Monday, May 06, 2019
Magic Leap quietly dies. (unofficially)
Usually companies that vaporize money have a more spectacular ending. Especially ones that raise billions with absolutely nothing to show for it.
So....earlier in the year Magic Leap put up a last gasp effort and said - we aren't dying. Come see our product. And they set up a bunch of events to show the public. This was around Christmas. Which was a hectic time because of the Holidays and CES following right behind. I got a slot right after CES. Mid January.
Then they started pushing back the date, and now they have completely cancelled. So I went over to Google to see if there was any news on them and ran across this demo from GDC this year (Game Developers Conference) and just look at this bullshit. What a useless piece of crap.
It's embarrassing really. I mean, they had Google Glass level hype.
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James Bond 007 did it better and with less hype and expense.
ReplyDeleteActually, they did this more than once with less hype and expense.
I'm with M, I'm not impressed yet.
These results from Magic Leap?
That's actually what I expect now because of an application of not-so-basic math that points to the dismal results that everyone should expect.
So this time you could possibly generate charts and graphs with my cynicism.
Be afraid, be very, very afraid. :-)
That company is trying to balance three things in order to produce a new product: 1) the gains coming from their designers implementing the correct models and heuristics; 2) the gains to be realized from brute force; 3) the gains (and losses) coming from the supply of money to the startup-as-a-system.
Convert the inputs into a form that you can represent with a multivariate normal distribution, and use that to create a first-order approximation of their likely success.
Or don't, because this is also a math joke: doing the math at all is the joke, because all of your problems are really people problems, especially problems with impressive sounding but highly normal people.
These people appear to think that if they can lever factor 3 super-hard and apply a ton of data from factor 2, the fact that their designers may actually not be all that brilliant can be glossed over, especially since factor 1 seems to have a lot less magnitude than the other factors, taking all things as equal and that sort of nonsense.
But all things aren't equal, not in this case and not in general.
(To anyone who would dispute that last statement, the fact that you'd dispute it proves my case, and therefore your opinion doesn't matter because it isn't equal to mine. That burning sensation of rage you are now feeling is exactly what all things not being equal feels like. QED. *snicker*)
The "normal solution" shows that the more normal their designers are (or the less brilliant they are) , the more likely it is that they will produce a useless result regardless of how much money they've been fed.
I'm waiting for Bay Area vulture capitalists to develop and apply MVN and "Bayesian metrics" to de-bullshitting the prospects of new tech startups, because that's essentially what should follow from this approach.
These utter fools also thought that skinny and pleasant models doing demos of the product would suitably impress ...
FOOLS! ... and their money will be soon parted.
So who's taking bets on when the SEC investor complaint filings begin?
That's really how companies that burn through this much cash fizzle out.
There's quiet right now because this hasn't started to happen ... yet.
(BTW, more crap to make the SEC happy: I don't hold any positions in these UTTER FOOLS, and I never have.)
I'm sort of confused as to why this hasn't already started. As you can see from my posts today, it's already starting in other areas that have actual products. So it's sort of notable that they are so quietly failing. The idea that no one cares actually says a lot about the whole situation.
ReplyDeleteI want to say - why in my day we used to need an actual product to con you out of your money. Now...... no product. No problem.
I would actually be interested in a cynicism chart.
"... doing the math at all is the joke ..."
ReplyDelete"I would actually be interested in a cynicism chart."
Obviously you're having fun with the joke. :-)
But seriously, I wouldn't do the math anyway, and here's why: there's a pretty good bit of money to be made in coming up with off-the-shelf risk analysis products for business success and failure modeling that are based on quantitative analysis.
Some Wall Street "quants" out there who aren't happy with their high-stress and high-but-not-high-enough earnings really ought to form a startup for this kind of idea, especially since it's long overdue in de-bullshitting the Bay Area's startup culture.
It would also work pretty well in Fintech Alleys, and it would be an actual risk product you could buy with the blessing of your funding sources.
"Re-insurance" needs to come into the 21st Century, in other words.
Think of it as an extension of credit rating for businesses, but one that measures whether they have a ghost of a chance of surviving past a certain date, and you can see why I'm saying there'd be plenty of money to be made from that.
I'm not in the heavy analytical math business (in that sort of way, anyway), so it's not something that's interesting to me.
But can you imagine the surprise of some Lying Bay Area Startup Sacks of (Formerly Homeless) Excrement being handed a document full of actual charts and graphs that show in soul-destroying detail how their visions of tangible market success are actual crap as well?
It might motivate the less motivated to do something about their circumstances, and that's be enough to Make Bay Area Tech Interesting Again.
In the meantime, I'd be saving up some moving money so you can buy that new Ranchburger in Suburban Paradise ... in Cary, North Carolina, where there are also plenty of technology jobs in the area.
WHAT? YOU RESIST?
PANIC NOW AND ENJOY THE RUSH ...
OH, AND BTW, THEY HAVE A WAFFLE HOUSE THERE. :-)
I sort of feel like that would be a complete waste of time. People by nature love to gamble. I think a lot of them don't even care if they lose money. What these companies are selling them is hope. Hope will make you do crazy things. You can put up with a lot of rough spots in life if you see a way to get out of it. Even if that way never materializes. It's why people play the lotto knowing they will never win. So I think you could do all of that and it wouldn't even matter. People wouldn't care because what is really being sold is a story and people like that.
ReplyDelete