[dmix]

The company that nearly acquired Skully before they apparently "messed up" (LeSports) just got $1.2 billion in capital so I don't think you can say easy money has stopped floating around for AR startups. This headline could just have easily been that the company was getting bought out.

Skully just couldn't hit their targets for the 2nd round. Especially with the founder getting dramatically booted out and Intel Capital Partners is quoted in this article as still being actively involved until the very end - they clearly had greater problems than access to capital.

So I'm not sure this story backs up your narrative very well.

http://variety.com/2016/biz/asia/chinas-le-sports-raises-1-2...

[kevin_thibedeau]

Basically LeSports has all the technical know-how now and can respin this concept using cheaper NRE for a lower price point with the pesky Americans out of the picture.

[jessaustin]

If you're implying that LesPorts looked over their shoulder and got valuable IP for free, that too would be something of a failure on the part of Skully's management.

[ChuckMcM]

I don't know how it went down at all, but I can relate a story about a dot com casualty that I helped purchase. The company's assets were bought from the investors, as far as I could tell that transaction happened between the board of directors at the company where I worked, and their board of directors. The "cover story" that their board told their CEO and CTO was that they should consider taking us over, and we went over and talked to everyone and did some technical due diligence. I found both the CEO and CTO fairly annoying with their "why would we want to buy you?" attitude.

Then on Monday the week after that get together our CEO told us they had purchased "certain assets" of that company and we should "hire" anyone who we thought was good, we had a spreadsheet with their time of service and salary info. And a green light to just move them into our org with the same salary. They came right across as a horizontal transfer as far as the employees were concerned.

I know for a fact that it surprised the heck out of the CEO as when we went over there to talk to people his office monitor was sitting on the floor and the CRT tube was broken. And we never saw any of the senior management after that one time. Definitely left a sour taste and it reminded me how "expensive" it was to take bridge funding.

[nzjrs]

Ip? It's hardly rocket science. More like they killed them to get first to market.

[dmix]

I thought Skully was already on the market? Just with supply chain issues. Unless you mean in a mainstream form.