Jason Voorhees
๐ธ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐ฎ๐๐๐ โข ๐๐๐๐๐ฅ
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- May 15, 2020
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In 2021 when Facebook rebranded to Meta, the tech industry treated the "Metaverse" as the next big thing. Eveyrone thought it was inevitable because when a Big-4 lays down over 10 billion dollars into something you know it's something big.
My senior at uni was one of the many founders who took the bait. He saw a legitimate problem friction in real estate and thought he had the ultimate high tech solution.
In real estate buying, you first have to see and inspect the property before buying. The endless driving, the scheduling conflicts with agents, the photos that never matched reality. He thought, Why fly across the country to see a condo when I can walk through a 1:1 photorealistic digital twin?
And he aiming for the stars. He didn't just want to build a small website or service. He wanted to build a platform. Like Zillow. Matterport SDK for high-end spatial mapping
matterport.com
and buying specialized LiDAR cameras to scan properties with millimeter precision. He even bought "digital land" and Meta assets to host his virtual showrooms.
This is what it was supposed to look like
my.matterport.com
On paper, it was a masterpiece. He had custom logins for investors, realtors, and buyers. He invested a lot of money into it. His parents and his own money. But he made one fatal mistake. He trusted Meta to build the road.
To be honest for his perspective back then it did not look foolish at all. Why fear when Meta with its billions of dollars invested is here. You just need to profit off meta's success and Meta with its track record will not fail and everyone back then was convinced this was the future
But we all know what happened next. The "Metaverse" didn't happen. The headsets stayed in the boxes. People realized that strapping a 500g plastic brick to your face ain't it and meta platform died a slow and painful death. The market didn't follow the hype. Meta was too big to fail and just absorbed the loss, the insane mind blowing loss of almost $80 billion on Reality Labs and then pivoted to Al
www.rte.ie
But my friend couldn't bear the losses and went bankrupt. Today, he's 27. He's a software developer at Okta, earning a solid salary but he isn't building wealth. Most of his income goes toward paying off the interest and principal on the debt from a future that never arrived.
That is the thing about Tech. It moves at warp speed and a "Big 5" company can't dictate future and influence market forces and they can survive being wrong about the future but early-stage founder usually can't. This is why startups in tech are so risky. You either hit out of ball park or end up like my friend
My senior at uni was one of the many founders who took the bait. He saw a legitimate problem friction in real estate and thought he had the ultimate high tech solution.
In real estate buying, you first have to see and inspect the property before buying. The endless driving, the scheduling conflicts with agents, the photos that never matched reality. He thought, Why fly across the country to see a condo when I can walk through a 1:1 photorealistic digital twin?
And he aiming for the stars. He didn't just want to build a small website or service. He wanted to build a platform. Like Zillow. Matterport SDK for high-end spatial mapping
Capture, share, and collaborate in immersive 3D.
Our 3D cameras and virtual tour software platform help you digitize your building, automatically create 3D tours, 4K print quality photos, schematic f
matterport.com
and buying specialized LiDAR cameras to scan properties with millimeter precision. He even bought "digital land" and Meta assets to host his virtual showrooms.
This is what it was supposed to look like
Explore Nike Store Milano in 3D
The new Flagship Store of the American Sportswear Giant in Milano.
On paper, it was a masterpiece. He had custom logins for investors, realtors, and buyers. He invested a lot of money into it. His parents and his own money. But he made one fatal mistake. He trusted Meta to build the road.
To be honest for his perspective back then it did not look foolish at all. Why fear when Meta with its billions of dollars invested is here. You just need to profit off meta's success and Meta with its track record will not fail and everyone back then was convinced this was the future
But we all know what happened next. The "Metaverse" didn't happen. The headsets stayed in the boxes. People realized that strapping a 500g plastic brick to your face ain't it and meta platform died a slow and painful death. The market didn't follow the hype. Meta was too big to fail and just absorbed the loss, the insane mind blowing loss of almost $80 billion on Reality Labs and then pivoted to Al
Reality check: Zuckerberg's $88bn metaverse flop
Mark Zuckerberg said the metaverse would be the future of his company - and the entire internet - now, after tens of billions of dollars spent, it's quietly being shelved in favour of AI, writes Adam Maguire.
But my friend couldn't bear the losses and went bankrupt. Today, he's 27. He's a software developer at Okta, earning a solid salary but he isn't building wealth. Most of his income goes toward paying off the interest and principal on the debt from a future that never arrived.
That is the thing about Tech. It moves at warp speed and a "Big 5" company can't dictate future and influence market forces and they can survive being wrong about the future but early-stage founder usually can't. This is why startups in tech are so risky. You either hit out of ball park or end up like my friend
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