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Magic Leap is neither magic nor leaping

theregister.co.uk

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Re: Magic Leap is neither magic nor leaping

#71

Post by new299 »

ryandamm wrote: post #66
new299 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know... this thesis that they've raised 1.1BUSD so it /must/ be good just doesn't hold water for me. It's almost an argument from authority, and it's not very useful. In particular, investors have made large investments in the past which it turns out did not have a strong technical foundation. So there's track record here. Yes, there's obviously something. There's obviously a team of people doing something. That'…

While I think the money raised is a vote of confidence from the investors -- and it's only a vote -- my point about "too big to fail" is actually more a sunk-cost argument. With that much funding, the worst-case glide path for Magic Leap might be to stumble along, sucking in continuation funding until it gets a product to market. (It's no Theranos.) To be clear, I'm not making predictions about ML specifically. I don…

Right, my comment wasn't on the last statement in your comment ("they're too big to fail"), but the bulk of it motivated by "Google didn't put ~$500m, and Alibaba something like $800m, just on a whim".

Yea, they might well use the money for /something/ useful. The might use it to acquire a bunch of other companies.

The question is, is this 1.4B USD more or less useful than 500K USD put toward the right idea.

Re: Magic Leap is neither magic nor leaping

#72

Post by ryandamm »

jacobolus wrote: post #68
ryandamm wrote: post #50

I think what's missing from this discussion is the demo is apparently really, really good. Google didn't put ~$500m, and Alibaba something like $800m, just on a whim, or some investment thesis. And everyone I've spoken to who's gotten the demo is a believer. I think this article suffers from an overly binary view of technology -- if it isn't market ready, it's vaporware. No, there's probably some real tech there (afo…

Friendly pedantic usage note: you mean by means of or some synonym ( via perhaps?), not vis-à-vis . The latter literally means “face to face”, but can more broadly be used to mean something like “compared to” or “in relation to”. Your use here is unidiomatic/ungrammatical.

You're right, thanks! I'm usually the one with the grammar pedantries, but I have a lot of blind spots. I'll leave it uncorrected as a warning to the masses...

Re: Magic Leap is neither magic nor leaping

#73

Post by ggame »

DonHopkins wrote: post #30
grabcocque wrote: post #3

That these guys are a bunch of snake oil merchants has been obvious from day zero. Sometimes the overwhelming stench of bullshit is a little too difficult to ignore.

What makes you think that? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8J5BWL8oJY

Wow that TED talk really explains everything. I get it now.

Re: Magic Leap is neither magic nor leaping

#74

Post by ryandamm »

new299 wrote: post #71
ryandamm wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I think the money raised is a vote of confidence from the investors -- and it's only a vote -- my point about "too big to fail" is actually more a sunk-cost argument. With that much funding, the worst-case glide path for Magic Leap might be to stumble along, sucking in continuation funding until it gets a product to market. (It's no Theranos.) To be clear, I'm not making predictions about ML specifically. I don…

Right, my comment wasn't on the last statement in your comment ("they're too big to fail"), but the bulk of it motivated by "Google didn't put ~$500m, and Alibaba something like $800m, just on a whim". Yea, they might well use the money for /something/ useful. The might use it to acquire a bunch of other companies. The question is, is this 1.4B USD more or less useful than 500K USD put toward the right idea.

Right. I thought it was significant that the two lead investors are strategic (the first big tranche came from Google, not GV), so there's even less signaling there.

As for $1.4B vs $500K... they're different species of investment animal. The people making the hundred-million dollar decisions aren't prepared to make hundred-thousand dollar decisions. So I don't think those huge investments are actually replacing or crowding out seed funding (especially if a highly-funded company like ML can then buy a bunch of seed-funded companies, returning liquidity to the seed market).

The only thing that's weird about it is money is fungible, so the two are truly equivalent... just not commutable. Could those billions have been a shower of seed investments instead? I dunno; this is one of those things that makes me scratch my head and shrug. I don't know enough about the history of finance, and venture finance in particular, to weigh in on the logic (or forces of nature, or chance) that led to this structure, but it seems to make sense except when it doesn't. (/hedge)

Re: Magic Leap is neither magic nor leaping

#75

Post by Pica_soO »

throwanem wrote: post #56
new299 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to break this down a bit. Firstly, why is this so frustrating. On a practical level, it's frustrating for engineers because to operate as engineers we have to work for these companies. It's not just the fakeness, it's the bad management that comes with it. They dilute the pool of possible good companies that we could work for. They also increase the cost of doing something actually worth while. Salaries get…

> to operate as engineers we have to work for these companies Surely you don't mean software engineers. There's a whole big wide world outside the ongoing bubble, and in entire honesty I've never quite found "move to the Valley, work for a startup" to be the no-brainer it's so often been represented. In particular, the quality of life really doesn't seem to be there, at least not reliably; we hear horror stories all…

>Meanwhile, in the "enterprise" companies at which Valley >biens-pensants smirk and sneer, one finds often enough that >among the various fiefdoms, there's one or two with a savvy >director and a team full of smart, capable people who have >everything they need for the asking, and whose job is to >solve problems the organization would otherwise find >entirely intractable - sort of 18F or USDS, if you like, >except in an industry context and with less politics to >worry about, and as well or better paid. The trick is >knowing where to look and how to bring value.

True. But please tell the second part to the story too. Those innovative teams, can discover cold-fusion, and they will be locked in and ignored- or even worser, there idea would be patented to be held hostage in lawyercabinetscryo until a advancing humanity is willing to pay the ransom.

Those startups have only runway to loose and everything to gain- they will not throw away a discovery this way.

Re: Magic Leap is neither magic nor leaping

#76

Post by bradleyjg »

DonHopkins wrote: post #55
Neliquat wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You see, this is the type of comment that tears me on HN. On one hand I actually lold, on the other, it added nothing but some humor to the discussion. What is the guideline here? We sure don't want to become 'insert failed or failing aggregator here'. Or the race to the bottom, who gets the 1st clever chuckleluck comment in, contest of internet points and paid marketing. So I made this comment instead.

Good meta-discussion. I assumed the article's title was a reference to the SNL skit, but there weren't any more references or allusions to it in the article, so I though other people who didn't recognize the skit might appreciate a reference. I hope my other post linking to their TEDx talk balanced out my frivolity! ;)

My guess is it was a reference to the Voltaire quote -- "The Holy Roman Empire was in no way holy, nor Roman, nor an empire."

Re: Magic Leap is neither magic nor leaping

#77

Post by new299 »

ryandamm wrote: post #74
new299 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, my comment wasn't on the last statement in your comment ("they're too big to fail"), but the bulk of it motivated by "Google didn't put ~$500m, and Alibaba something like $800m, just on a whim". Yea, they might well use the money for /something/ useful. The might use it to acquire a bunch of other companies. The question is, is this 1.4B USD more or less useful than 500K USD put toward the right idea.

Right. I thought it was significant that the two lead investors are strategic (the first big tranche came from Google, not GV), so there's even less signaling there. As for $1.4B vs $500K... they're different species of investment animal. The people making the hundred-million dollar decisions aren't prepared to make hundred-thousand dollar decisions. So I don't think those huge investments are actually replacing or c…

Well, perhaps think of it another way. Those billions are mostly going toward staffing costs (I would guess? If not direct employees then via semiconductor fabs etc).

Would that engineer time be better spent proving out a bunch of smaller speculative ideas rather than throwing it all behind one speculative idea.

That's the crux of it really. We could be spending our engineering time better. Maybe not funding 1000 smaller projects, but even 100 might be better.

I understand that the current investment structure probably wont support that, but it seems unfortunate.

Particularly when the large projects that engineering time gets thrown at are large, very speculative projects with likely poor DD like Magic Leap (or whoever else).

Re: Magic Leap is neither magic nor leaping

#78

Post by cmiles74 »

ryandamm wrote: post #50

I think what's missing from this discussion is the demo is apparently really, really good. Google didn't put ~$500m, and Alibaba something like $800m, just on a whim, or some investment thesis. And everyone I've spoken to who's gotten the demo is a believer. I think this article suffers from an overly binary view of technology -- if it isn't market ready, it's vaporware. No, there's probably some real tech there (afo…

It sounds like Magic Leap has already given up on marketing whatever it is that they have been demoing. The Information reporter who managed to see the demo without signing the NDA said...

"The demos that I tried had some good attributes and some bad. The good - they were high resolution and they were able to focus the images at any depth - but only one focal depth at a time - so that they appeared very clear even when they were very close up. That said, the demos used a completely different type of technology from what Magic Leap ultimately wants to build. "

"Oh, and as I mentioned in the article, the bad was that the objects didn't stick very well. They were blurry and jittery when I moved my head, despite the fact that the device was connected to a desktop computer. That was one of the most difficult parts of building the HoloLens, but Magic Leap said it would figure that out on its final device. "

https://www.reddit.com/r/magicleap/comments/5hgtll/im_reed_a...

Re: Magic Leap is neither magic nor leaping

#79

Post by Analemma_ »

Pica_soO wrote: post #26
argonaut wrote: post #5

The first video was known to be fake back in 2015, when they released another video that explicitly stated no visual effects were used. And my guess is the second video isn't fake, but it's using their non-miniaturized technology. This is not news. Unlike Theranos (where people's health was also at stake), if/when Magic Leap fails, their investors will lose their money and capitalism will go on - this is how things a…

The problem is that this kind of "learning" experience propagates from CEO talk to CEO talk. Making a whole branch of technology a No-Go-Zone, even if the problems that stopped it, get solved. "We could do that, and end up like Magic-Leap.." will be the Standard slogan at every pitch.

Fortunately Microsoft is not only working on the same thing but already has a shipping product, so even if Magic Leap goes under I don't think it's going to take AR with it.

Re: Magic Leap is neither magic nor leaping

#80

Post by chillaxtian »

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #63
misnome wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Raising millions is not a reward. They get paid for the X years it takes their startup to crash, probably quite well. Afterwards, they are considered an "Experienced entrepreneur" and thus more likely to get their foot in the door to more negotiations, given press time etc. What part of this is failing?

In most cases the companies that fail after X years have been failing for at least X-1 years. This means these guys were under total stress for X-1 years. One has no idea what that feels like if they haven't gone through the process. Another thing is, you're pretty much locked into that company for X years. Even if you realize on year 1 that it's not what you started out to build, you still need to go with it, otherw…

> In most cases the companies that fail after X years have been failing for at least X-1 years. This means these guys were under total stress for X-1 years.

> One has no idea what that feels like if they haven't gone through the process.

> Imagine wasting X-1 years of your life working on something you no longer "truly" believe in. That part is failing.

> If you still don't agree, try raising money and starting a company, and work on it for X years. You will understand.

please, enlighten us with the hardships of being paid lots of funny money, and spending even more funny money, on something you know is going to fail for X-1 years, but you keep doing it anyways because ???

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