#30 – The Metaverse Part 2 – Final Episode – Straight talk on the Key Players and what they are up to, and Implications for Entrepreneurs and Investors

In this, the final episode on the Metaverse - or is the Metaverses - we discuss what the Key Players are doing in the space, as well as the so-whats for entrepreneurs and investors. As you, our listeners are accustomed to, only straight talk and “straight shooting” in this duology on the Metaverse. Navigation: Intro (01:34) Section 1: Key players (02:02) Section 2: So-whats for entrepreneurs and investors (22:36) Conclusion (30:35) Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedro Our show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Intro (01:34) Bertrand Welcome to episode thirty, our second episode on the metaverse. In episode 29, we talk about our definition of the metaverse, we talk about the key enablers for the metaverse. This episode will have two section. One, first section around the key players. And we will have a section about what it means. The so what for entrepreneurs and VCs. Nuno, should we go into the key players? Section 1: Key Players (02:02) Nuno And a very good segue to what the key players are doing around the metaverse or the metaverses and all these different technologies. And maybe sticking to Google again, not because we dislike them particular. I think we've shown them a lot of fondness in the past. But we're starting with another failure, Google Glass, which I already talked about earlier. I love those glasses. They were so cool. There was so much promise in it and then nothing. It was just like, nothing's gonna happen. Sorry guys. Bertrand For me, it was also an example of something that was hyped way too much, way too early, and totally out of context. When you have something for total geek that are only going to touch the most crazy early adopters of all, why do you start to brand it? I remember they were showing off celebrities at modeling shows. It was like crazy. It was as if it was going to be mainstream next month. It's like, wow, a lesson of how to set expectations wrong, as if they did everything they could to make sure it was really going to fail. Because the expectations are so disconnected from the reality of how bad it was. Bad maybe is a strong word. Nuno It wasn't that bad for what it was. I think it's more the point of what you're making, yeah. Bertrand As we see today, it was at least 10 years too early. And you know there is something in history when people tell me, "Oh yeah, we're just 10 years too early." I'm like, "Oh yeah, that's not much, ten years, I guess." I don't like it when people make it wrong by 10 years. There are so many things you could do instead, especially in our world of tech, where in some ways I feel it could be predictable. Google Glass, total fiasco, because it was 10 years too early. But I said 10 or maybe 20. Nuno Maybe 20. Bertrand The jury still out for this until we have something really working. What was about this other company that was promising crazy shit and ultimately went nearly bankrupt? Nuno Magic leap, yeah. By the way, I don't know anyone there. I'm telling our friends just as a way to not throw them under the bus. Yeah, Magic Leap. Bertrand But Magic Leap is a fantastic company. I was from very far smelling a rat. I will call it a rat when you burn billions of dollars and you don't deliver at all anything of value, at least value connected to how much money was invested in the business. I wish them the best in their new version, just focused on enterprise. But there was so much bullshit. And I'm frustrated because some of these companies are so much actively destroying value. And they have a lot of people who put years of their life, in this trying to make it work when ultimately there was not much if anything. And it's easy to create hype but it's another thing to deliver. There have been constantly shocked. And for me, what something typical is when you're very secretive about it when you promote too much hype, you are very secretive of how it works. Typically it doesn't end well. Either you are fully secretive, like Apple and you wait until it release, and I respect that 100% or you are very more transparent. You have to be transparent. So in a way, people probably do not like us to talk about Magic Leap because it's making their metaverse effort look in danger. But I would say that the life of tech there has been a lot of promising companies in some ways that go bust. And a few years after that, you have the real thing coming up. So I don't want to hold ourselves to Magic Leap. But that's also a sign of a market going too hot. Nuno Just a couple of notes. One, I think they're now led by Peggy Johnson. We're not buddies, but I have a lot of appreciation of the work certainly she did at Microsoft. So a lot of respect there. Hopefully, they'll be able to really make a business out of the enterprise side. A couple of points. One is they've been a ton of companies that have risked quite a lot of money. And even in the AR space, which is what this sort of portrays a little bit more closely to ODG, HoloLens in the end who ended up at Microsoft. But honestly, they really haven't made much with it, to be honest, either. So there's been a lot of these sort of false starts. I think what was particularly, I wouldn't call egregious, but particularly significant about Magic Leap was 2.6 billion, just incredible. It sort of edifies a little bit the case of companies that over promise and under deliver very good salesmanship on behalf of the founder, CEO, and people that are really running with the company. And then sort of this huge delta, what I was mentioning as vaporware early on, this huge delta between what they are promising and what it actually can do, which is not necessarily very positive for the expectations of the world and consumers and others. So I don't know, hopefully they'll make a go at it that works well for enterprise. I'm sure they have a lot of tech that they've developed over the years. They better have given all the money they raised. But it does exemplify these types of companies that are to your point, Bertrand, secretive, arrogant, aggressive, we're the best things since sliced red. And then you go a little bit under the hood is like, I really don't get what's special. And they're not the only one. I don't think they're going to be the last one, such as the price of tech innovation. Bertrand I'm deeply respectful of deep tech, but I feel that Magic Leap is one of these companies that went a step too far in terms of what they promised to investors and the reality of the technology and the business. And at the same time, you could argue some of these investors might have only themselves to blame. I don't know. I'm still deeply troubled when I see that. In some ways, if you think about it, at the time it was a time when journalists were friendly to tech, I guess. But people were not questioning much, to be frank. It was just accepted at face value. And I was still shocked about that. Going to a player that I must say I'm much more impressed what they have delivered, it's Facebook. If there is one player in the metaverse, at least today, that is open and public about what they build, it's Facebook. I mean, they built on Oculus, of course, but it has been very impressive. I mean, they went all the way from buying the best company in the space at the time with Oculus to investing huge amount of money since 2014 in that space. And not just money, but AI research. So a lot of pretty precious resource. And it's pretty impressive to see everything they have done. And to be clear, they are probably, at least from my perspective, the best working product with Oculus Quest 2. The only issue obviously, is that it's not a massive success to the scale. It's really needed to make a difference. At the same time, it's costing this year around 13 billion of spend. One-three. Nuno Fair enough. Bertrand So of course, Magic Leap with 2.6 billion of funding and nowhere to run when you are facing a player who can spend 13 billion a year in that space. And I'm very thankful because in a way they are pushing all alone, by themselves, the space. Nuno For all the crap I give Oculus Quest 2 etc it is a pretty good device and it's sort of the closest we've had to real mainstream-ready VR experiences, right? So they've put money where their mouth is. They've made it evolve as a product. The experiences they're creating in terms of software, I think are still... Jury is still out. We'll see where they head and if they really scale. Maybe they'll be the guys that'll hit it with the next Oculus Quest and that will sort of untap the whole world. Or then again, it will be our friends at Apple, and they'll come out of nowhere. They'll just launch it and it will sort of work. We'll see. Bertrand That's a tough part because if we look at computer history, Microsoft was very early in mobile. I had a Microsoft at the time. I forgot the exact name, and I'm sure I will be wrong, but it was called HPC, one of the first iteration of a windows mobile. Then they had a pocket PC and a palm PC. It had so many things every year to change branding. But my point is that being first doesn't guarantee you a spot. And that's exactly what happened. Actually they had too much baggage, were not ready to make the move quickly to a new approach. Instead of having a dedicated slimmed-down version of Windows, what ended up winning in a way was an OS built from the ground up for more powerful devices. That was iOS based on macOS, and that was Android based on Linux. ...