Oculus掌门人详解Facebook收购内幕

    很快，Facebook以190亿美元收购了WhatsApp，于是Oculus团队“对自己的价格更有信心”，艾利布说道。但他表示，归根结底，交易更注重的是合作，而不是金钱。Oculus没有进行竞拍，也没有向其他潜在买家推销。

    扎克伯格认为虚拟现实将是下一个大平台，这种远见说服了Oculus。Facebook没有像谷歌（Google）安卓（Android）操作系统或苹果（Apple）应用商店（App Store）这样的自有平台。Facebook只有一个网站和一系列应用。而Oculus则可以成为Facebook的平台。

    所以，在3月的一个周六，当扎克伯格邀请Oculus团队一起用餐时，他们在第二天早上便急匆匆地飞抵旧金山。卡马克用虚拟现实代替2D显示器的愿景打动了扎克伯格。扎克伯格向Oculus团队介绍了Facebook将如何以更低的成本和更大的规模，帮助Oculus公司将虚拟现实头戴设备迅速推向消费者。

    两个团队达成了协议，上周三，四位Oculus创始人前往扎克伯格家中用餐，陪同前往的还有考克斯、企业发展负责人艾明•佐弗农、Facebook工程设计副总裁科里•昂德莱奇卡。昂德莱奇卡也是虚拟世界第二人生（Second Life）的联合创始人。

    用餐结束时，扎克伯格说：“我们应该大干一场。”

    艾利布开玩笑说：“我不知道他是不是在菜里加了什么东西，但我们全都面带微笑，感觉良好。我们觉得，确实应该办这件事。”

    扎克伯格称，他认为他们可以在三天半时间完成这笔高达20亿美元的交易。

    周末，两家公司的法律团队在Facebook总部安营扎寨，彻夜未眠，最终敲定了交易的细节。艾利布说：“大家肯定听说过Facebook喜欢迅速行动——这是他们的座右铭——他们的确如此。”周日上午5:30分，艾利布离开Facebook总部后，直接赶往机场，马不停蹄地回家好好睡了一觉。他说：“因为缺觉，我甚至出现了幻觉，有一点精神错乱。”醒来之后，他还有一些思绪混乱。这是真的吗？还是在做梦？

    接下来的星期二，一切都已经板上钉钉：Facebook在闭市后宣布了这笔交易，震惊了游戏行业、科技行业、Oculus在众筹网站Kickstarter的赞助人和华尔街（Facebook股票在盘后交易中出现了小幅下跌）。但艾利布表示，Oculus董事会对这笔交易并不热心，他们更希望公司保持独立。

    之后，艾利布一直渴望介绍这件事的另外一面。他和公司联合创始人分别发布了三篇与交易有关的博客，结果，艾利布很快发现，整个Oculus团队都支持将公司出售给Facebook。他承认，Facebook并不是最合理的选择，他自己第一次听到这个消息时也曾有过怀疑。

    但现在他对这笔交易充满了信心：“我相信，在未来十年，对于Oculus和虚拟现实的成功，Facebook的支持将具有重要的意义。”（财富中文网）

    译者：刘进龙/汪皓

    Soon after, when Facebook spent $19 billion to acquire WhatsApp, the Oculus team "started to believe in our number a little more," Iribe said. But he noted that ultimately the deal was more about the partnership than the money. Oculus didn't run an auction process, or try shop itself around to other potential buyers.

    Zuckerberg won over Oculus with his vision for virtual reality as the next big platform. Facebook doesn't have its own platform, its own version of Google's Android operating system, or Apple's App Store. It just has a website and a set of apps. But Oculus could be that platform for Facebook.

    So when Zuckerberg called on a Saturday in March to invite the Oculus team over for dinner, they hopped on a flight to San Francisco the next morning. Carmack impressed Zuckerberg with his vision of virtual reality replacing 2-D monitors. Zuckerberg showed the team how Facebook could help Oculus get virtual reality headsets to people quickly, at a lower cost, and in a bigger way.

    The two teams reached an agreement, and that Wednesday the four Oculus founders had dinner at Zuckerberg's house, along with Cox, Amin Zoufonoun, head of corporate development, and Cory Ondrejka, a Facebook VP of engineering who was also a co-founder of the virtual world Second Life.

    At the end of the dinner Zuckerberg said, "We should do this."

    "I don't know if he put anything in the dinner, but we were certainly all smiling and felt good about it," Iribe joked. "And it felt like the right thing to do."

    Zuckerberg said he thought they could close the $2 billion deal in around three and a half days.

    Both companies' legal teams camped out at Facebook's headquarters over the weekend, working around the clock without sleeping to pound out the details of the deal. "When you hear Facebook likes to move fast -- that's their motto -- they move fast," Iribe said. At 5:30 a.m. that Sunday he left the Facebook office to go straight to the airport, and from there straight home to bed. "I was hallucinating a little bit and a little delirious because we hadn't slept," he said. When he woke up, he was still disoriented. Had that really just happened, or had he dreamt it?

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    That Tuesday, it became very real: Facebook announced the deal after the market close, shocking the gaming world, the tech world, Oculus' Kickstarter backers, and Wall Street (Facebook's stock dropped slightly in after-hours trading). Even Oculus' board wasn't enthusiastic about the deal, preferring the company stay independent, Iribe said.

    Since then, Iribe has been eager to tell Oculus' side of the story. He and his co-founders posted three separate blog posts on the deal, and Iribe is quick to note that the whole Oculus team was in favor of selling to Facebook. He admits that Facebook wasn't the obvious choice, and even he might have had some initial skepticism upon first hearing about it.

    He's a believer now, though: "When you look at what's going to make Oculus, and virtual reality in general, successful a decade from now, I really believe that Facebook's backing and their support in this is really going to make a big difference," he said.