Facebook Just Acquired Us. What's Next?

The morning after Facebook announced its $2 billion acquisition of Oculus VR, the virtual-reality headset company that many predict will transform the gaming and computer industry, Oculus COO and acting CFO Laird Malamed '89 phoned Slice of MIT to share the news.

Since the headset will make its commercial debut later this year or early next year, Malamed, who previously worked on Call of Duty and Guitar Hero during a 16-year stint at Activision, has his work cut out for him. Fortunately, he now has a little more help.

What’s the last week been like for you?

It’s been a really busy six days. We got the verbal offer a week ago, and we went down to Facebook on Thursday morning and didn't leave until we had a deal.

What first drew you to joining Oculus VR?

Three things: I liked the people, they were genuine and smart. The product was cool and I believed in it. And third, I thought it was something we could market easily. I've had a lot of great opportunities to work with a lot of great people, but I had never felt like I’d done anything on the level of MIT. I wanted to be part of starting a new thing. This is right in line with fulfilling MIT’s mission of developing and changing the world and being of service to it. I hope VR can do that.

Developers first got to try Oculus Rift in 2012 and have since started developing software for it. What has excited you about what they've done so far?

They've been doing basic things like asking what Breakout might look like in virtual reality. From a 1970s game like that to looking at what cinema looks like, what it feels like to be completely immersed in a movie. Then there’s a Kickstarter project, which I personally backed, to laser-scan a canyon in Australia that is decaying. The developer wants to put that in the Rift so that people can access it later on. I love the range of things they are doing with it.

Will you have a lot more people to please now that Facebook is in the mix?

Yes, and we've disappointed a lot of early fans who feel we've sold out and all I can say is that we got a commitment from [Facebook] management to keep running this the way we want it and at the same time leverage what they've built. Facebook has grown to a $160 billion company in 10 years. Say what you will about them, they’ve got 1.2 billion users. We want to remain true to [founder] Palmer Luckey’s ideals that the world can be magical and the experiences we can have with VR can really connect people. Who better than Facebook to help us do that?

Are there other MIT alumni on board at Oculus VR?

It’s amazing that there aren't, out of our 78 people right now. We've just started to reach out, though. We did some recruiting there a few months ago, and I imagine there are a lot of MIT alums at Facebook.

How does your aero/astro degree come in handy as a COO?

Do I use it every day? No, but MIT taught me how to think, and at the end of the day aero/astro was about communicating remote experiences to everyone. One of my favorite days at MIT was sitting in this lecture hall, during IAP, and watching images load on a screen from the Jet Propulsion Lab as Voyager II was passing Saturn…it was magical. I always loved the magic of engineering. Also, I’m proud to say I took 6.002x and got an A. I look forward to getting more time to take MITx courses!