The History of the Future by Blake J. Harris

Author:Blake J. Harris
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2019-01-08T05:00:00+00:00

Integrating the player’s body into the virtual world would be key to DK2. “DK1 immersed the player in the virtual world visually, but did nothing to integrate their physical body,” they wrote in the roadmap. “With DK2, we want our players to feel like they’re actually Batman when they’re playing in Oculus VR.”

OVER THE PAST TWELVE YEARS, BRENDAN IRIBE HAD PITCHED DOZENS OF potential investors. Some meetings had gone well, others not so much. But regardless of outcome, they all had one thing in common: nobody had ever fallen asleep while he was talking. That changed in early March, however, when Iribe went to Boston and pitched North Bridge Venture Partners.

The meeting had been set up by Ric Fulop, a general partner at North Bridge, who saw potential in VR and reached out to Iribe to hear the pitch. By this point, Oculus had yet to find any investors for their Series A—with one exception: Founders Fund. But that had only raised $1 million of the $15 million Oculus was looking for, so in the weeks leading up to GDC, Iribe hit the road hoping to raise the necessary funds. Coming to Boston and boring an investor to sleep was definitely not how Iribe had hoped to start off his trip.

This is crazy, Iribe thought. If VR doesn’t keep you awake, then what will! But discouraging as it was, Iribe did his best to power through it.

Fortunately, Narcoleptic Investor’s partners were much more impressed than he. And before Iribe left, Ric Fulop presented him with a term sheet. Or, uh, maybe not.

“Ric, what is this?” Iribe asked, looking over the document. “This isn’t even a term sheet. This is a convertible note. You don’t even have a valuation in this!”

“Oh,” Fulop replied. “I got you the wrong meeting.”

All in all, things couldn’t have gone worse. “It was a crash-and-burn partner pitch,” Iribe told Founders Fund’s Brian Singerman, whom he called right after leaving North Bridge. “This just happened. It’s pretty discouraging.”

The whole ordeal, however, turned out not to be a total loss. Because Fulop—who felt bad and still sincerely believed in Oculus—connected Iribe with another lead: Santo Politi, who was a partner at Spark Capital.

“Reach out to Santo,” Fulop told Iribe. “He’s a great person. And also in Boston.”

Politi was interested, but currently traveling. That’s fine, Iribe said. I’ll come to you. And three days after his crash and burn at North Bridge, Iribe found himself in San Francisco, giving Santo Politi a demo in the conference room of an airport hotel.

Back in early the ’90s—during the heyday of janky VR—Politi had been an executive at Panasonic, so he had a vague sense of what he was about to see. He knew that this would be significantly better, of course, but he had no idea how much better it would turn out to be.

“I’m floored,” Politi said. “I’m absolutely amazed.”

Iribe smiled. He had been hoping to hear something like that.

“Let’s have dinner,” Politi suggested. “I think there’s a shitty restaurant downstairs.

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