Let me put a positive spin on. Lets say Bigger and Tao are basically two sides of a Steve Jobs for the oil industry, lets say I know Bigger personally and find him trustworthy and believable, lets say I believe that the AOT works, he just needs to jump a few hurdles and then the product will take off making his company a multibillion behemoth. Which I can get a piece of. Lets say I have some money to invest in my trustworthy, genius, freind's company say $200,000. But let me do a little bit of DD and ask some questions. Most importantly, how are you going to spend the money Gregg, what hurdles? Your salary ... right .... how much? $290,000 pa? (put appropriate emoji here). So you want me to fund your lifestyle then? Any businessman who's done anything in pre-sales mode knows you have a subsistence salary, at basic costs level. You ask, how much is your rent, not how big a house do you think you deserve! You don't start at high-flying executive before you've made a single sale.
Q: "What if it doesn't work Gregg, do you put your house up or give the money back?"
A: "No, there's this thing called limited liability and I can get a new job..."
Q: "So basically I buy your shares, which pays your salary, and if it doesn't work out, I've got your paper and you've spent the money and left?"
A: "We have assets too"
Q: "Ah great, land? buildings?"
A: "Patents".
Now lets come crashing back to earth and see that the chances of this being a Steve Jobs are vanishingly small and he's a former bank manager, that Tao has made a few crackpot claims (gigantic walls to stop tornadoes) along the way, that the company is exploiting corporate forms so that the risks to the management are hugely limited and the rewards only limited by their ability to selling shares, that ALL risk is transferred to shareholders who have no chance of taking the board to task, that this has been going on now for time measured in decades, that all expenditure has to date been 99% covered through issuing stock, that it has a very long sheet of devices which will revolutionise the entire world, but have failed to make it to the factory let alone the sales room, that the former CEO (who has a Trump for president T-Shirt, LOL!) bailed before the centrepiece achievement of the TransCanada test, that in any case the proceeds of the TransCanada lease were small fry compared to the income from selling shares, that TransCanda cancelled the lease anyway, that the company persistently targets investors rather than customers, that it cherry picks its testing procedures and results and reports and does not realse information which is not transparent and can be interpreted any which way you like.
