While MS had products like hololens out, Magic Leap was still “in stealth”. This is the same company that was “worth billions” before they even released a product or before they had made public whatever product they wanted to sell. The marketing videos they produced early on (which were impressive) look nothing like the technology that was released years later. Look up the expectation vs reality videos of if you want a laugh.
Now they want out at a crazy valuation.
When the economy is “good” and there is plenty of dumb cash lying around (think these past years of bubble build up), an expert sweet talker is able to command money away from the vision fund type of folks. However, then the situation is like we are right now, we go back to the basics... things like market-fit, income, revenue, growth, sustainability... the healthy business.
We need the bubbles of the Magic Leaps, WeWorks and all the other unsustainable unicorn startups to burst. This is what will bring us back to industry sanity. The first dotcom bubble burst made our industry better. I hope this one does, too.