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Sources: Google is buying Lytro for about $40M

techcrunch.com

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Re: Sources: Google is buying Lytro for about $40M

#41

Post by Stratoscope »

fwgwgwgch wrote: post #32
vadimberman wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree, and given the standard "liquidity preference", the founders are likely to net $0, except for the Google bonuses for the engineering (Jack Barker-like Rosenthal is not likely to stick there). It's sad, really. It's one of the really innovative companies, but it's not easy to sell tech ahead of its time. Yet another incident that will encourage to pick copycats over real innovation. I guess Google is no longer a…

Can you explain what you mean by "liquidity prrference"? My understanding is that you get money in proportion to your vested share at the time of sale

Not all shares are the same. Corporations have different classes of stock: as a simple example there may be common stock and preferred stock.

In a "liquidity event", and especially in a "down round" where the company is bought at a lower price per share than previous investors paid, those shares are not treated the same. Preferred shares may get something from the new investment round (perhaps less than they invested), while common shares may have their value wiped out to zero.

(Source: I have been a "commoner" in a company that was bought in a down round where my stock was zeroed but the preferred shares were still worth something.)

Re: Sources: Google is buying Lytro for about $40M

#42

Post by StavrosK »

JimmyAustin wrote: post #18
coldtea wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would it be priceless? With dash-cam video you can just chose a fixed hyperfocal distance and have everything in good focus. You certainly don't need creative DoP and bokeh...

Just spit-balling, but could it be used for cheap depth perception, like a LIDAR alternative?

Probably, but so can two normal cameras, like the ones humans have in our heads.

Re: Sources: Google is buying Lytro for about $40M

#43

Post by jazoom »

coldtea wrote: post #17
samstave wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are buying them to make dash cams for self driving cars is my guess... That tech in dash-cam video is priceless

Why would it be priceless? With dash-cam video you can just chose a fixed hyperfocal distance and have everything in good focus. You certainly don't need creative DoP and bokeh...

Yeah dash cams are super wide angle. I don't see the point since everything will always be in focus.

Re: Sources: Google is buying Lytro for about $40M

#44

Post by pinkgodzilla »

fwgwgwgch wrote: post #32
vadimberman wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree, and given the standard "liquidity preference", the founders are likely to net $0, except for the Google bonuses for the engineering (Jack Barker-like Rosenthal is not likely to stick there). It's sad, really. It's one of the really innovative companies, but it's not easy to sell tech ahead of its time. Yet another incident that will encourage to pick copycats over real innovation. I guess Google is no longer a…

Can you explain what you mean by "liquidity prrference"? My understanding is that you get money in proportion to your vested share at the time of sale

Apologies in advance for the oversimplification. It depends on the actual contract you signed but in general it goes like this:

VC puts in 1 dollar, you sell at 1.2, VC will take the first dollar and MAY take the next 20 cents. That could mean a liquidity preference of 1.2x. If you sold at 1.4, it COULD mean VC takes 1.2 and you split the next 20cents according to your share split with the VC.

It may be easier to think of a VC as a bank that doesn't ask you to pay back a loan every month BUT if a liquidity event occurs (i.e. someone buys your company), they absolutely want all their money back first (i.e. "senior" in debt to equity holders (you)) before you get to dip your hands in.

Re: Sources: Google is buying Lytro for about $40M

#45

Post by cycrutchfield »

fwgwgwgch wrote: post #32
vadimberman wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree, and given the standard "liquidity preference", the founders are likely to net $0, except for the Google bonuses for the engineering (Jack Barker-like Rosenthal is not likely to stick there). It's sad, really. It's one of the really innovative companies, but it's not easy to sell tech ahead of its time. Yet another incident that will encourage to pick copycats over real innovation. I guess Google is no longer a…

Can you explain what you mean by "liquidity prrference"? My understanding is that you get money in proportion to your vested share at the time of sale

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/liquidation-preference....

Re: Sources: Google is buying Lytro for about $40M

#46

Post by sooheon »

nitrogen wrote: post #40
fwgwgwgch wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain what you mean by "liquidity prrference"? My understanding is that you get money in proportion to your vested share at the time of sale

Search for "liquidation preference" on your favorite search engine

Sometimes you feel like asking trusted strangers online for a synthesized summary as it pertains to the topic at hand.

Re: Sources: Google is buying Lytro for about $40M

#47

Post by taneq »

Qworg wrote: post #38
taneq wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, that looks awesome! For something at the demonstration-prototype stage in 2013 I'd have hoped they would have something at least in development by now.

They have a fully working version of it: https://vr.lytro.com/within/hallelujah

Looks awesome, but only an "experience" rather than something you can buy? I guess it would need an ultra-beefy system to run it, and is probably extremely expensive and not supported by much software (yet).

Re: Sources: Google is buying Lytro for about $40M

#48

Post by Qworg »

taneq wrote: post #47
Qworg wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have a fully working version of it: https://vr.lytro.com/within/hallelujah

Looks awesome, but only an "experience" rather than something you can buy? I guess it would need an ultra-beefy system to run it, and is probably extremely expensive and not supported by much software (yet).

They run it for you - it is a capture service. https://www.lytro.com/immerge#immergeDetails

Re: Sources: Google is buying Lytro for about $40M

#49

Post by angrygoat »

Stratoscope wrote: post #21
bwang29 wrote: post #6

Lytro has really cool technology but never really found a good use case for consumers. I owned both the 1st generation and 2nd generation camera, as much as I hated the UI of the software and usability of the hardware, I can clearly see the team has tried really hard to make it usable. They tried building an editing app, a community, a community 2.0, multiple hardware batch revisions. I wonder why they didn’t stop so…

I discovered Lytro at the Maker Faire when they had their "borrow a Lytro" demo. It was a great bit of marketing: take a Lytro around the Faire for an hour (where are there are always plenty of interesting subjects) and afterward they put all your shots in an online gallery for you. I got a fun shot or two that day and promptly bought one of their first cameras. But it wasn't a very good camera, and they completely m…

I've got a Lytro, and haven't used it for years, for many of the reasons you articulate.

To my mind their mistake was not having an open source library that could work with their capture format, including basic support for focusing and producing an output image for display.

Pretty much every new photography tech has had a community of amateurs and professionals spring up around it and (hopefully) innovate.

They missed out on that; all we got was the fun-for-a-few-minutes clicking around thing, which gets old pretty fast.

Re: Sources: Google is buying Lytro for about $40M

#50

Post by Deimorz »

If you have a VR headset, I highly suggest trying out the "Welcome to Light Fields" demo that Google released on Steam last week (it's free): http://store.steampowered.com/app/771310/Welcome_to_Light_Fi...

It's absolutely incredible and seems like really promising technology. Even with the relatively low resolution of current headsets, the image quality is amazing and you can see some slight lighting changes as you move your head, which makes it feel far more immersive than a static photo. There should be a lot of potential to use this for extremely realistic virtual tours.

Note: I had some slight issues with it "hitching" at the start of each scene in the guided tour (which made me feel a bit of motion-sickness), but that was probably because I didn't install it on an SSD (or my PC is just not quite fast enough overall). There weren't any issues when viewing the scenes individually afterwards.

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