Oculus
VR is crowd funded company based in California and founded by Palmer Luckey.
The company launched a Kickstarter campaign to help funded the innovative
Oculus Rift (3D head-mount display). The campaign started back in August 2012
and aimed to get $250.000 of crowd funds, instead the company was able to reach
almost ten times their initial goal, the stunning amount of $2.4 million was
reach within a couple of days this incredible success was due to social media
publicity, just regular Joes excited about this new and innovative product.
The
initial Kickstater campaign begun with a developer’s kit and backers who
pledged $300 or more would get one, the kits preorders were sold at a rate of
4-5 per minute on the first day, later on slowing down. But this was
enough for Oculus VR to start their journey towards building a 3D head-mounted
display for the masses at an affordable price.
After
the Kickstarter campaign ended a prototype was showed at the 2012 E3 convention
(Entertainment Expo), it was backed by gaming company Id Software for their new
updated version of Doom 3, and the Oculus Rift got a lot of attention at the
convention it was one of the nominees for “Best of E3” awards. Subsequently
many gaming companies followed Id software footsteps and started working
alongside Oculus VR to integrate the Oculus Rift into their games.
The
Oculus VR crowdfunding campaign was so successful that on March 2014 the company
was bought by Facebook for $400 million in cash plus $1.6 billion in Facebook stock
and $300 million extra if Oculus VR meets certain financial targets in the
second quarter of 2014. Taking in consideration
that they only have a prototype of their final product this campaign is one of
the most successful crowdfunding stories yet.
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