Rony Abovitz on Magic Leap and Taking Bold Risks

Magic Leap Founder Rony Abovitz is a serial tech entrepreneur and visionary. He co-founded Mako Surgical in 2004 — a robotics company specialising in manufacturing surgical robotic arm assistance technology utilised by hospitals worldwide. MAKO was acquired by Stryker Corporation in 2013 for $1.65 billion.

Rony went on to found Magic Leap — a spatial computing company which envisaged a futuristic world, many years ahead of its time. Starting out of his garage in 2010, Rony worked on Magic Leap at night whilst still working at Mako during the day. He partnered with award-winning Weta Workshop in New Zealand and assembled a world-class team of creative scientists before building their own high-tech factory in the US. He remained Magic Leap’s CEO until 2020 when he helped recruit Peggy Johnson to be his successor. Rony remains on the Board of Directors at Magic Leap and is also founder and CEO of Sun and Thunder – which incubates creative tech experiments. He is also strategic advisor to Lamina1, the Layer-1 blockchain for the Open Metaverse co-founded by none other than Neal Stephenson - who famously coined the term “metaverse” in his book, Snow Crash.

Rony is also working on another startup which we weren’t able to talk about but I am looking forward to having him back on the podcast next year to discuss it.

This interview was recorded during the pandemic and the sound quality isn’t great so please forgive me for that but it’s still a fascinating interview with a pioneer of our times.

Enjoy!

-----------------

You can read our interview here

Rony on Twitter / Magic Leap / Sun and Thunder / Medium

Danielle on Twitter @daniellenewnham and Instagram @daniellenewnham / Newsletter