
Translation from VC-Backed PR Jargon to English of Magic Leap CEO Statement - docdeek
https://daringfireball.net/2020/05/abovitz_magic_leap_translation
======
ObsoleteNerd
$2.4B wasted on this.

They weren't smashing atoms together to discover world-changing new physics.
They didn't send people to space or develop some new revolutionary type of
transport that could transform society.

They made some really average AR glasses.

Two point four BILLION dollars.

The Tesla Model S cost ~500M to develop from start to finish[0], so Magic Leap
has spent 5 times that amount.

The ENTIRE Starlink satellite network will cost ~$10B total to develop, build,
and deploy [1]. So Magic Leap spent a quarter of that.

Apple developed and released the original iPhone on a budget of $150M. Magic
Leap has spent 16 times that.

These aren't apples to apples, of course. But I think it puts in perspective
just how much of a scam Magic Leap is in general.

[0] [https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/model-s-
development-...](https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/model-s-development-
costs-so-far.7294/)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_(1st_generation)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_\(1st_generation\))

~~~
walkingolof
You could say that none of it was "wasted", people earned their salary there
(I assume) and learned something, that led to consumption and investments
elsewhere.

Unless someone literally burnt the money, it did some good.

Then again, yea, $2.4B is just ridiculous, wonder what Jeri Ellsworth and
Tilt5 ([https://www.tiltfive.com](https://www.tiltfive.com)) could have done
with those resources...

~~~
nadavlidor
"people earned their salary" and "learned something" aren't great arguments.

Building a bridge that collapses minutes after construction also entails
workers earning salaries, and perhaps learning something. that still doesn't
mean it's a good use of funds, it's waste. you want the investment to create
actual value for someone.

~~~
nabla9
People have tendency to abandon this line argumentation immediately when it's
applied to something they admire and have been hyped up. Wasted money was
actually R&D.

Example that gets almost everyone: Space Shuttle.

It was supposed to be reusable space truck that reduces cost. It was several
times more expensive than conventional approach with non-reusable rockets and
shuttle. It was infrequently used. It drained NASA budged from anything
productive. Even those combined manned+cargo missions could have been achieved
cheaper with double launch. It was objectively failure based on the goals and
purpose of the project.

They developed so much new technology and inspired people. It was simply great
piece of engineering and PR. We learned a lot.

~~~
raverbashing
That being said, I believe the SLS gave many more spin-offs than the Magic
Leap

I wonder if there were missions that would not be possible without it (maybe
the Hubble launch and the AMS launch and installation) though most likely they
would be adapted to work without it.

~~~
nabla9
Are you satirizing? Because you make exactly the two invalid arguments I
mentioned.

~~~
raverbashing
I am not, I'm referring to missions where the Shuttle arm was used

Yeah, maybe they could be a double launch or worked in some other way.

------
fermienrico
How come VCs are not learning from examples like this? Perhaps get engineering
consultants take a look at the tech, provide their independent assessment of
the tech and guide them to not make these mistakes again?

Hindsight is always 20/20 except when you also have foresight which is maybe
20/40? Surely, Juicero with foresight was a bad idea.

Or ostensibly, these things are not that straightforward as they seem to be?

~~~
Traster
People act like Juicero was claiming they had some crazy proprietary way of
squeezing bags, and when it turned out you could squeeze them by hand the game
was up, but that's just not true. Nespresso hasn't collapsed because some
plucky journalist ripped open the little capsules and stuck them in a
Cafetière. We all know nespresso is just coffee in little pods.

Juicero was selling a lifestyle product to people who wanted super premium
juices. It was for the sort of person who buys stuff from Gwyneth Paltrow, has
a siphon coffee machine and gets teenagers blood injected into their face to
stop aging. While that's not the vast majority of us, it doesn't mean there
isn't a market for it.

~~~
gruturo
Nespresso does not come with an insanely steep price, you can't squeeze the
little capsules by hand :) and it has actual use cases:

* I would never drink the stuff some of my colleagues like, and vice versa, so we all buy our preferred capsules and are all happy.

* I have 3 variations depending on time of day or how I feel, and my favorite is (to my own surprise) a really cheap supermarket brand with compostable capsules which is not actually even from Nespresso

* I don't have to deal with the dirt and messes with loading and emptying the machine.

* Even my most clueless colleagues and guests can put a capsule in, push a button and obtain coffee. I assure you some of them couldn't operate anything much more complex than that.

* Capsules are sealed so they retain taste for longer. I don't drink enough to go through a bag of raw coffee before it loses its taste.

~~~
fermienrico
I think Nespresso makes the best espresso shot, even better than a coffee
shop. Nespresso is exactly the same everytime.

Also their pods are manufactured in Switzerland with extreme care for quality
and precision.

------
itronitron
'spatial computing in enterprise' << for some reason I expect this to be the
result of a summer intern's project

------
JumpCrisscross
Do we have any evidence of the $350mm raised? Might the e-mail have gone out
on a term sheet, as opposed to anything binding having been signed?

On a whim, I tried to see if the SEC’s EDGAR [1] showed any recent Forms D by
Magic Leap. Not that surprisingly, it looks like they haven’t ever bothered
filing one.

[1] [https://www.sec.gov/edgar.shtml](https://www.sec.gov/edgar.shtml)

------
danielscrubs
For anyone wondering about how much Google invested in them, it was at least
$542 million [1].

[1]: [https://www.businessinsider.com/magic-leap-google-
investment...](https://www.businessinsider.com/magic-leap-google-
investment-2014-10?op=1&r=US&IR=T)

------
trollied
Wow, they managed to raise another $350m.

What a strange world we live in.

~~~
chrisco255
VC money printer go brrrrr.

------
oftenwrong
This is my first time hearing about Magic Leap, and it is quite a story.
Reminiscent of Theranos. Was the retinal projection tech ever real, even in an
imperfect, non-miniaturised form?

Also, I stumbled upon a _Variety_ piece [1] about a Magic Leap conference that
sounds straight out of HBO's _Silicon Valley_ :

>However, Magic Leap decided to go a different route. When its CEO Rony
Abovitz took the stage at the beginning of the conference’s opening keynote,
he vaguely framed the company’s technology as a remedy to political and other
divisions plaguing today’s world, postulating: “Our new medium of spatial
computing is fresh. It doesn’t carry the baggage and negative headlines that
are dominating the news today.”

...

>“The conversation that we are starting here goes on for decades,” proclaimed
Abovitz. He went on to talk about Magic Leap’s idea to build city-wide AR
information layers — an interesting idea, but not anything we should expect to
materialize any time soon, as he freely admitted, while inexplicably bringing
up the spectre of fascism:

>“There is gonna be other companies proposing alternate x-verses. There will
be all these competing universes and systems, like there is competing
governments. There is monarchy, there is democracy, there is fascism, and
there is progressive, liberal thought. And these holistic systems will be how
governance might happen. How many people live their life. And this is not
tomorrow, this might be a few years from now. But you set the stage for that
right now.”

>Abovitz seemed to sense that there was still some work to be done before
Magic Leap could defeat fascism in the Magicverse — and he promptly proposed
to host a Burning Man-style gathering to get it done:

>“In order to continue this conversation, we probably kind of need a Burning
Man in the desert. Like a kind of Magicverse event where we hang out for a few
days, do a vision quest, build weird things. So more on that later, can’t
commit to it 100%, but we think it’d be cool.”

>There were some other odd moments that morning. A third-party developer read
a poem to the audience. Science fiction author and Magic Leap chief futurist
Neal Stephenson talked close to 10 minutes about virtual goats. The three-hour
keynote didn’t feature a single live demo.

[1] [https://variety.com/2018/digital/opinion/magic-leap-
leapcon-...](https://variety.com/2018/digital/opinion/magic-leap-
leapcon-1202978949/)

~~~
itronitron
retinal projection tech is pretty old actually, from the HIT lab at UW
([http://www.hitl.washington.edu/projects/vrd/](http://www.hitl.washington.edu/projects/vrd/))

"The VRD, based on the concept of scanning an image directly on the retina of
the vi ewer's eye, was invented at the HIT Lab in 1991."

------
MangoCoffee
"Magic Leap: Spatial Computing for Enterprise"

you gotta love whoever come up with "Spatial Computing for Enterprise".

------
Animats
Who put in $350 million more? Did anybody? So far there's just an internal
email from Magic Leap management.

~~~
rapsey
Someone suffering from sunk cost fallacy maybe

------
karmakaze
An entertaining read, but I don't believe for one second that this is how it
was for most of the life of the company. Perhaps toward the end this became
their reality.

It's really more of a case of drinking too much of your own kool-aid and
biting off more than you can chew.

I believe that everyone from the top down really did believe they were
creating an amazing future. It reminds me of the similarly named company
General Magic from the 90's. I tried it out in the day and the documentary is
simultaneously sad and joyous. Hats off to Magic Leap for trying. But.. they
should have released sooner and often rather than trying to create an entire
medium and ecosystem behind a curtain for v1.

------
stephc_int13
Predicting the future is notoriously hard.

I think plenty of successful products were once in a shaky/buggy/bulky state.
The hype was high on AR and only a few experts had a good understanding of the
constraints, especially about optics, physics, and sensors.

------
sdan
Realistically, which "enterprise" would buy this?

~~~
nickflood
Given that HoloLens already exists, I guess, they're looking to leverage their
investor selling skills on some enterprise execs that don't need this stuff...

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Who will then force it on to their subordinates who have no use for it.

~~~
xabotage
This. I have worked and developed on the HoloLens; it is 20% cool tech demo
and 80% cardboard propped up by Microsoft's over-eager marketing (think Xbox
Kinect). Only difference between them and Magic Leap is that Microsoft has a
large swath of existing gullible enterprise customers who will happily buy
whatever superfluous products they can be talked into buying, whereas I guess
Magic Leap's core competencies are on the opposite end, selling to gullible
VCs.

------
pfortuny
“We have closed significant new funding and have very positive momentum
towards closing key strategic enterprise partnerships”

So meaningful...

~~~
BigJono
Rofl. The last startup I worked for had "very positive momentum towards
closing key strategic enterprise partnerships" from the day I joined to the
day we went down like the Hindenburg.

------
seemslegit
Very smart people might have been duped into investing alright, but it's not
because they were duped to believe in the tech or the product, rather it was
because they were duped to believe that a bigger sucker will come along as
from their previous experience one usually did eventually.

------
xarope
ELI5 what constitutes spatial computing platform for the enterprise? $500
measuring devices (aka rulers)?!?

------
IngoBlechschmid
When I visit [https://www.magicleap.com/](https://www.magicleap.com/) without
cookies enabled, I'm redirected to a non-existent page.

------
kulor
Don't hate the player, hate the game

------
person_of_color
I think this is harsh. The CEO surely must be acting in good faith to his
investors?

~~~
trollied
The CEO has actually stepped down:
[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/05/29/magic_leap_ceo_rony...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/05/29/magic_leap_ceo_rony_abovitz_steps_down/)

