My south Floridian side really wants them to be successful, but my techie side despises their secrecy and "demos" aka photoshopped graphics and cgi videos.
I live here too. We unfortunately have built a reputation of our value only being skin deep and superficial – from our real estate to our transit to our restaurants and nightlife to our startup community. This reputation is not entirely without merit; we need to do better.
Knowing all that – I want this to be amazing, but I am keeping my expectations in check. To me, this all seems too familiar. Lots of flash and shine, but I don't see anything concrete.
Most people there have always been from somewhere else, I didn't always fit in as well being born in Florida.
from above:
>>I don't understand why this entire field seems so focused on gaming, and not productivity
>Because they think that gamers will pay. Unfortunately, I see that they got a wrong idea. It has a vibe of a semibotched Kickstarter project, except backers here are not private individuals, but gigacompanies.
>A type of a gamer who spends 15k usd on a gaming rig to crush opponents in Quake 3 in ultracompetitive environment, will not care a bit about this toy.
>The founder of the company comes from a socioeconomic strata whose people have that characteristic. A Boston "old money family (R)" born man may see that selling gaming stuff to quite a lot of relatively rich people dumping 15k on a gaming rig is a good business idea, proceeds to build a company built around that idea with all audicious bold claims being received with accolades from other people like him, but never actually bothers to figure out what things matter in a gaming gear.
>If you have read his personal blog from naughties before he deleted it, you will get that his ways can be said to be well beyond "nebulous". He wrote stuff like "solving global problems" while maintaining that tone you usually see from people who flood the internet with something very insubstantial like "saving African children with Agile, innovation, and seven sigma framework..."
>Ok, back to the botches kickstarter line. As happens often with such projects, original claims performance get scaled down, company barely manages to deliver a downrated product after missing the delivery deadlines multiple times, product works so so, and in the end it ends in your drawer for good. A year down the line the company simply shuts down the cloud service for the widget and you are left with an expensive paperweight. I expect magic leap to follow this route.
then there's this:
>Given what is known about the mechanisms of high end confidence tricks, what is different about the operation of Magic Leap that indicates that it is not a confidence trick
Similar to the way that SV is decades ahead in software engineering, Hollywoood (Calif.) almost a full century ahead in moving picture entertainment, and Houston with its petro/chemicals, Ft. Lauderdale leads the pack in confidence leverage, selling to investors their very own dreams in the most "creative" ways like no place else. Lots of locations are desirable for different reasons and give rise to extreme leadership in regional specialties like these, where most outsiders are completely out of their element. Magic leap is already successful on its own terms without needing actual paying customers yet or even a shippable product, what's the hurry to put icing on the cake, even if it becomes possible? I wouldn't expect them to be as competitive at selling to customers compared to the pitches they have already delivered and won.
Vapor ware has existed much longer and more traditionally in hardwares than in softwares to begin with.
The most well-honed So. Fla. ventures always have a very realistic possibility of truly making money, the persuasive confidence being focused on distorting the probablity rather than on complete fraud. After all, fraud would be illegal, even in So. Fla. where you traditionally did not ask people what they do for a living, that would be rude since there's so little opportunity to earn a legitimate income compared to parts north. You're supposed to have money before you go there.
When I was a youngster Ft. Lauderdale was a much smaller yachting community, but more so than ever it looks like "hook, line, and sinker" will always be some of the most prominent pastimes enjoyed by those who specialize in this type of activity. All the yachtsmen I knew were only looking for the biggest fish, not interested in the small fry. That was for commercially viable fishermen who didn't even own a pleasure craft.
People probably don't have much memory from the last time, of course Port St. Lucie isn't exactly South Florida proper. Not as big a venture but could be considered a POC in an area not as thoroughly overfished as Broward:
With Facebook and all, everybody knows SV is where the biggest fish are these days. You go where the money is, or even better bring them to you.
Anyway, I am completely "confident" I could get a better return for the investors in Theranos than for those lured in to Magic Leap based on what each of these groups has to work with at the present time, if given the opportunity to steward each of these companies' present assets from this point forward. Surely I have seen what looks like some of the huge cash put into Magic Leap already trickle down into photonic advances that will make money for somebody someday, and from the looks of Theranos there have got to be some outstanding people in there somewhere with amazing breakthroughs that I would have an unfair advantage exploiting.
Only problem is, not so sure it would be a positive return for either one, the better bet may just be starting from scratch or getting in on the ground floor of a much smaller outfit in either case.
