Palmer's VR Beginnings
- 17-year-old Palmer Luckey, driven by a desire for deeper video game immersion, experimented with VR prototypes in his garage.
- He secured a part-time job at USC's Institute for Creative Technologies, a DoD-funded VR lab.
Carmack's E3 Demo
- John Carmack, a prominent game developer, discovered Palmer's work through online VR forums.
- Carmack demoed a duct-taped Rift prototype at E3 2012, generating significant industry buzz.
Oculus VR Formation
- Brendan Iribe and Michael Antonov, Scaleform co-founders, partnered with Palmer to establish Oculus VR.
- Their 2012 Kickstarter campaign raised $2.5M, exceeding their $250,000 goal.
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Introduction
00:00 • 2min
Podcast Presented by Acquired at Dot FM
01:50 • 2min
The Greatest Founders of All Time
03:21 • 2min
Facebook's 2014 Acquisition of Oculus
04:54 • 3min
What's the Future of Virtual Reality?
07:32 • 2min
The Next Great Entrepreneur Is John Carmack
09:10 • 2min
John Carmack and the Rift
11:31 • 2min
E3 2012 Is the Watershed Moment for Oculus VR
13:05 • 2min
Gaming Is a Dual Track of Pushing the Envelope on PCs
14:57 • 2min
The Oculus VR Kickstarter
17:06 • 2min
The Kickstarter Campaign Is a Great Model to Bootstrap a VR Company
19:35 • 2min
Oculus DK One Developer Kit
21:52 • 2min
The DK Two Is the Next Title Wave of Technology
23:37 • 2min
Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg's Acquisition of Oculus
25:27 • 2min
Facebook's FOMO
27:07 • 4min
Facebook's Acquisition of ZeniMax by Oculus - What's the Story?
30:40 • 4min
Oculus Rift vs Valve VR
34:45 • 2min
HTC and Valve Are Executially Brilliant
37:13 • 2min
Valve VR
39:07 • 2min
The Next Tidal Wave in Technology?
41:00 • 2min
Oculus CEO Palmer Lucky Has Left Facebook
43:12 • 2min
Oculus Is a Business Line Acquisition
45:12 • 3min
Oculus Riffs
47:42 • 2min
Facebook and Oculus
49:53 • 3min
Can Facebook Be a Horizontal and a Vertical Business at the Same Time?
52:48 • 3min
Is Google Taking That Approach With Daydream VR?
55:26 • 2min
What's Going to Happen if Oculus Doesn't Land at Facebook?
57:05 • 4min
What Would Facebook Have Done in VR Without Oculus?
01:00:35 • 2min
Facebook and Oculus Are the Future of VR
01:02:07 • 4min
Facebook's VR Strategy, Mark Zuckerberg's Oculus
01:06:04 • 2min
Is Facebook a Monopoly on a Direct Custom Relationship?
01:08:25 • 2min
Is Facebook a Camera Company?
01:10:14 • 2min
Mobile Eye - Vertical Versus Horizontal?
01:11:53 • 2min
Can Intel Be the Microsoft?
01:13:38 • 5min
Ben & David transcend the barriers of “real” reality, and dive into Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg’s geek-eutpoia vision of the future of gaming, social, and maybe even the entire internet: strapping goofy-looking goggles to your face. Is VR for real this time or are we living through another Virtual Boy moment? Tune in to find out!
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Topics covered include:
- Oculus’s origins in 2010 as a twinkle in the eye of the then-17 year old VR wunderkind, Palmer Luckey, who started by prototyping VR headsets in his parents’ garage in Southern California
- Palmer’s time interning at USC's Institute for Creative Technologies, and chronicling of his own VR efforts in the Meant to be Seen 3D internet forums
- Legendary game developer John Carmack’s own interest in virtual reality, his intersection with Palmer on the MTBS3D forums, and how he acquired and popularized one of Palmer's first early prototypes of the Oculus Rift (which was literally held together with duct tape!) by demonstrating it onstage at E3 2012
- How former Scaleform cofounders Brendan Iribe and Michael Antonov teamed up with Palmer after E3 to create the company Oculus VR
- The newly-formed Oculus’s wildly successful August 2012 Kickstarter campaign, including video endorsements from both Carmack and Valve founder Gabe Newell
- Oculus’s subsequent venture capital fundraisings, and catching the attention of Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg
- Facebook’s acquisition of the company in March 2014 for $2.3B
- The Zenimax lawsuit filed against Oculus and Facebook following the acquisition
- Valve (home of the most incredible company handbook of all-time) and Gabe Newell’s subsequent pivot from supporting Oculus to launching their own competing VR efforts with the Vive
- Team changes at Oculus post-acquisition
Followups:
- SNAP: still a public company
Hot Takes:
- Intel’s $15B acquisition of Mobileye (with reference to Ben Thompson’s analysis of the deal and Smiling Curves)
The Carve Out:
- Ben: Kara Swisher interviews the Pod Save America team at SXSW
- David: Adam Gopnik asks Are Liberals on the Wrong Side of History?