Does Oculus Rift founder Palmer Luckey's name say it all? His father was a car salesman and father like son, he is the world's best salesman. We have all grown to love him.
The recent Oculus Rift deal with Facebook has created a real rift with OR kickstarter supporters. The question is: were the OR creators simply overwhelmed and kidnapped by venture capitalists as babes in the woods or were they spinning a "garage startup story" with their fans? In one single move, OR went from having Apple-like fanatical support base to being regarded as everything that is wrong with the current Guilded Age we are in these days.
But Kickstarter supporters who gave him the $2.5 million expected to at least see him put out a 1.0 production model rather than flip the company a mere two years after starting it. Everyone knows there are crazy acquisitions these days by Facebook, Disney and others but the main differences here was that OR used fan/supporters to get going enough to flip the company. But the Kickstarter campaign is what has angered most of his fans. When new entrants like Sony, Verve, Microsoft, Google and others roll out new products, OR will not get lots of "Likes" on facebook and their early supporters will swarm to it competitors. As they say in the action movies you will doubtless now watch in virtual reality: "payback is a bitch."
The larger fallout from all this is that large projects like this one has turned out to be will have a harder time getting money from Kickstarter fans. Who wants to be a technology incubator for fat cat venture capitalists the logic will run. Kickstarter is blameless in this matter and will be hurt as well. Their "cool vibe" will get beat up a fair amount. We also expect to see an angel-style Kickstarter start up where you get real equity. Hey... I need to run now and start that idea up!
Swedish developer Markus Persson said he was cancelling the project because Facebook's motives are too unclear, and he doesn't trust the site.