 of the company across those two rounds.
Still, it's pretty cool that they were able to skip raising a seed round, and
I don't doubt that the founders retained more equity than they would have
otherwise.

    
    
        Nobody wants a bunch of T Shirts plus being the first kid
        on the block with a new toy for $500m of equity value.
    

If Oculus had sold equity instead of product pre-orders I don't believe for a
second that their Series A round would have worked out nearly as well. I'd
much rather walk into a meeting with a VC with 7,400+ pre-orders for my
expensive gadget tucked under my arm than a list of people who ponied up a
thousand bucks for a sliver of equity in my company.

    
    
        However we are still in the really, really early days of
        crowdfunding, the days when we have not yet moved from the
        “first they laugh at you” phase.
    

Right, because the Indian independence movement is _exactly_ like
crowdfunding.

~~~
BrainInAJar
> Right, because the Indian independence movement is exactly like
> crowdfunding.

Grandiose, self-important valley startup wank talk. Like "disrupting the
market" by making another bullshit website or app.

~~~
dang
This is a truly awful comment that should never be on Hacker News at all, let
alone upvoted. This is not because of what it says about "the valley", but
because of its form. It could be about anything else and be just as bad.
Please don't post this sort of thing.

(Edit: I completely rewrote my comment here, because I'm still getting the
hang of this. Also, all these feedback comments I've been adding are an
experiment in comment quality and transparency. We're going to keep
experimenting until we find things that work. I doubt that this experiment is
going to work, because I'm getting tired of writing these, and some of you are
no doubt tired of reading them.)

~~~
tptacek
I think these comments are awesome, but I can't imagine having to write them
regularly.

The "I'm burying the story" stuff is especially useful.

~~~
dang