It has been nice to get some downtime. June was a super-charged month for augmented reality. Snapchat and Apple. North and Google. So much news and so little time to process it all.
But in the middle of it all, Magic Leap was conducting a search for a CEO. With their shift to enterprise, their decision was bound to send a major signal to the market.
In announcing Peggy Johnson as their new CEO, the company has managed to thread a whole bunch of needles":
She’s an engineer! Frankly, this is huge. If they had chosen someone purely based on their ability to market or strike deals with “enterprise” it would have sent a very particular signal. But this is someone who has the capacity to dig deep into product development. This sends a signal that ML 2 is still on its way.
She’s a she. Which shouldn’t be a big deal. But it is. And aside from being good for the industry/enterprise segment/world….sends a strong signal that Magic Leap has values and stands by them.
She has experience at Qualcomm. Qualcomm is a key driver of the XR industry.
She has “big enterprise” experience at Microsoft and clearly knows how to attract customers and partners.
She “gets” innovation, startups and how to work with all of the smaller companies that will help make Magic Leap a success. Her venture fund experience at Microsoft is proof of this.
Now, whenever I mention Magic Leap I tend to get eye rolls.
I get it. People have been disillusioned. They feel let down.
But I don’t discount the company so easily. Sure, they have internal morale issues. They have likely turned off a segment of the market who were expecting bigger things. But I still think that Rony’s vision is important, it just needed a better hand at execution.
Peggy brings that ability to execute.
What Next?
I recently wrote that Magic Leap can succeed where Hololens does not.
For a bit of a Hololens take-down, see Karl Guttag’s recent article, which concludes:
“For all the technology and money that was spent, as the saying goes, “(Hololens) are still putting lipstick on a pig.””
In other words: maybe Hololens isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Maybe there’s room for a second AR headset for enterprise. And wouldn’t it be awesome to have an ex-Microsoft employee helping out?
In fact, one of the more curious lines in the press release is this:"
“It is with great pride and sincere appreciation to the Magic Leap Board, Rony and the entire team, as well as to Satya Nadella at Microsoft, that I assume the role of leading this visionary business into the future.”
Did the nod to Satya mean that he gave his blessing on the move? Or was it more of a “so long and thanks for all the fish”?
With Peggy at the helm, we can now keep an eye out for the answers to the questions I asked in my post:
With funding now removing the Magic Leap death watch, what enterprise partnerships do they announce first?
Do they make the mistake of migrating to “we help with productivity”? If they do, it means that Rony has lost his voice
Do they make a major push into the “Big C” creative space? Do they become the de facto device for architecture and ad agencies, store design and product innovation?
Do their forays into ‘training’ end up being bland and dull? If so, they’re only going after low-hanging fruit rather than aspirational use cases
Do they start to muddy their value proposition, trying to straddle the divide between “productivity and efficiency” and value-creation?
Can they start to parse the Magicverse for enterprise? If you know how to read it, it’s a brilliant path forward for corporations and non-profits, perhaps especially during these perilous times.
I think we can safely say that Magic Leap can get a second wind. The only question being whether it’s too late.