The uBeam Handshake

It's Thanksgiving here in the US, and you'll see us Americans talking about what we are thankful for. For me I could say I'm thankful that things seem to be going well for my family and friends, that we've not all been incinerated in nuclear fire following a Twitter feud, and that I don't have to deal with the ridiculousness of working at uBeam any more.

Since I got such a good response to my earlier anecdote about working about uBeam, I thought I'd share my recollection of another that highlighted one of those ridiculous things - this time it's The uBeam Handshake:

Here's a picture of Meredith Perry in January 2018, co-founder and then CEO of uBeam, making a strange shape with her hand. At first you might think it's a Spock Hand (technically a Vulcan Salute), however you'd be very wrong. That, to the initiated and chosen few, is the beginning of The uBeam Handshake.

While I can't remember the exact date it started, it was sometime in the first few months following our Series A funding in October 2014, while we were in our office in Santa Monica. We were working hard to get the company going, equipment setup, and start the process of building devices, when during one impromptu group meeting Perry comes out and says how cool it would be to have our own secret company handshake. Trying to get the meeting back on track proved fruitless, Perry was on a roll and wasn't going to be dissuaded from this. Being a bit of a self described 'space nut', she starts making the Spock Hand and then has one of the other team members do the same, then reach out so they could touch fingertip to fingertip, at which point Perry said "Bzzzzt" - and lo the uBeam Handshake was born.

Perry was very pleased with it, and proceeded to educate the team about it for the rest of the afternoon, with mostly everyone there having to do it ('Bzzzt' included). Eventually the fun died down and we got back to work, and forgot about it all. Over the next few days and weeks, however, Perry started cajoling everyone to do the uBeam Handshake, and for me and others it quickly moved past being a slightly stupid and amusing distraction to being a really dumb and annoying distraction. From what I remember, many if not most were uncomfortable, Perry was the only one to ever initiate it, with most trying to get out of it but eventually being badgered into doing so - few wanted to tell the CEO "No".

I discussed with my team members how to find ways to get out of doing it, and spoke with Perry to let her know it was not popular and that for a CEO to press her employees to do something like that was inappropriate. Perry was clear that I took it too seriously, that everyone thought it was great as no-one else had complained, and she'd run her company as she pleased. A few days later at a company lunch in the office, Perry tried to get me to do the handshake with her, making a fuss about it to try to get the whole team to watch. I declined, making some joke about not shaking hands while eating, but Perry was having none of it and kept pressing. And I kept declining. After a few attempts, she gave up, and we went back to eating. That incident was never mentioned again, and it was the last time she ever tried The Handshake with me I can recall, but I felt she was annoyed that I had not done it, and I was annoyed she'd attempted to make me in front of the whole team - whether I had done it or not, the company lost with either choice.

The Handshake disappeared for a while, or so it seemed, and I wasn't really hearing about it from the staff. I remember Perry tried to create variations of it, such as The uBeam Wave, which she demonstrated to me in the hallway by standing straight upright with feet together, military style, with arm outstretched forward at an upward 45 degree tilt, very straight and hand in the 'V' shape. When I reacted with some alarm and said what it reminded me of, Perry stopped doing it (she hadn't realized the resemblance at first), and I think is one of the few times she listened to me tell her not to do something. Eventually the uBeam Wave seemed to morph into what you see in the picture above from Jan 18 - hand in the 'V' shape, elbow bent and close to the body hand about shoulder height, with a little side to side motion.

As 2015 rolled on, it started appearing again, especially around the convertible note round in early summer, sometimes with Perry telling guests, potential customers, or investors about it, then doing it with whichever staff member was nearby. Given the presence of a third party, it was a lot of pressure to not say 'no' to the CEO, and so people seemed to do it. Things at the company were very unpleasant at that time, and I was arguing with Perry about a lot more critical matters, throwing in stopping her doing it to the team just would have been an exercise in frustration - and one of the many, many, reasons I left later that year.

Pretty much every time I saw it done after the first handful, I had the feeling it was an odd power-play, a way to locate the few who would find it equally 'fun', or who were in a position where they wouldn't or couldn't decline. Or, perhaps, to identify the 'heretics'? It wasn't the only ritual that happened at uBeam that gave me that feeling, but I'll get to those others in future posts. In the meantime, if you see a former uBeam team member from that era, try to give them the uBeam Handshake, I promise you'll get a reaction...

Update 25th Nov 18: One of the former uBeam employees tells me that one of the handshake variations tried was that rather than touching fingertips, the hands were at 90 degrees to each other and interlocked at the 'V'. I also want to make it clear my opinion is these choices of variations were made without realizing possible alternative interpretations and not not done to be deliberately offensive to any group.