You Get Nothing

Interesting take on why Facebook elected to buy Oculus by Joe Rosenstee of Unauthoritative Pronouncements. I haven’t fully worked out the justification for this purchase in my own mind, but I will comment on something tangentially related to this deal: as Joe pointed out in his article, and Linus Edwards as well on Twitter earlier, for some reason many seem to have this mistaken notion that Oculus — or Facebook — owes its Kickstarter backers something. Talk about entitlement issues, and an impressive ability to misunderstand the exchange Kickstarter facilitates. As backers, you provide the startup money — that initial push to make it to market. In return, you receive whatever rewards the project owner elects to distribute based on your contribution. That exchange is the extent of your relationship with the company.