Comment by yaeger | Hacker News Reader

Comment by yaeger | Hacker News Reader

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No he doesn't. He oversimplifies things.

You know what the money during the kickstarter campaign was for? The first DevKit! They raised money for the dev kit and guess what? The people you chipped in got their dev kits.

As far as I can see, people got exactly out of the kickstarter campaign what they wanted. They helped to start the business of Oculus and in return even got the DevKit to experience the first results on the road to VR.

I hardly think just cause you started your business with a kickstarter campaign and gave the backers what you set out to give them should exempt you from ever getting acquired by another company somewhere down the road. If that were true, why go on kickstarter at all? That would basically mean you will always stay a small time player. If you can survive at all because you will have to do it all by yourself. Next thing you know, kickstarter backers demand that you also don't accept other investors money because then, these investors would also have a say how to do things.

You are oversimplifying things as well. On the "cash on the table" side of things you are right: people put cash on the table and got the goods.

On the other hand, Kickstarter is a platform where people invest in future of some geeks. A successful funding drive plays on emotions, on promises and a glimpse of the future.

A lot of the people that got a dev kit were closely monitoring what Oculus was doing and were pleased. Those people feeling let down by Oculus not staying independent is perfectly reasonable and fine to state. It is also fully okay to withdraw your future support because they are now part of a company that shows not general interest in helping any companies but themselves.

>On the other hand, Kickstarter is a platform where people invest in future of some geeks.

And because of that it should be a rule that no other investors or partnerships should be possible once you go to kickstarter?

What about the past two rounds of investments Oculus went through? Did all backers threw fits like this? How many other entities have given money to Oculus and have a say in how things should be run at the office?

They never threw fits cause they a) didn't know who invested and was now calling the shots or b) didn't care enough to find out.

Only thing different is that is is well publicized that fb and oculus are now in business together. Had they done this quietly, nobody would have freaked out like this. Is it really too much to ask to put the freaking out on hold until there is actual evidence that things are being run into the ground? fb does not have a track record of acquiring and then fucking up the acquired tech. Examples are still instagram and whatsapp. They are also part of an open hardware initiative and they make contributions to open source. As far as a software company goes, they do things right.

So long as they keep their promise to let oculus work independently nothing changes other than oculus now has one big money source instead of many many smaller ones that all want a say how to do things. Unless the last two rounds of investments were all angel investors and not venture capitalists, I'd say a single silent money giver is better than many small noisy ones.

> And because of that it should be a rule that no other investors or partnerships should be possible once you go to kickstarter?

I have neither implied nor called for that.

The only thing I explained is that the reactions are perfectly understandable and should be taken seriously - Oculus played the Kickstarter game as much as the backers.

You keep using the words "investor" and "partner," but that isn't what people are talking about. They're talking about an owner.

>> Kickstarter is a platform where people invest in future of some geeks

And then those same backers complain loudly when those geeks succeed at business. Oculus just sold, before launching a product, for a quarter of the value of Electronic Arts (revenue: $3.7B). Perhaps Oculus (the business) was too successful for its backers, but there's not a lot of teams that would have turned down a deal like this.

Nitpick: If EA's revenues are $3.7B, their value is much more than that.

Generally you could look at market cap, or derive the present value of future expected cash flows (meaning how much would you have to invest today in order to receive $3.7B in interest payments annually).

Selling is success for the businessman, not necessarily for the customer.

There is no point in telling people that they should be happy about that.

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