PORTL Hologram raises $3M to put a hologram machine in every home | Hacker News Reader

PORTL Hologram raises $3M to put a hologram machine in every home

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There's no such thing as holograms. Not until we discover new physics. These are Pepper's Ghost, a simple lighting trick [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepper%27s_ghost

This isn't holograms (and neither are the looking glass or Sony's spatial display thingie), but holograms exist, generally film based.

Lenticular displays like Looking Glass are pretty neat. They don't go 360 but they create images with real depth by layering transparent displays.

https://lookingglassfactory.com/

Might wanna let the Nobel Committee know that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Gabor

Printed holograms, sure of course. But projected holography akin to Star Wars is pure science fiction.

Well I would argue that holograms are always a projection, that is you need a reference beam to reconstruct your image beam.

But I agree the star wars "holograms" were never holograms but more 3D point cloud projections. Now you could say they do exist, see e.g. laser light shows, they are just by far not as impressive as the star wars movies.

Side note: Dennis Gabor's "Personal life" section seems to have a strange bit of editorialization.

> On 8 August 1936 he married Marjorie Louise Butler with whom he lived in a harmonious marriage. They did not have any children.

I'm glad they lived in a harmonious marriage, I guess? I am really curious why/how that particular detail managed to make it onto Wikipedia. Random edit? Part of the phrasing in a biography or his will? Someone who knew them personally that wanted to make that clear?

Maybe they sang a lot.

Sounds like typical language of an obituary, maybe it was lifted from one.

It's often useful to check the other language wikis that are relevant for more info. (here you replace the en with hu)

It's cited from here -

"harmonikus házasságban"

https://dokutar.omikk.bme.hu/archivum/gabor/htm/gaborkronol....

Why they said it.......

If you want to see a "real hologram", check our the mirascope. It is a children's toy, that consists of 2 parabolic mirrors, aligned in such a way, so that when light rays converge at its top, the illusion of an object that is not there appears. (I guess this meets the definition of hologram, except it is not created out of a projector but from an actual physical object)

[1] http://physicstoys.blogspot.com/2018/02/the-mirascope.html

That is not a hologram, that is a reflection; the object is, in fact, there. If that is a hologram, then so is the person you see in your bathroom mirror.

The key question is whether it's 2D or 3D. If it's 2D (which I understand regular screen-plus-mirror things to be), then it's not much different from a screen, except that it takes up much more valuable floor space and is going to be a lot more expensive, while also horribly breaking immersion if you're nearby.

If the frame/box really add much immersion, then some solution that can sit flat on a wall while still appearing to be a cabin (recessed into the wall) would likely be a lot more successful, as it can "create" instead of eating real estate.

A certain Dr. Smalley would be very insulted to hear that, as he's pioneered a pretty good method for making those: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322723302_A_photoph...

Video for anyone interested.

https://youtu.be/1aAx2uWcENc

"In simple terms, we’re using a laser beam to trap a particle, and then we can steer the laser beam around to move the particle and create the image"

The projector can transmit images any time of the day or night

Is there some limitation of image recording and transmission technology that I'm not aware of that this needs to be called out?

I took that to mean it the projected image could be seen in daylight.

It sounds like they have an outsized amount of bookings compared to recognized revenue:

   The company has sold a hundred devices and already delivered several dozen to shopping malls, airports and movie theater lobbies. “We’ve manufactured and delivered several dozen,” Nussbaum said.

I wonder what their challenge has been in recognizing that revenue. If it’s a matter of delivery capacity, R&D, or something else.

At $60,000, it feels a little steep to me personally, but I would more than happily pay for the spectacle — like a movie theatre ticket price.

Besides that, I’ve always thought volumetric displays would be a good way to visualize information. If the display is large enough, it’s a much better way to view certain datasets. Combined with certain gesture recognition technologies, this really does feel like technology that could be welcome in conference rooms.

From a home entertainment, this reminds me of DVDs with multiple angles. Although it never was popular at the time, I think that it’d be awesome to watch a football game or play age of empires on such a display.

I’m pretty sure it’s only a 2D display, essentially a semi-transparent display in front of a box. It can’t visualize any data better than a 2D screen could.

It’s https://images.app.goo.gl/BZAgsgtkdoptiGw37 but in a box. It does look like the edges of the box help with the sense of presence.

Hmm, I don't understand why they did a $3M round. If they've already sold a hundred at $60k, that's $6M in revenue. I feel like they'd want to raise a lot more, or try to remain profitable. The $3M seems like they're taking on dilution (and expectations) for an relatively low amount of money, when their product is $60k and has a fair amount of traction.

The $6M probably only comes after delivering the product.

$3M might be the what they need to get strong manufacturing going. And it looks like they money comes with a COO and some strong connections. It may be a smart move by the founder to get what they need while giving up as little equity as possible

So why not do debt financing?

I do agree that it seems to be for the connections, and for all we know they gave up 5% for that $3M.

> So why not do debt financing?

If you do debt financing, does that look unattractive to future VC rounds?

Have any successful startups done primarily debt financing?

Debt tends to be hard for super new companies, even with orders in hand. If you are developing a new product and don't have cash up front, there's a good chance you never deliver, and both lenders and potential customers know that. Also looks unattractive in future VC rounds, but in this case probably secondary to my first point.

> Debt tends to be hard for super new companies, even with orders in hand. If you are developing a new product and don't have cash up front, there's a good chance you never deliver, and both lenders and potential customers know that. Also looks unattractive in future VC rounds, but in this case probably secondary to my first point.

There is always factoring (ie. sell the receivable for a large fraction — typically 90-95% — of the face value). It eats into your profit margin, but you get the money up front, the customer pays on net30 (or whatever) terms, and you don't have to deal with billing. It works best when you need the money to buy materials or build capacity in order to fulfill the order. The longer the lead time from spending money on materials to delivery and billing, the more attractive factoring becomes.

Factoring is common and essential to certain industries like clothing that have very long lead times & where the buyers have leverage to insist on net60 or net90 terms.

Do we know the terms of this deal? It could end up looking a lot like debt in the end.

3m is low enough to not be priced. They probably have a lot of flexibility and control at this point.

This is a $60K 4K display... I'm missing what makes it revolutionary?!?

So we now have the Telehuman from Silicon Valley?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9YOEEpWAXgU

I wonder if the audio is working.

I automatically distrust this just from the name. I know what holograms are and that is not it.

It looks like it's just a full body video conference with a blank screen behind the person.

I think the only way this could succeed would be by doubling as a good TV that can rotate 90 degrees with no hassle. How else do you convince people to set aside a space in the hoe for the occasional sales rep to talk to you.

Porn has a way with these things my friend.

fun with ambiguity: the title reads as if this company is literally using the 3 million to put the holograms in every home. i was unaware that holograms were commodity hardware. at 7.5 billion people, assume 4 people per household, that is 1.8 billion hologram devices. this puts the unit price at about a third of a penny. i’ll take 3.

What is the advantage of this over just an LCD screen? Is it just that the edges of the box move when the viewer does?

"In every home" - sure, if you somehow involve the adult industry.

Package up a gimmick in a decent looking kiosk and pitch the “where won’t this work!?” dream. You’ll capture enough imagination in pitch meetings to raise a few mil. You’ll put together a team and manufacture your first batch, spending all of your first raise in the process. A few big name clients will pop-up and show interest, enough to go back to your investors for a just a bit more money to keep going. Big name clients do some one off deals, everyone is interested but if it could just do X or Y, you’ll chase custom requests and eventually arrive at the crossroads of becoming an event based marketing agency or riding a slowly fading business into the ground as the kiosks age and no new clients sign up after the hype is over.

Whether it’s touch screen mirrors, digital art club screens, cell phone charging kiosks, photo booths, sports training kiosks, screens on water faucets, it’s inevitably the same story arch.

The only ones I’ve seen that make money are those that pivot into high-ticket custom events which then you’re not a scalable startup anymore but an agency, or you barely get your investors bailed out by selling some backend tech you developed for stock in another company.

"Pessimists sound smart. Optimists make money." —@natfriedman

They also lose a ton of it =)

Pessimists make money shorting the market.

On that note, why aren't there more touch screen mirrors? Of all of these, that ones makes a certain amount of sense (being a 'screen' we already look at at least a few times a day). I've only ever seen the DIY ones, never a proper product.

That is how innovation progresses. These folks who burn weekends and evenings, often they fail. Many of them get up and go on to build something bigger for the society.

Hey now, photo booths have been doing very, very well in Japan for 30 years! =D

I’m surprised seasoned investors haven’t pattern matched this yet.

Why would you assume this is a gimmick?

Is there something we're missing here? It seems fairly credible, and if it's enough like a hologram, that novelty will not fade, it represents quite a leap in communications (though will probably take some time to settle in).

That's exactly what this is, though. Pepper's Ghost is not a real hologram.

Ok - fair enough - but people don't care about 'what tech is used' what they care about is the experience.

So if you can create a really powerful '3D experience' using simple tech, than that's wonderful. That said, if it's crappy or doesn't work well from angles or whatever then that's not good either.

But let's not get confused in arguing about 'what a real hologram is' - because that's now what we really want, what we want is the 3D there may be other ways to achieve it.

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