> Get involved with your local community of makers, get them intrigued by your idea and its potential, connect with people that will help you build it.
This will prevent me from patenting it. I can also make first prototype myself, I've started last year, will try to finish this year. Funding would just let me drop one job and make it faster.
> Patent it, and then raise funds via the Internet to try and build it. Seek out local VCs. I know that's a lot to ask, on top of two jobs, but I didn't organize our economy.
I don't have enough money for patenting something that might not work. That's why I need to make a prototype. That prototype will be MUCH cheaper than a proper patent but takes some time which I also don't have too much (but working on it slowly). When I'm sure it works, I already have enough connections to make it actually happen.
At this moment, funding my prototype would just benefit humanity with earlier knowledge of whether it works, so of course no one sane will fund it, that's the sad reality with human priorities.
> I know that's a lot to ask, on top of two jobs, but I didn't organize our economy.
Yeah, I've only asked for tips just in case you have some, I don't blame you or anything. Thank you!
This thread also describes WHY those LK-99 researchers sat on their invention for so long, they just couldn't find enough people interested in their material.
Of course I could just publish my idea, but it's possible that no one would be interested in this and I would like to have some money from this to pursue some other ideas without begging people for support.
That is a framing issue. How else do you want to get support? If you find a marketing person to glam it up, and have people come to you wanting support you instead of you going to them. The end result is the same though - you're being supported.
If I had something I think could change the world, I'd beg, borrow, and steal whatever I needed, just to get the equipment to be able to get the patent on it.
They're experimentalists: they didn't find the material from first principles, they appear to have made it and decided to continue.
So did you make the engine and notice it's efficiency, or did you find it using first principles where no one else did?
I found it from first principles, I still don't know why no one else thought about it, but it requires sort of splitting and reversing a normal stirling engine inside-out. Since then I've found several attempts at going in that directions which I took, but no one connected all those pieces yet as far as I know. This doesn't require any advanced materials, just a new configuration of existing inventions. For 15 years I've thought why it should not work, but I can't find a flaw in my reasoning, so now I need to verify it with actual working machine, because I know I still might be wrong. If I'm right - this will change energy generation and storage (no more steam turbines and will replace PV panels). If I'm wrong - someone will potentially lose about $10k.
Like I said, there's a reason I'm not in charge of any VC stuff and I largely don't invest myself lol.
I wish you the best of luck with your invention though, please never give up and never stop dreaming. People like you even if you never produce it push us ALL forward. Thanks for what you do
