I see one and I have a couple sketched out. This sparks their interest a little more. The tone and the mood in the room suddenly changes. One of them who is the lead turns to another and mutters something under his breath. I have their attention now.     

At that point I start engaging them in a very relaxed manner. “What kinds of investment opportunities are you (plural) looking for? “

Because thy have been sat all morning listening, they welcome the chance to speak for a bit, so they begin.

The dream ends.