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0 pointsFD3SA12y ago0 comments

And where are those products today? Elon Musk has openly said that PayPal has become a disappointment since he sold it.

Relinquishing control of design decisions for a product company is suicide. Product companies make things whose functions are the selling point. Tesla, SpaceX and Oculus all fall into this category.

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4 comments · 2 top-level

dmoy12y ago· 1 in thread

Ah yes, sorry. I should have been a bit more verbose in my response.

I totally agree with you about the long term health of the product/company itself. I have no doubt that they could have raised capital by other means, and continued to do cool things for VR.

What I don't agree with is the comparison to Elon Musk, because Elon Musk already sold companies for billions of dollars. When someone offers billions of dollars, that changes things for a lot of people. Elon Musk did exactly what Oculus is doing right now. He sold, because that's a hell of a lot of money. In some respects, it has allowed him to do whatever the hell he damn well pleases, to great effect (launching space rockets and making incredible cars).

So I understand why the fan base of VR & Oculus is upset, but I cannot at all fault them for selling, because giant piles of money, holy crap.

jamesisaac12y ago

From what I gather, Musk had aspirations to make advancements in renewable energy and space travel from has early as his time in college, but obviously those industries have rather large barriers to entry. So I believe Zip2 and Paypal were acting as stepping stones so he could build up capital/experience before he could move onto his true passion.

Virtual reality has a low enough barrier to entry that the kickstarter and existing investments had already solved that problem. And as far as I'm aware, VR are some of the highest aspirations held by the Oculus team, take this recent quote from Palmer Luckey for example:

> "I’m obsessed with VR. I spend every day pushing further, and every night dreaming of where we are going. Even in my wildest dreams, I never imagined we’d come so far so fast."

So I personally see the comparison with SpaceX/Tesla as a fairer comparison than Musk's first two businesses.

general_failure12y ago· 1 in thread

Well, the point is elon has made his fu money. Its easy for him to say it was a mistake.

You know what. Let,palmer do the same. Let him get his millions here. Maybe he will start another company in the future and call oculus deal a mistake. Fair game?

nitrogen12y ago

It's still troubling to see the possibility that an entire industry (VR) might head in the wrong direction for years to decades.

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