Could these Kickstarter campaigns be the next Oculus VR?

Zuck’s been waving his wallet around again.

 

This time on his shopping list was Oculus VR, maker of Oculus Rift, a virtual reality headset.

Tech-heads have been praising it as the next generation of gaming and a big step towards realism in virtual reality (if you can get your head round that).

It’s been almost exactly a month since Facebook’s wunderkind told everyone at Mobile World Congress he wouldn’t be considering another acquisition for a long time.

“After you’ve bought a company for $16 billion, you’re probably done for a while,” he told attendees at Mobile World Congress.

Clearly Oculus was too good a proposition to wait around for the Whatsapp cheque to clear.

Zuckerberg splashed out $2.3bn on Oculus, turning the start-up into the posterboy for crowdfunding overnight. The virtual reality company started its life on Kickstarter in September 2012, where it raised $2.4m – smashing its goal of $250,000.

But who will be next? Could any more of Kickstarter’s budding campaigns lead to billion dollar acquisitions within two years?

We take a look at some of our favourite current Kickstarter campaigns.

 

 

 

Given the mammoth success of Oculus, we thought we’d play it safe and stick with the virtual reality theme. Well, if Zuck’s gone there, Page and Schmidt might not be far behind…

 

Altergaze is a 3D printed accessory for your smartphone. When added to your iPhone or Samsung handset, the Altergaze creates a virtual reality headset for you to view your own photos, films, presentations etc in virtual reality. 

 

It’s raised £10,444 of its £250,000 target so far and there’s 36 days to go. 

 

What MIGHT Zuck pay? $1.1bn. 

 

 

 

This is one for the more green fingered of you. The MIDI Sprout allows you to convert the activity of plants into music. Well, they do say plants react to music, now you can react to theirs. Kind of. 

 

It’s part of what’s been referred to as the DIY biofeedback movement – and it means anyone with a computer or synthesizer can use the device to listen to their plants. 

 

How? The MIDI Sprout has probes which measure small electrical currents which move across a plant’s leaves. These in turn are read by synthes and computers to create sounds. 

Pretty cool – just don’t think too much about the Little Shop of Horrors. 

 

So far it’s raised $18,044 of $25,0000 and there’s 25 days left. 

 

What MIGHT Zuck pay? $77m. 

 

 

 

You may have heard of this one already – mostly because Harvest Mooner himself Neil Young is the creative force behind the campaign. Pono is a download device and music player – designed to provide the best possible quality of sound with the ease of downloading. 

 

In their words, “you’ll hear the nuances, the soft touches, and the ends on the echo – the texture and the emotion of the music the artist worked so hard to create.” Something which many Mp3 players have lost. 

 

As a sweetener, Pono is offering limited edition Pono players signed by certain artists. 

 

It’s raised $4,871,003 so far, smashing its $800,000 goal by a country music mile and there’s 20 days to go. We can see Zuck’s ears pricking now…

 

What MIGHT he pay? $3bn.

 

 

 

 

This may not be one for Zuckerberg as much as Michael Gove but we thought it was worth a look. It’s a small, programmable robot, which uses online tutorials to gets kids programming and learning robotics. 

 

With such a large national push to get kids coding this toy couldn’t have come at a better time. Good if you fancy turning your progeny into the next Zuckerberg? 

 

It’s raised £13,365 so far out of a £25,000 target with 14 days to go.

 

What MIGHT Zuck pay? $50m

 

 

 

Have you ever looked at your light bulbs and thought, “wouldn’t it be great if that little guy did more than just light up my room,” ? Well, no we haven’t either really but some folks in Hong Kong have and they’ve combined light bulbs and smart speakers to become….AirBulb, the bulbs that also play music and are controlled by your smart phone. It combines an LED energy efficient bulb with a wireless speaker device in one unit. 

 

“We believe, where there’s light, there’s music,” says the company. 

 

And some other people have also thought so too. The bulbs have raised $52,403 out of $100,000 with 32 days to go. 

 

What MIGHT Zuck pay? $34m. 

 

 

 

It’s happened to the best of us. You get your burger, having possibly queued for an hour or two outside whichever burger joint is in vogue that week, and it gets soggy within a minute or so, leaving you with a sloppy mess and a feeling you shouldn’t have waited quite so long.

 

Burger Lift is here to save the day. The little device simply created a platform for your patty and bun to sit on, lifting your treat out of the pool of its own juices (which inevitably gathers on the plate) and therefore allowing you to enjoy a juicy, yet dry burger sensation. 

 

It’s literally just a piece of plastic but people do love burgers. It’s raised $5,799 out of a $10,001 target (we’d love to know what the additional cent is for). 

 

What MIGHT Zuck pay? $5.99 for one.