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Like Facebook the leaders spoke at the opening of the opening of the Oculus Connect 5 conference, one thing was clearly missing, the founding team that had created the Facebook virtual reality startup bought for $ 2 billion in 2014.
None of the five co-founders of OculusVR spoke during the company's grand speech, while Facebook executives, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, vice president of long-time announcements Andrew Bosworth – now vice president of VR / AR – and Hugo Barra VR, delivered the bulk of the major announcements.
The absence of the co-founders of OculusVR on stage during the biggest Facebook VR event of the year comes as a lot of information circulates around the old leaders of high-profile Facebook acquisitions. Earlier this week, Instagram co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger announced they were leaving the company unexpectedly. Today, we heard more from Brian Acton, the founder of WhatsApp, who left Facebook earlier this year and who left $ 850 million after being unhappy with the management of the company that it was. originally created.
Oculus experienced more turbulence on Facebook than other acquisitions. The company was at the center of a $ 3 billion lawsuit last year with ZeniMax Media for the creation of the company and intellectual property theft. In the end, Facebook was forced to pay $ 250 million.
Founder Palmer Luckey also proved to be a headache for Facebook's public communications after his donation to an anti-Clinton group in the 2016 election led to a negative news storm. Luckey left Facebook last year. While the company's other co-founders took on leadership roles after the acquisition, a big change at the end of 2016 degraded the roles of Brendan Iribe and Nate Mitchell, then CEO of Xiaomi. as vice president of VR Facebook reporting directly to Zuckerberg.
The co-founders of OculusVR have also played a larger role in recent years during the events. While Iribe and Luckey had a major presence during the opening speeches at the first conferences, last year only Mitchell spoke. This year, there have been many reminders about Connect's past conferences with the first employees, like Chef Michael Antonov, on the future of the VR platform.
As Facebook continues to shift its far-reaching acquisitions away from autonomy and leadership, the future of founding leaders leading the public vision of the companies they originally created seems even more uncertain.
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