Magic Leap said to be ‘doing 1,000 things badly’ after raising $1.4B
venturebeat.com
venturebeat.com
I've thought about this and I'll be damned if I can't think of a single example. The closest I can come is some of the old steam engine tech, where they would have a huge public competition and one demo engine would be crazy fast, but the hype was never at these levels.
Basically, as a student of business history of sorts, just considering the base rates for these situations, I'd be willing to give generous odds that Magic Leap absolutely fails to deliver anything worthwhile. It just doesn't seem to happen. The true breakthroughs are built by those quietly plugging away, scared to death that if they take a breath to talk about it their competitors lurking in the shadows will pull ahead.
It really makes me wonder who these investors are that piled on. The first $100M or so I understand; they thought they were getting in on something new and great. But the next $1B? Did they never read a business history book during their MBA program?
Great technologies grow organically out of need and real life demands. Greatness isn't created purely out of conference rooms and imagination.
Magic Leap should have set the bar lower to get something out of the door sooner and depended less on hype of possibilities but excitement for what they actually created. Then they don't have to hit it out of the park the first time or nothing. Which is basically what they've set up expectations for.
Looks like Magic Leap are opting not to do it.
To your point: it'd be impossible to achieve AR without some major breakthroughs in eye-tracking _or_ general 3D image rendering in front of the eyes. This is what hololens had to achieve before AR made sense, and just to be able to ship it in spite of the hardware constraints, they were stuck with a small viewport in Gen 1.
The only real compromise with implementing AR is FOV coverage. If you're going to cover the entire FOV, you should either get creative (rendering low-res outside what hits the fovea of the eye, which would be possible only with eye-tracking) or use a small viewport.
Hololens did it right. It seems (judging from the hardware) that Magic Leap is trying to avoid compromises of any sort, so they're probably doing it wrong.
Mobile phones & PDAs as well - they were super-hyped right around 1992, it just took 15 years after that before someone produced a device that was actually exciting.
Actually, it's generally been a pretty good business strategy to take whatever was hyped up 10-15 years ago but was then written off as unworkable, and then reimagine it with modern technology. Think of Javascript apps (DHTML 1997 -> Angular 2012), streaming video (RealAudio 1996 -> YouTube 2006), e-commerce (everybody 1995 -> everybody 2012), webmail (HotMail 1997 -> GMail 2004), GUI interface builders (NeXTStep 1992 -> XCode 2007), mobile phones (Newton & General Magic 1992 -> iPhone & Android 2007/09), lithium-ion batteries (first prototypes late-80s -> widespread cellphone/laptop use mid-00s), etc.
It doesn't do much good for the investors of those early waves of companies, though.
All your examples were ones where the initial hype around the technology/idea just wasn't ready yet, it wasn't one company playing coy and then coming out with some groundbreaking thing like the iPod/iPhone was.
It was evolutionary, it was very, very well polished (something apple are good at) and it was advertised massively. But it wasn't streets ahead of the competition.
I think this is a highly controversial opinion, especially with hindsight. Consumer products are never just about the hardware specs, but about how the entire ecosystem around the product functions..
Two competing platforms (Nokia and Windows phone) tanked and the only viable current competitor (Android) came to market afterwards and driving marketshare by imitating the specific innovations the device had (plus with a certain degree of openness).
Nokia tanked due to very, very poor management and branding. Internal competition between engineering units and tens of handsets with overlapping features made the brand slowly sink into the mire.
When thinking about the iPhone, remember there was no app store for over a year, and other platforms had had one since 05 or before.
Apple got a lot of stuff right, they released a great product. But it wasn't the huge leap forward people like to present and I often wonder if the perception that it was such a leap forward comes from the state of the US market at the time, not the world market (particularly Europe).
It was something above well-polished, it was that moment when you look at something and just think "why didn't anyone else think of this already? it's so simple!"
The iPhone was a great product, I'm not denying it, but I wonder if the perception that it was revolutionary comes from the state of the US market at the time - generally thought to have been years behind Europe and Asia.
iPhone was incremental, just like the bb was incremental
Because every phone that came after it (and currently) follows it's form factor.
It wasn't the first phone to market with that concept, and tablet PCs had been around for a while. They were a total failure, but they were there...
There were companies making internet killers, don't kid yourself, and they're all dead. Prodigy. Compuserve. People don't even know what they are.
Likewise the mobile phone had immediate and tangible benefits, but it took a while for the devices to get small enough and cost-effective enough for everyone to be able to afford them. They had immediate appeal. This was also a push done by an entire industry.
It's extremely rare that a singular company ever succeeds on this scale.
Google Search was one. Lytro another.
Magic Leap's demos were ridiculous because they required monumental leaps in various areas - computer vision, holographic imaging, CPU/GPU energy efficiency (computationally).
I don't see how this is related to business history. Having some sort of basic understanding of scientific and technological progress, sure. But an MBA?
They had a good, fake demo for vaporware. That's all.
With the exception of Apple, I don't think this is really true. ARPAnet, Transistors, Cellular networks etc... were all discussed and probed and iterated on in the defense/research community then in industry.
> The first $100M or so I understand; they thought they were getting in on something new and great.
Abovitz is a serial entrepreneur with a previous $1B exit. That alone counts for a shitload, if not everything. If you can show someone even a rudimentary display that gives accommodation and can build a competent team then that gets the hype cycle started. All due credit where deserved, Abovitz knows how to raise money.
It's true of Microsoft, Google, Amazon and even airbnb because while the latter eventually got vc, they didn't have that same hype. They all spent years doing unglamorous work before becoming a name like Magic Leap is today.
You're right about the serial entrepreneur aspect. But we're still talking about staggering sums.
It’s clear that a bunch of senior Google people believe that we will all own an augmented reality device in the near future, and they don't want to cede that market to Microsoft (having killed Glass).
Another great google product that I think is actually under hyped is Google translate. I was in Kiev and ordered off a menu by looking st it through my smartphone. Sitting at a table with 6 engineers and everyone was floored. If you haven't tried it I highly recommend it.
Siri is still mostly useful as a kitchen timer though.
[0] https://blog.google/products/translate/found-translation-mor...
[1] https://research.google.com/pubs/SpeechProcessing.html
[2] http://www.theverge.com/2016/9/9/12860866/google-deepmind-wa...
(aka Jesus Phone, aka "they're not just going to walk in") was probably one of the biggest hyped things in recent history, and it absolutely did live up to it's claims.
Edit: does hype have to be first-party? Apple is king of the rumors-as-marketing hype machine.
Apple's big contribution was smashing into a broken market that didn't serve its consumers.
I think "West Coast business" originally comes from a football term, but idea that a new silicon valley-style business approach has overtaken the old "M7 MBA" thinking has evidence. Like journalism is experiencing now...things may have changed.
Don't most businesses fail regardless of how much money they raise? What is a true breakthrough anyway? Has it gotten harder to keep secrets from competitors in the shadows? Can you an ambitious company raise money and hire the best people still without a PR-hype-machine going full speed ahead? What does success even mean these days, are founders and VCs trying to IPO big businesses or sell expensive secondary shares and cash out a bit?
I agree, most of these business will fail. While I don't participate in the hype, I can understand the thinking behind pushing for a super-funded startup strategy that attracts talent, strategic investors and that can hang with competitors since I.P./courts cannot be relied on.
Because Musk always says "There's a very good chance might not happen" very talented people perk up because what they hear is a guy dreaming with pragmatism. When very smart people see that, they want to help make it happen.
Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in event of success
Supposedly, 5,000 men applied after reading the ad.
- Note: historians can't find the ad, it might be a myth, but I still like it
Magic Leap are going to have to do something seriously amazing to beat the hololens, especially when they inevitably upgrade the FoV.
To the extent that I'm guessing full field of view is a computing limitation and not a hardware limitation, the cord-free tech may not be ready for VR.
Also, screens probably require more power than their light field display, which makes a large field of view doubly hard.
Meanwhile my startup has a working product with traction and a revenue model but we are having issues getting funding. At least partially because we aren't in Silicon Valley. (not bitter at all... no I won't name the company)
No, that's the problem. The entire company is PR. They need engineers.
Microsoft doesn't have a tethered product right now, but it seems very likely that an OEM will[0] and Microsoft will help them build it and will provide the software - somewhere that Meta 2 has been struggling with.
[0] https://news.microsoft.com/2016/06/01/microsoft-opens-window...