Dead On Arrival: What was just Hype and what was just wrong Timing? Some technologies and products get over-hyped, and never seem to come to fruition? Some just come to fruition, but years or even decades later? In this episode of Tech Deciphered, what is Dead On Arrival versus just wrong timing Navigation: Intro The Fork Cold Open General Magic The Metaverse Dead on Arrival The soon to be Resurrected… Conclusion Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedro Our show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Bertrand Schmitt Introduction Welcome to Tech Deciphered episode 78, Dead on Arrival. Was it just hype or just wrong timing? In this episode, we are going to discuss two different types of businesses that as an investor, as an entrepreneur, you want to think carefully about. Looking back, you want to understand better what happened. If we take dead on arrival, we’re talking about businesses, technologies that maybe the tech work fine, but actually no one cared about it, no one wanted it. It’s really a mismatch in terms of what consumer want versus what you are trying to deliver. It’s a classic example of a solution finding for a problem. On the other hand, will it happen but not like that, not now? It’s a type of business where we were too early. We tried to make it work, but actually the technology is not ready now, but it might become ready in the future. As an entrepreneur, as an investor, obviously, you want to make sure you are not in one of these two technologies, one of these two categories. But it’s really a useful lesson to learn which situation you might be in because it will help you make better decision and pick better industries going forward. Nuno, what’s your take on this tough analysis? Nuno Goncalves Pedro Yeah, in hindsight, everything looks like, “Oh, of course, this wasn’t meant to work,” etc. But here we’re going to take a stab, as you mentioned, at things that are just wrong timing. They might have failed miserably in the past, but they might work in the future. The Fork To have this stake on the ground approach to it, as we’ve had in previous episodes, of defining exactly what we think will happen, but just not like that, versus the dead-on-arrival, which is a little bit more of a hardcore view on it. To your point, we want to really split between those two things because in some ways people are like, “Well, are we ever going to go and have different ways of interacting, for example, in terms of input and output, like with glasses or things like that, that really scale to become pretty pervasive?” We probably would agree that, “Yes, that will happen”. Maybe not in the way that we’ve anticipated until now, and certainly it’s going to take longer than we’ve expected. In some ways, the “will happen, not like that” is a little bit like Amara’s law or Nuno’s law, as referred to in the past. We tend to overestimate the speed at which we get to a revolution, underestimate impact. The “will happen, not like that” will probably fit into that. They will have probably bigger impact than we thought they would, but they will just take longer. Therefore, the solutions we’ve had until now are not great solutions. Whereas the dead-on-arrival, we’re saying, “Hey, we don’t think actually this works.” It’s to your point, not solving a problem that actually needs to be solved, or it’s solving it in the wrong way. Yeah, it’s basically an attempt to really frame, if you’re an entrepreneur, if you’re a venture capitalist, if you’re someone who is an angel investor and is looking at the market right now, what things should you put some real money and real resources, real time behind versus not, and really share that with you guys: our audience. Bertrand Schmitt Cold Open I always like to go back to a company called General Magic, a company that was legendary in Silicon Valley, spun out of Apple in the 1990s. There was even a movie made about General Magic. It’s a company that tried to basically build the first modern smartphone with touchscreens, app ecosystem. The only issue was it was years before the technology existed to support it. But Nokia at the time was less ambitious and more practical with what the technology was able to do at the time. But what’s interesting with this company is that obviously the smartphone was coming, just took 10 more years, 15 more years. Interestingly enough, some of the people in the team ended up being very successful in that exact space. Tony Fadell, for instance, who ended up creating the iPhone, co-create at least, and Andy Rubin, who end up building up Android, selling that to Google and leading the charge with Google Android. Nuno Goncalves Pedro Yeah, a very successful team. Tony Fadell, obviously, later on did Nest as well. Megan Smith, who was later the Chief Technology Officer of the US. A lot of people that came out of it that did a lot of important things. To be honest, I think a lot of the technology that was developed that was in some way a capacity or that are reused later on by some of these team members. I’m not saying they were infringing on any IP, but definitely there was a lot of reuse of tech. But it was too soon, right? They were doing something that was truly ambitious too soon. But a lot of these principles, a lot of these things ended up manifesting themselves, and particularly in the iPhone later on and in that deployment. Another such example is actually the metaverse. We did two episodes back in the day, a long time ago, on the metaverse. We debunked it a little bit. Back then, I think it was a very nuanced debunking, if I recall it correctly, Bertrand, because we were saying, “Hey, it’s going to happen in some ways, but it’s an evolution, not a revolution,” not in the way that we saw definitionally. We were huge fans of Matthew Ball and his analysis around media, but somehow we disagreed, I remember, with his definition of what the metaverse is and how it will look like. There’s no doubt that there’s going to be a metaverse in the future, probably metaverses in the future before there’s any given unification. In those metaverses, we do believe. But this whole hype cycle around metaverse and what’s happening clearly didn’t work out well, as proven also by all the write-offs done by Meta on their metaverse stuff. That much must have hurt. It’s related to AR and VR as well and to the enriched reality positioning of a lot of these technologies, which we’ll talk about later. But, again, it was probably something that’s going to happen. It’s going to happen likely in a different product manifestation as the one that was anticipated by a lot of the pundits that opined on what’s happening around metaverse in the future. But it’s going to happen. It’s just going to take longer. It’s going to probably come from angles of entry that are likely not what people had anticipated earlier on. Maybe it’s from gaming, maybe from something else. But definitely it’s going to happen. Bertrand Schmitt Yes, and you could argue that Apple did a similar mistake with the Vision Pro. I think the Vision Pro is the worst launch of an Apple product. When we say launch, it’s been three years maybe? Nuno Goncalves Pedro Since the Newton, maybe? Bertrand Schmitt Yes, that’s my point. You have to go back a really long time to have such a disastrous launch. I think for me, it’s very interesting because it’s really a category where on one side there is a metaverse of some sort. You should argue if you are just using Twitter, or Facebook, these are some parallel universe in parallel to your real life. But the full on metaverse where you need some extra super heavy glasses to make it work, that simply has not worked. Don’t get me wrong, there are some super small, narrow cases where your heavy VR glasses makes sense for some training, for some simulation, for some light gaming. But given the weight, the disconnection from the real world, it has really never taken fire. Even at cheaper price like Meta was able to do, at more expensive price, much higher quality like the Vision Pro did. It looks like people have an issue with putting heavy glasses on top of them. We’ll talk later about the other side: AR glasses. But the traditional metaverse, heavy glasses, VR glasses, yes, it’s not feeling right, and I don’t think it will ever be right. It needs a different form factor to go at scale. Nuno Goncalves Pedro Definitely fundamental shifts on the metaverse. Just a quick reminder, Meta actually changed their name because of metaverse. Bertrand Schmitt Yes. Nuno Goncalves Pedro It’s not just that they’re writing off the investments, it’s their name is apparently wrong. It didn’t really happen in that way. You are saying that this persistent embodied virtual world, which was the early definitions of what a metaverse was, didn’t really happen until now. It might happen at some point, but not in that way. But, obviously, a lot of the enablement layers are still work in progress, right? Real-time 3D, presence, avatars, all of these things are moving on. A lot of these enablers will be ready once there is a time where these technologies and businesses that are fundamentally anchored around these technologies will emerge. It’s, again, right components, wrong product alignment, but at the same time, it will happen, just not yet. Bertrand Schmitt Again, I think we’r
