VC John Frankel: Google Glass 'Feels More Like The Segway Than Anything Else'
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Google Glass has already attracted some interest from top investors Marc Andreessen, Google Ventures, and VC firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, which teamed up to launch the Glass Collective to fund Glass-related startups.
But not all investors are as optimistic about Google Glass, GigaOm reports.
John Frankel, a partner at ff Venture Capital — which has funded How About We and Klout — thinks Google Glass is interesting and has great use cases for doctors, he said at the Wearable Tech Expo in New York this week. But he's just not convinced it's going to work as a consumer product.
“It’s too big a change of behavior," Frankel said. "It’s technology that sits between you and other people … it feels to me that it’s too impersonal. It feels more like the Segway than anything else, which is, ‘hey, this looks great on paper but I probably wouldn’t have one in the garage.’”
When the Segway launched in 2002, the founder said it would "Be to the car what the car was to the horse and buggy." It was expected to totally change transportation but people just weren't buying them. By the end of 2007, Segway had only sold 30,000 units.
Similarly, Google Glass is being hyped up as the gadget that will completely change how we interact with people in both the physical and digital world.
These grand claims can create overly high expectations and potentially leave consumers feeling disappointed.
Disclosure: Marc Andreessen is an investor in Business Insider.
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