Agree, and given the standard "liquidity preference", the founders are likely to net $0, except for the Google bonuses for the engineering (Jack Barker-like Rosenthal is not likely to stick there).

It's sad, really. It's one of the really innovative companies, but it's not easy to sell tech ahead of its time. Yet another incident that will encourage to pick copycats over real innovation.

I guess Google is no longer as generous with the acquisitions.

> It's sad, really. It's one of the really innovative companies, but it's not easy to sell tech ahead of its time.

This glorifies failure quite a bit. One major objective of tech companies is to produce products that customers value and like. Lytro failed to do this. Just because the underlying science is complicated doesn't make the tech "ahead of its time" due to the fact that maybe the tech, as implemented, just isn't what people want, now or in the future!

Having complicated science underlying a product certainly doesn't excuse a company from producing products that people want.

> Having complicated science underlying a product certainly doesn't excuse a company from producing products that people want.

That's not the biggest obstacle, actually. The biggest obstacle that the sales strategy has no case studies to work with.

What market does the new tech appeal to? Should it be B2C or B2B? (In their case, they tried both IIRC.)

You may hold the collective entity responsible, if you wish, but in this case, they required both sharp and inventive techies (which they had), and a business leader with a vision (which they didn't have). It's not easy to put together, especially if the investors make the call for the CEO's replacement.

An analogy from a different area, Siri could be another dead curio if Steve Jobs didn't decide to make it a centerpiece of their new iPhone.

>Lytro failed to do this. Just because the underlying science is complicated doesn't make the tech "ahead of its time" due to the fact that maybe the tech, as implemented, just isn't what people want, now or in the future!

As we speaking abstractly? What theoretically could be if we didn't know anything about the tech?

Because otherwise this specific tech is very much an "ahead of its time" technology, whether consumers adopted it or not.

Besides, consumer adoption is a BS test for a technology being ahead of its time.

Failure in the market can simply be because the implementation was not good, or the marketing wasn't, or the support was lacking, or the price too high, or 200 other reasons, that don't depend on the technology not being ahead of its time.

The high price was primary due to them trying to offset the high RD cost vs the actual hardware cost. Google might be able to sell it cheaper if they can get ROI with other applications.

Update: hardware cost about $400 interesting analysis of their strategy here http://hc25.web.rice.edu/files/projects/LytroMarketingPlan.p...

Google never really was generous with its acquisitions: many of its most successful ones like Blogger, KeyHole (Earth), Where2 (Maps), Writely (Docs), Zenter (Presentations), Urchin (Analytics) and Android were for tiny dollar amounts, sub-$100M. And the really big ones - YouTube and DoubleClick, and to a lesser extent Metaweb - turned out to be worth way more than Google paid for them. The only big duds I can think of where Google paid a "generous" amount for something that didn't really make them a whole lot were Motorola, Andy Rubin's robot collection (Boston Dynamics etc.), and Skybox, and in all cases they managed to sell them off for decent amounts.

Google got to keep Motorola Mobility's patent portfolio and license them back to Lenovo I believe.

And I think they dodged a bullet by failing to acquire Groupon (for $6bn).

Yes, it's a shame for the founders in this situation, particularly if the wished to continue whilst their investors wished to exit and recoup any losses they may have had.

I'm reminded every day that the adoption curve can be brutal for those at the sharp end of the stick.

Good points. Lightfield tech will be common on day but that's probably at least 5 years from now

Can you explain what you mean by "liquidity prrference"? My understanding is that you get money in proportion to your vested share at the time of sale

Apologies in advance for the oversimplification. It depends on the actual contract you signed but in general it goes like this:

VC puts in 1 dollar, you sell at 1.2, VC will take the first dollar and MAY take the next 20 cents. That could mean a liquidity preference of 1.2x. If you sold at 1.4, it COULD mean VC takes 1.2 and you split the next 20cents according to your share split with the VC.

It may be easier to think of a VC as a bank that doesn't ask you to pay back a loan every month BUT if a liquidity event occurs (i.e. someone buys your company), they absolutely want all their money back first (i.e. "senior" in debt to equity holders (you)) before you get to dip your hands in.

Not all shares are the same. Corporations have different classes of stock: as a simple example there may be common stock and preferred stock.

In a "liquidity event", and especially in a "down round" where the company is bought at a lower price per share than previous investors paid, those shares are not treated the same. Preferred shares may get something from the new investment round (perhaps less than they invested), while common shares may have their value wiped out to zero.

(Source: I have been a "commoner" in a company that was bought in a down round where my stock was zeroed but the preferred shares were still worth something.)

Search for "liquidation preference" on your favorite search engine

Sometimes you feel like asking trusted strangers online for a synthesized summary as it pertains to the topic at hand.