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Magic Leap CEO Rony Abovitz Is Out

baybal2 6y ago
An interesting persona, you can check web archive for articles he deleted from his weblog. You can only guess why he decided to delete them one decade after he stopped blogging. I believe, he didn't want to be seen as too much "new age hippie" type.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
RestAndVest 6y ago
Well, he made hefty amount of money. Good luck to the investors with this turd.
jondubois 6y ago
The tech culture of investing gigantic sums of money in a handful of hyped up projects is sick IMO. Especially when these investors already know perfectly well that only 1 out of 10 startup makes it and that it's almost impossible to predict which ones will succeed. Even Y Combinator, which is top of the top, doesn't have that high success rate in terms of number of companies. Instead of giving this one company $2.6 billion, the investors could have invested $100k in 26k different startups. They could have literally scrolled through the list of the top 26k open source projects on GitHub and invested 100K in each of their teams to come up with any kind of business related to their expertise. Their success rate is bound to have been better. This money was just wasted. Investors are just too lazy to interact with so many companies. Too fat and lazy to make an impact.
- marcinzm 6y ago
  There is a non-trivial cost to investing money into a venture. Investing into 26k projects means you're going to lose a large percentage of money in overhead, legal fees, communication, etc. Then there's the continuing overhead of monitoring the investment which will cost even more.
- skrebbel 6y ago
  > giving This is not at all how investing works. It sounds like you're talking about some kind of charity.
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    I think that's a pretty uncharitable reading of deep meaning into a single word (that isn't even wrong).
- amitutk 6y ago
  > Instead of giving this one company $2.6 billion, the investors could have invested $100k in 26k different startups. This already happens, its called angel or accelerator funding. YC gives $150K to 200+ company every year. Some of these companies then raise more, then some more. For founder with successful exits or other outstanding achievement, they can effectively start with series C and raise 50 million as the first round. Thereafter everyone wants to bet on the winning horse.
  - jondubois 6y ago
    It doesn't happen enough. Nowhere near enough. The number of companies which apply to YC versus the number which are actually accepted is a very bad ratio. YC and all other incubators combined do not represent a free market by any stretch of the imagination. They're picking winners based on some selection criteria which worked at one point in history... This funnel has been so thoroughly gamed and hacked that at this stage, they might as well invest in random companies. Does anyone realize just how hard it is to get even $20k in funding for a hard working honest founder who is not a psychopathic manipulator. IMO, anybody who can't setup a functional profitable business with $20k funding is unfit to run any company. You've got to give a first chance to more people and fewer second, third and fourth chances to charming psychos.
    - objclxt 6y ago
      > Does anyone realize just how hard it is to get even $20k in funding for a hard working honest founder who is not a psychopathic manipulator It isn't that hard to get $20k in funding if your idea is halfway decent - that's not the value that YC provides. The value that YC provides is in the networking and connections, which I think a lot of people would argue is worth far more than the money. > anybody who can't setup a functional profitable business with $20k funding is unfit to run any company Not quite. Good luck setting up a profitable hardware business with $20k of funding, tooling costs alone are going to dwarf your seed capital.
      - jondubois 6y ago
        >> It isn't that hard to get $20k in funding if your idea is halfway decent - that's not the value that YC provides. The value that YC provides is in the networking and connections It's very hard in most countries - Coming from someone who has been applying constantly for 10 years. At one point I even managed to get invited to some events and conferences where a specific seed stage investor was going and I approached him enough times at different events that I was eventually able to secure coffee with the guy; took 2 years from when I started trying to get investment. Then this investor encouraged me to apply to their incubator... Then they just rejected me. My open source project was one of the most popular in Australia at the time. I had worked on it for several years and I had a solid business strategy and I could really have benefited from $20K and any kind of support network (I was never asking for YC level business connections, just some help me get 1 foot in the door with 1 B2B customer would have been great). BTW my project was more than 'halfway decent'. As proof, today my project powers multiple mainstream tech projects and several major blockchain projects and I'm collecting forging rewards on one of them. Did it with $0 funding and most people I met actively working against me instead of helping me. Got screwed over so many times. I don't think my case is unusual. What happened to me is just average. The thing is that in spite of it being so difficult to secure a mere $20K, this whole experience did not make me believe that fiat money is valuable. It did the exact opposite. So now I'm dedicating my career to the fight against fiat money.
- valachio 6y ago
  Look up "power law". Peter Thiel talks about this in detail in his book
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ArtWomb 6y ago
If the "virtual" space is a zero-sum game, then Oculus is beginning to expand on an already formidable burgeoning empire ;) The strategic points that have paid off are the laser commitment to consumer electronics and gaming. Ceaseless technical product innovation and release cycles. And the stellar relations with the indie game dev community. I think looking at something like Echo VR, which is basically the Battle Arena from Ender's Game. I always loved the zero-G levels in Unreal Tournament and Quake Arena. But this an environment where "which way is up" is truly relative. It represents a new "VR-native" style of game play.
- kbumsik 6y ago
  > If the "virtual" space is a zero-sum game, then Oculus is beginning to expand on an already formidable burgeoning empire ;) Is it? I saw that Valve also is getting much attention with Half-Life Alyx and Valve Index.
  - darkerside 6y ago
    No technology impactful enough to be worth investing over $100k is operating in a zero sum market
  - sgift 6y ago
    Alyx I would agree, but for Index the reaction I usually saw was more of "yeah, okay, nice, but far too expensive. Let's wait a few years for an affordable solution" while Quest is praised all the time.
  - ArtWomb 6y ago
    Alyx is remarkable. You are in the Black Mesa universe. And it's appropriately horrifying. But in a perverse way, and this is probably a generational thing, I found the original PC-era Half-Life more immersive. Just could not stop playing until I reached the end. And was always rewarded with a narrative that got weirder by degrees. I think it was the novelty of getting stuck and seeking out trustworthy walkthroughs from some anonymous dial-up era phpBB forums ;)
criddell 6y ago
What was ML showing investors and reporters before their first product release? Was it all smoke-and-mirrors, or do they have something interesting that they haven't been able to make into a product? Do NDAs (like the one Kevin Kelly had to sign) ever expire? I'd love to hear the story one day of what was going on in that company that allowed them to raise so much money.
- sbarre 6y ago
  They have a product, it's out in the market now. It's just not relevant or interesting to the mass market in the way that Magic Leap was able to lead investors to believe it would be. I think it might actually be that simple.
  - Cactus2018 6y ago
    > They have a product, it's out in the market now. Sure enough! (image link) https://images.ctfassets.net/wzcrdezk3u3k/4BYPBt61B2XnAsY3ysn4Fc/e25bff85385b77f0eb5e9e9a2e01d3b9/Developer_3x.png https://images.ctfassets.net/wzcrdezk3u3k/4BYPBt61B2XnAsY3ys... https://shop.magicleap.com/#/ https://shop.magicleap.com/#/ >> $2,295 >> What’s included? Magic Leap 1 (Lightwear, Lightpack and Control), Lightpack Charger, Control Charger, 2 USB-C Cables, ...
    - Cactus2018 6y ago
      Review and specs https://www.techrepublic.com/article/magic-leap-1-augmented-reality-headset-a-cheat-sheet/ https://www.techrepublic.com/article/magic-leap-1-augmented-...
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- kace91 6y ago
  Back when I was working in a small VR company (about 4 years ago?) ML was granted a bajillion of very abstract vr related patents (in the vein of apple's famous "square device with rounded corners" one). I remember one about mapping physical objects to virtual ones in position, with an example of selecting a random object on a table and being able to use it as a mouse, and another about interacting with virtual creatures through AR that was obviously inspired by the (then) popular pokemon go. Given the suspicious lack of demos except for closed doors events and silly CGI trailers, our guess back then was that the whole thing was somehow going to be a scheme to become some sort of patent troll of the emerging field - which would make giants like google want to be in - coupled with using the hype of getting investment by the big guys to increase it's value. Nowadays, I still have no idea what happened in there.
alangibson 6y ago
In my office there are several sets from Oculus, ML, etc. Every time one shows up, it goes like this: everyone stands around and has a go at it, then it is never touched again. That's basically the state of VR and AR as it exists today.
- capableweb 6y ago
  For some. For others, it bring them lots of joy. I'm a huge flight nerd and VR has made my experience flying simulators waaaay better. Beat Saber also got me to move a lot more, while listening to my favorite music and it's fun. But in general I think you're right, most VR stuff is gimmicky. But for us niche nerds, it's a cool addition to our stuff.
- tosers4 6y ago
  Beat Saber. That is the VR seller right now.
  - whatch 6y ago
    Can confirm. I have fallen in love with VR when I tried this game on my friend's Oculus Quest. Now during lockdown Beat Saber and BoxVR (another great title, with issues though) on my own headset account for, I guess, 90-95% of my physical activity.
  - thendrill 6y ago
    And super hot!
- tashoecraft 6y ago
  Because who sits around at work on a vr headset? Vr is inherently anti (local) social. Vr is fantastic for certain things right now, sim racing being the one I’m familiar with, that it completely blows away any alternative. The big issue I’ve found is the UX and software is atrocious. Things are not intuitive, there’s walled gardens (f you oculus). I’ve had so many moments of knowing what I want to do, but being totally unable to figure out how to do it. I’ll be excited once Apple enters space to figure out a bunch of this stuff and the rest of the field can just copy them.
catacombs 6y ago
I feel like this has been a long-time coming, as the company continues to be shrouded in secrecy and not release anything of significant value.
ideals 6y ago
It sounds like he will still work there, just not as CEO. This article is a bit light on details. There's no reason given for this. I'm surprised this didn't leak during the last couple rounds of headlines about laying off staff and more recently raising money. Is Magic Leap really good at keeping secrets or was this a last minute change to funding outline?
sebringj 6y ago
I would contrast Jerri Ellsworth of Tilt 5 as the exact opposite of Rony Abovitz. She is low-key, tech smart and made a product quickly with a relatively low budget while having that magic feel to it in the AR world although in a limited, clever and practical way for table top gaming.
ngngngng 6y ago
I only want one AR app and no ones made it yet as far as I know. I just want to be able to walk around the Acropolis in Greece (or any site) and see it in AR as it would have been throughout history. Have little digital scenes play out with people from 2000 years ago, show me buildings as they were before they were destroyed.
- stevofolife 6y ago
  Same
- r2champloo 6y ago
  Funnily enough, the Carnegie Natural History Museum funded a project exactly like this at Carnegie Mellon University. An AR tour of their Architecture exhibit that placed exhibit objects back into their full construction. I wonder if that project went anywhere...
dhosek 6y ago
Jon Gruber's take is brutal: https://daringfireball.net/2020/05/abovitz_magic_leap_translation https://daringfireball.net/2020/05/abovitz_magic_leap_transl...
- ebg13 6y ago
  The bit that really stands out to me is where he says "We even convinced Google to invest. Google! Those guys are smart!" This flavor of trope really needs to die. Some people at Google may be smart, but it's pretty clear time and again that many at Google are not, and that Google as a whole is not. "Google is smart and I should trust them to make smart choices" is the kind of cancer that gave ML almost 3 billion dollars.
- qppo 6y ago
  I don't want to downvote you because I assume you didn't write that, but this kind of vitriol is childish. We shouldn't point and laugh at people losing their jobs in this environment.
- valachio 6y ago
  The hate that people have for ambitious people with ambitious projects, is quite sad.
flmlta 6y ago
It's really easy to make a comment and have it come off as dismissive or unsympathetic, I recognize that thousands of people put in tons of hard work on a product and tech stack that they believed in. I keep reading my friends' goodbye messages to ML after being laid off and being amazed at how different they perceive their work than I do as a consumer. It's like the culture is closer to Jonestown than Cupertino. I say that because I don't know how much koolaid you have to drink before the ML product that was released to consumers becomes impressive. The experiences available on their platform are not compelling. The headset is inferior and expensive. Much of what I've seen exclaimed by ML employees as examples of their product and company's quality are things that I consider organizational bugs. Their tech stack is as deep as the Marianas Trench and they're too proud of it. I don't think ML will be in business in 5 years unless they slim down, sell off IP, and relocate. They do have some really impressive tech and smart people, but I don't think the company as it exists today is viable.
psmithsfhn 6y ago
I worked at an AR startup that got rid of their very smart and charismatic CEO eventually. Guess what happened?
ykevinator 6y ago
Am I banned?
- Gibbon1 6y ago
  Not yet I guess.

An interesting persona, you can check web archive for articles he deleted from his weblog. You can only guess why he decided to delete them one decade after he stopped blogging. I believe, he didn't want to be seen as too much "new age hippie" type.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

RestAndVest 6y ago

Well, he made hefty amount of money. Good luck to the investors with this turd.

jondubois 6y ago

The tech culture of investing gigantic sums of money in a handful of hyped up projects is sick IMO. Especially when these investors already know perfectly well that only 1 out of 10 startup makes it and that it's almost impossible to predict which ones will succeed. Even Y Combinator, which is top of the top, doesn't have that high success rate in terms of number of companies. Instead of giving this one company $2.6 billion, the investors could have invested $100k in 26k different startups. They could have literally scrolled through the list of the top 26k open source projects on GitHub and invested 100K in each of their teams to come up with any kind of business related to their expertise. Their success rate is bound to have been better. This money was just wasted. Investors are just too lazy to interact with so many companies. Too fat and lazy to make an impact.

marcinzm 6y ago
There is a non-trivial cost to investing money into a venture. Investing into 26k projects means you're going to lose a large percentage of money in overhead, legal fees, communication, etc. Then there's the continuing overhead of monitoring the investment which will cost even more.
skrebbel 6y ago
> giving This is not at all how investing works. It sounds like you're talking about some kind of charity.
- sokoloff 6y ago
  I think that's a pretty uncharitable reading of deep meaning into a single word (that isn't even wrong).
amitutk 6y ago
> Instead of giving this one company $2.6 billion, the investors could have invested $100k in 26k different startups. This already happens, its called angel or accelerator funding. YC gives $150K to 200+ company every year. Some of these companies then raise more, then some more. For founder with successful exits or other outstanding achievement, they can effectively start with series C and raise 50 million as the first round. Thereafter everyone wants to bet on the winning horse.
- jondubois 6y ago
  It doesn't happen enough. Nowhere near enough. The number of companies which apply to YC versus the number which are actually accepted is a very bad ratio. YC and all other incubators combined do not represent a free market by any stretch of the imagination. They're picking winners based on some selection criteria which worked at one point in history... This funnel has been so thoroughly gamed and hacked that at this stage, they might as well invest in random companies. Does anyone realize just how hard it is to get even $20k in funding for a hard working honest founder who is not a psychopathic manipulator. IMO, anybody who can't setup a functional profitable business with $20k funding is unfit to run any company. You've got to give a first chance to more people and fewer second, third and fourth chances to charming psychos.
  - objclxt 6y ago
    > Does anyone realize just how hard it is to get even $20k in funding for a hard working honest founder who is not a psychopathic manipulator It isn't that hard to get $20k in funding if your idea is halfway decent - that's not the value that YC provides. The value that YC provides is in the networking and connections, which I think a lot of people would argue is worth far more than the money. > anybody who can't setup a functional profitable business with $20k funding is unfit to run any company Not quite. Good luck setting up a profitable hardware business with $20k of funding, tooling costs alone are going to dwarf your seed capital.
    - jondubois 6y ago
      >> It isn't that hard to get $20k in funding if your idea is halfway decent - that's not the value that YC provides. The value that YC provides is in the networking and connections It's very hard in most countries - Coming from someone who has been applying constantly for 10 years. At one point I even managed to get invited to some events and conferences where a specific seed stage investor was going and I approached him enough times at different events that I was eventually able to secure coffee with the guy; took 2 years from when I started trying to get investment. Then this investor encouraged me to apply to their incubator... Then they just rejected me. My open source project was one of the most popular in Australia at the time. I had worked on it for several years and I had a solid business strategy and I could really have benefited from $20K and any kind of support network (I was never asking for YC level business connections, just some help me get 1 foot in the door with 1 B2B customer would have been great). BTW my project was more than 'halfway decent'. As proof, today my project powers multiple mainstream tech projects and several major blockchain projects and I'm collecting forging rewards on one of them. Did it with $0 funding and most people I met actively working against me instead of helping me. Got screwed over so many times. I don't think my case is unusual. What happened to me is just average. The thing is that in spite of it being so difficult to secure a mere $20K, this whole experience did not make me believe that fiat money is valuable. It did the exact opposite. So now I'm dedicating my career to the fight against fiat money.
valachio 6y ago
Look up "power law". Peter Thiel talks about this in detail in his book

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

ArtWomb 6y ago

If the "virtual" space is a zero-sum game, then Oculus is beginning to expand on an already formidable burgeoning empire ;) The strategic points that have paid off are the laser commitment to consumer electronics and gaming. Ceaseless technical product innovation and release cycles. And the stellar relations with the indie game dev community. I think looking at something like Echo VR, which is basically the Battle Arena from Ender's Game. I always loved the zero-G levels in Unreal Tournament and Quake Arena. But this an environment where "which way is up" is truly relative. It represents a new "VR-native" style of game play.

kbumsik 6y ago
> If the "virtual" space is a zero-sum game, then Oculus is beginning to expand on an already formidable burgeoning empire ;) Is it? I saw that Valve also is getting much attention with Half-Life Alyx and Valve Index.
- darkerside 6y ago
  No technology impactful enough to be worth investing over $100k is operating in a zero sum market
- sgift 6y ago
  Alyx I would agree, but for Index the reaction I usually saw was more of "yeah, okay, nice, but far too expensive. Let's wait a few years for an affordable solution" while Quest is praised all the time.
- ArtWomb 6y ago
  Alyx is remarkable. You are in the Black Mesa universe. And it's appropriately horrifying. But in a perverse way, and this is probably a generational thing, I found the original PC-era Half-Life more immersive. Just could not stop playing until I reached the end. And was always rewarded with a narrative that got weirder by degrees. I think it was the novelty of getting stuck and seeking out trustworthy walkthroughs from some anonymous dial-up era phpBB forums ;)

criddell 6y ago

What was ML showing investors and reporters before their first product release? Was it all smoke-and-mirrors, or do they have something interesting that they haven't been able to make into a product? Do NDAs (like the one Kevin Kelly had to sign) ever expire? I'd love to hear the story one day of what was going on in that company that allowed them to raise so much money.

sbarre 6y ago
They have a product, it's out in the market now. It's just not relevant or interesting to the mass market in the way that Magic Leap was able to lead investors to believe it would be. I think it might actually be that simple.
- Cactus2018 6y ago
  > They have a product, it's out in the market now. Sure enough! (image link) https://images.ctfassets.net/wzcrdezk3u3k/4BYPBt61B2XnAsY3ysn4Fc/e25bff85385b77f0eb5e9e9a2e01d3b9/Developer_3x.png https://images.ctfassets.net/wzcrdezk3u3k/4BYPBt61B2XnAsY3ys... https://shop.magicleap.com/#/ https://shop.magicleap.com/#/ >> $2,295 >> What’s included? Magic Leap 1 (Lightwear, Lightpack and Control), Lightpack Charger, Control Charger, 2 USB-C Cables, ...
  - Cactus2018 6y ago
    Review and specs https://www.techrepublic.com/article/magic-leap-1-augmented-reality-headset-a-cheat-sheet/ https://www.techrepublic.com/article/magic-leap-1-augmented-...
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
kace91 6y ago
Back when I was working in a small VR company (about 4 years ago?) ML was granted a bajillion of very abstract vr related patents (in the vein of apple's famous "square device with rounded corners" one). I remember one about mapping physical objects to virtual ones in position, with an example of selecting a random object on a table and being able to use it as a mouse, and another about interacting with virtual creatures through AR that was obviously inspired by the (then) popular pokemon go. Given the suspicious lack of demos except for closed doors events and silly CGI trailers, our guess back then was that the whole thing was somehow going to be a scheme to become some sort of patent troll of the emerging field - which would make giants like google want to be in - coupled with using the hype of getting investment by the big guys to increase it's value. Nowadays, I still have no idea what happened in there.

alangibson 6y ago

In my office there are several sets from Oculus, ML, etc. Every time one shows up, it goes like this: everyone stands around and has a go at it, then it is never touched again. That's basically the state of VR and AR as it exists today.

capableweb 6y ago
For some. For others, it bring them lots of joy. I'm a huge flight nerd and VR has made my experience flying simulators waaaay better. Beat Saber also got me to move a lot more, while listening to my favorite music and it's fun. But in general I think you're right, most VR stuff is gimmicky. But for us niche nerds, it's a cool addition to our stuff.
tosers4 6y ago
Beat Saber. That is the VR seller right now.
- whatch 6y ago
  Can confirm. I have fallen in love with VR when I tried this game on my friend's Oculus Quest. Now during lockdown Beat Saber and BoxVR (another great title, with issues though) on my own headset account for, I guess, 90-95% of my physical activity.
- thendrill 6y ago
  And super hot!
tashoecraft 6y ago
Because who sits around at work on a vr headset? Vr is inherently anti (local) social. Vr is fantastic for certain things right now, sim racing being the one I’m familiar with, that it completely blows away any alternative. The big issue I’ve found is the UX and software is atrocious. Things are not intuitive, there’s walled gardens (f you oculus). I’ve had so many moments of knowing what I want to do, but being totally unable to figure out how to do it. I’ll be excited once Apple enters space to figure out a bunch of this stuff and the rest of the field can just copy them.

catacombs 6y ago

I feel like this has been a long-time coming, as the company continues to be shrouded in secrecy and not release anything of significant value.

ideals 6y ago

It sounds like he will still work there, just not as CEO. This article is a bit light on details. There's no reason given for this. I'm surprised this didn't leak during the last couple rounds of headlines about laying off staff and more recently raising money. Is Magic Leap really good at keeping secrets or was this a last minute change to funding outline?

sebringj 6y ago

I would contrast Jerri Ellsworth of Tilt 5 as the exact opposite of Rony Abovitz. She is low-key, tech smart and made a product quickly with a relatively low budget while having that magic feel to it in the AR world although in a limited, clever and practical way for table top gaming.

ngngngng 6y ago

I only want one AR app and no ones made it yet as far as I know. I just want to be able to walk around the Acropolis in Greece (or any site) and see it in AR as it would have been throughout history. Have little digital scenes play out with people from 2000 years ago, show me buildings as they were before they were destroyed.

stevofolife 6y ago
Same
r2champloo 6y ago
Funnily enough, the Carnegie Natural History Museum funded a project exactly like this at Carnegie Mellon University. An AR tour of their Architecture exhibit that placed exhibit objects back into their full construction. I wonder if that project went anywhere...

dhosek 6y ago

Jon Gruber's take is brutal: https://daringfireball.net/2020/05/abovitz_magic_leap_translation https://daringfireball.net/2020/05/abovitz_magic_leap_transl...

ebg13 6y ago
The bit that really stands out to me is where he says "We even convinced Google to invest. Google! Those guys are smart!" This flavor of trope really needs to die. Some people at Google may be smart, but it's pretty clear time and again that many at Google are not, and that Google as a whole is not. "Google is smart and I should trust them to make smart choices" is the kind of cancer that gave ML almost 3 billion dollars.
qppo 6y ago
I don't want to downvote you because I assume you didn't write that, but this kind of vitriol is childish. We shouldn't point and laugh at people losing their jobs in this environment.
valachio 6y ago
The hate that people have for ambitious people with ambitious projects, is quite sad.

flmlta 6y ago

It's really easy to make a comment and have it come off as dismissive or unsympathetic, I recognize that thousands of people put in tons of hard work on a product and tech stack that they believed in. I keep reading my friends' goodbye messages to ML after being laid off and being amazed at how different they perceive their work than I do as a consumer. It's like the culture is closer to Jonestown than Cupertino. I say that because I don't know how much koolaid you have to drink before the ML product that was released to consumers becomes impressive. The experiences available on their platform are not compelling. The headset is inferior and expensive. Much of what I've seen exclaimed by ML employees as examples of their product and company's quality are things that I consider organizational bugs. Their tech stack is as deep as the Marianas Trench and they're too proud of it. I don't think ML will be in business in 5 years unless they slim down, sell off IP, and relocate. They do have some really impressive tech and smart people, but I don't think the company as it exists today is viable.

psmithsfhn 6y ago

I worked at an AR startup that got rid of their very smart and charismatic CEO eventually. Guess what happened?

ykevinator 6y ago

Am I banned?

Gibbon1 6y ago
Not yet I guess.