The title and tone of this article make it sound unusual that the company used its IP as collateral.<p>You can get better loan terms (such as the interest rate) if your loan is secured. If you are going to get a secured loan, the default is that it's secured by 'all assets', which includes IP. In order to perfect a security interest in IP, you need to make this type of filing -- and a lender will be especially sure to do so when making a secured loan to this type of company because the company likely has little other assets of value with which to secure the loan.
><i>Magic Leap is estimated to have over 1,800 employees and 19 office sites.</i><p>For a company that has no consumer product and has no revenue, to have this many employees is quite shocking to me.
<i>Magic Leap is spending somewhere between $600M and $800M per year and that they have burned through all of their initial $2.4 Billion.</i><p>Doing what? They've sold a few thousand glasses, and have done a fair amount of R&D. But $2.4 billion? That's 12,000 engineer years.
I’m really hoping magic leap makes it in the long run. They’re a huge tech employer in south Florida, and frankly we could use more tech companies. I’m always afraid a recession will wipe them out and flood the market with experienced engineers.
> Magic Leap is spending somewhere between $600M and $800M per year and that they have burned through all of their initial $2.4 Billion.<p>Is it possible for ML to be viable at all? Assuming they manage to make $1000 profit <i>eventually</i> per device, they will need to sell at least half million devices each year. It seems militery usage probably won't be able to fund this alone as the size of US militery is just 1.5M. In US, 40M iPhones are sold each year and one can think of largest possible market for $2000 devices is likely around 5M to 10M per year. So 10% of that is certainly possible if there was a compelling experience device.
FYI - normal venture debt companies like WTI include IP as collateral as part of their standard deal docs. Just know what you're signing.<p>You as founder are most likely going to be the one trying to sell your IP if your startup fails and your debt guys will essentially give you a commission to do so.
Wow. You think Jimmy would have learned after getting hosed down on WeWork...nope.<p>Just anecdotal but JP Morgan appear to be involved in quite a few shitty deals this cycle. I know they are going hard in syndicated loans, which is very hot right now, wonder what we will find out when the tide goes out.
Looks like his server is in damage control, Web Archive has a copy but is in the same state for me: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.kguttag.com/2019/11/10/all-magic-leap-patents-have-apparently-been-assigned-to-j-p-chase-morgan-as-collateral/" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.kguttag.com/2019/1...</a>
Interestingly when I have gotten credit from Silicon Valley Bank they have always secured the debt with all the assets <i>excluding</i> IP. Why? Because they can't do anything with the IP while I presumably can find a buyer and pay them back.
I'm amused that anyone ever took Magic Leap seriously. It's basically Apple's Newton; a good idea without the tech, without the infrastructure, without the content to sustain it and make it useful. Check back in after 10 years.
What happened to them? They were in the news a lot for a while but lately it’s totally quiet . I thought they finally had released something. Has anybody tried their tech?
So what is up with AR?<p>The way i naively imagine startups work is that they identify a market, develop a product for that market, then sell the product to the market.<p>So where have the AR startups gone wrong? Did they not actually identify a market? Does the market turn out not to exist? Have they not been able to develop a product that adequatly fits the market? Are they unable to sell a perfectly good product to the market for some reason?
If any wanker goes on about Theranos but didn't call out Magic Leap years ago delete them from your feed.<p>And ML still goes on.<p>We know its technologically impossible yet people still go on like its something.<p>But the sad thing is, it's hard to say the actual value of the patents, to ML nothing but as a troll maybe a fair bit.
This is just an anecdote, but everyone and everything about Magic Leap has always struck me as pretentious, elitist, and ego-driven.<p>I walked by their booth at GDC a couple years ago, and tried to struck up a conversation with the representatives. I was essentially shooed away and given a sticker.<p>Later on that night, an invite to their Magic Leap party was sent to a telegram channel with an open invitation to 'come hang'. The only problem: the invite was sent 10 minutes before it was wrapping up, almost like a "look at our party you aren't invited to".