We Interview an Angel Investor of Oculus - How A Meal With Palmer Luckey Changed His Life

Welcome, welcome. This is Metaverse Monday.

Each Monday, delve into the minds of industry pioneers, cutting-edge developers, and savvy investors in the VR/AR Metaverse space.

🔥💬 HOT TOPIC: Oculus’ Angel Investor.

🕹️⏱️ THE METAVERSE MINUTE: New Developer Platform.

🤖💡PRODUCT INSPO: Meta introduces Digital Twins.

🔥💬 HOT TOPIC: Crazy Stories From Angel Investing in Oculus.

Greg Castle has invested in over 90 startups, counting five seed-stage investments now valued +$1B including Oculus and Rec Room.

This is PART 1 of 2 on the founding story of Anorak Ventures, a seed-stage venture firm focused on emerging tech.

Why feature Anorak Ventures?

Greg has been a mentor and adviser to Don for the past 5+ years, and over that time Greg has continuously proved his leadership within the AR/VR space. Anorak has a deep knowledge of all things 3D. This applies broadly to Metaverse and tech founders. Greg + Amal Dorai (Anorak’s new partner, who we will feature next week) have amazing founding stories, and next week with Amal we will cover: Reasons Anorak funds a founder, how they do due diligence, and their view on XR startups.

Why should XR founders learn to think like Anorak?

Investors have a broad view of the market, observing hundreds of startups' successes and failures. Whether or not you're seeking funding, their insights can be invaluable. Understanding the perspective of those who invest will guide you towards success.

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Greg Castle has an awesome story of joining Scaleform - with the future founders of Oculus - exiting it to Autodesk, meeting Palmer Luckey, investing and going on to found Anorak Ventures.

In our FULL ARTICLE, you can learn more about early Oculus, why founders shouldn’t focus on TAM as a metric and more: HERE 🔗

🦄 Angel Investing in Oculus.

After a stint in the restaurant biz, Greg saw video games as the best place to learn about the future. He joined his college friend Brandon Iribe, and Michael Antonov who started Scaleform - a game dev tool.

Greg and the founders from Scaleform met Palmer together on a trip together to LA to learn about what he was building… Pre-kickstarter!

“We took Palmer out to dinner, learned about what he was doing and that was the start… that dinner changed my life more than anything (other than meeting my wife!)”

Brendan, Michael and Palmer, along with Nate Mitchell (also Scaleform) joined Palmer and founded Oculus. Greg invested.

“The wow factor of the early, obvious potential of immersion, combined with his knowledge of the early team made it a no-brainer and I was compelled to invest ‘all I could’ into it.” Just 18 months later it was acquired by Facebook for $2bn!

😅 Lessons from Oculus’ Founders + Crazy Focus.

When Oculus was first getting going, just after the kickstarter, someone contacted Greg from United Airlines about potentially meeting the Oculus team to put VR headsets instead of screens in first class flights.

“I thought ‘holy moly this is the tipping point, this will be amazing!’ I set up the meeting… but the response from the Oculus team was stone cold. I was angry and frustrated believing this could be game-changing with huge revenues!…

Essentially, what Brendan said was ‘We have a roadmap of what we need to do for everyone to use these headsets. We are going to stick to the core product.’ — In hindsight, that was a brilliant move. That took a huge amount of discipline… Just focusing on what needed to be the core product is why they were successful.”

“Borderline obsessiveness is what is required to find great success. I had a front row seat to what it takes to do something like that and it is not easy… One danger of founding a company is meeting so many innovative people, this can be a subtle distraction, they all have the potential to take you away from what you should be focusing on."

📊 Founding Anorak Ventures

Started investing and had luck with his own capital - Oculus ($2B!) was his first ever deal!! Angel tickets grew into SPVS, and organically into Anorak now with great connections with founders and access to capital.

For Greg all of this has been built on “The foundational knowledge of games tech, which is the basis of all things 3D, all things VR/AR, robotics, computer vision and so forth.” So for founders, and investors this knowledge is a good place to start!

Anorak are now on their second fund of $25M - next week with Anorak, we will cover: Reasons Anorak back a founder, how they do due diligence, and their view on XR startups.

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🕹️⏱️ THE METAVERSE MINUTE:

Good news for developers, ByteDance has rolled out Pico Lab!

The move is consistent with Pico’s mirroring *ahem, copying* of Meta. While both platforms offer a streamlined approval process for developers, Pico Lab diverges by supporting only free apps, without in-app payment options.

It’s good because it means that Pico users will find more curated apps on the Pico store, and developers can share apps easier. However, Pico Lab risks being for indies as frustrating as App Lab, a place from where it is almost impossible to be discovered or promoted.

Meta is cancelling Quest Pro line of XR hardware altogether - or so says a report from The Information. Buuut, it’s not true. Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth says, “don’t believe everything you read,” then effectively saying he doesn’t know if or when there will be a Pro 2.

I would be surprised if there is a Pro 2. The high end market is enterprise driven, who do not love Meta, or deep VR enthusiasts who could spend $1k on a headset are probably better placed to get a $700 PC and a Quest to run PCVR. The Quest Pro has merely been a dev kit for studios, and now, ironically, used by devs testing concepts for Apple Vision Pro apps.

Google’s AR software leader is out over the company’s ‘unstable commitment and vision’. Mark Lucovsky, the former head of operating systems on Google’s AR team, announced in a tweet he has left Google.

In June, a report from Insider indicated that Google has given up on its plans to build AR glasses, codenamed Project Iris. Instead, It’s reportedly developing a “micro XR” platform that it could sell to other headset makers and is also working on a mixed reality project in partnership with Samsung and Qualcomm.

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Have a great week 🙂

Don Stein and Laurie Owen.

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Don Stein

We Interview an Angel Investor of Oculus - How A Meal With Palmer Luckey Changed His Life